Introduction to Smoke Simulation

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3 months in the making! This tutorial will teach you everything you need to know about the new smoke simulator from a beginners perspective.

Length:
27 minutes
Software:
Software 2.5
Difficulty:
Beginner
Rate:
VN:F [1.9.17_1161]
Rating: 4.8/5 (84 votes cast)

During the 27-minute video you will learn:

  • The Old System Vs New – What’s changed?
  • How the Smoke Simulator works
  • How to bake and render realistic smoke
  • A behind the scenes look at creating a smoking city

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few months, you’ve probably heard about this new feature called the smoke simulator. But what is it? Why is everyone getting so excited over it? This tutorial will answer all your questions from a beginners perspective.

At a Glance

Screenshots from the video:

I originally gave this presentation at the 2009 Blender Conference . The presentation included creations from other users, a short demonstration of smoke in action and a slideshow. Since that time there have been massive developements in smoke simulation so consider my video a revised edition.

Smoke Presentation

Do you have any tips or tricks for using the smoke simulator? Share your experiences in the comments below!

Introduction to Smoke Simulation, 4.8 out of 5 based on 84 ratings

About Andrew Price

User of Blender for 9+ years. I've written tutorials for 3d World Magazine and spoken at three Blender conferences. My goal is to help artists get employed in the industry by making training accessible and easy to understand. I'm an Aussie and I live in South Korea ;)
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  • Gary

    That video is fantastic, and moving.

    If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I have with Blender as of now.

  • rickrichie

    I followed your instructions to the letter(almost to the letter), but I am unable to render the smoke(I am using Blender 2.58).

  • Glewisguy

    The rubble, can you go into more detail about that please? That looks like a very useful tip and I would love to see how you made it!

  • alessandro

    good animation ,very nice , I like the choosed music for timer and the perfect combination with video sequence and muisc volume , the smooke simulation training good easy to undstand ,if possibile add ,common problem fix to improve the training video part .

  • Ausin

    Yes, tutorial on camera mapping

  • Isking

    Could you please do a photo mapping tutorial and also no web cam you look to smug or look like you about to go insane

  • umesh

    nice

  • Kasper

    Fantastic Tutorial. It’s simple and easy to follow, and yet the result is so amazing.

    Also, is it on purpose that the thing shown at 23:54 in the video looks like a kind of monster-dog-creature?

  • http://alberthoffmann.de Albert Hoffmann

    The finest tutorials for free I ever see!!! Thanx a lot !!!
    Greetings from Germany, Bonn

  • http://www.dynamitecanalproduction.com Morgann

    Thank you so much for your tutorial. I knew how to make smoke with blender 2.5. before, but now, thanks to you, I understand how’s it working so that’s certainly a plus. I can modify some of the settings according to what I want.

    But there’s something I can’t work out, it’s the speed of the smoke. I want to create a really slow, large, dense, black, column of smoke. I nearlys succeded to have a large dense black column of smoke but I can’t do a slow one. Mine is very very very fast and I don’t know what to do to slow it down. Any ideas ?
    (my smoke is emited from a uv sphere if that helps).

    Thanks again for the tutorial,
    Have a nice day,
    Best regards,

    Hello from Paris,

    Morgann.

  • Brian

    Great tutorial Andrew, they are always a great way to get a nice into to Blenders features.

    I just have one question for everyone:

    Does anyone know how you can keep the domain from repeating the smoke effect. I found out from trial and error that if you scale the cube in edit mode, instead of object mode, the smoke effect will repeat. I has baffled me all day.

    Any help would be most appreciative.

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  • Jan

    i like your videos very much, and would like to see more of them :)

  • Jeff Perkins

    This was by far the best tutorial on Blender I’ve ever had! I do like the “virtual classroom” kind of setup with the powerpoint and actually have it explained how this stuff works.

    Thank you also for showing how you put together your scene! Very useful.

  • samuel

    hi andrew! i only want to know if you have done the whole city behind or it’s just a picture of new york because it look really awsome and realistic.

    keep up good work man you’re really awsome

    Samus

  • eduardo

    Andrew that was a great tutorial for smoke.

    I also think that you should do a tutorial for the new york city scene in the backround and show how you do the building falling in blender.

    hope to see more.

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  • http://blenderdigitalblog.wordpress.com/ Christopher Wright

    Fantastic tutorial! :D

    …but why a macbook?? lol

  • Natron1

    Thanks, Andrew. But my computer’s so dark, I couldn’t see anything.

  • http://meshweaver.blogspot.com MeshWeaver

    Great tutorial, Andrew! Thanks for explaining what the values affect, it really helped me understand how it works :D Looking forward to doing more tests…

    You’re right about the Materials – seems to me it would be kinda tough to figure out on your own, would be very frustrating and discouraging…

    Anyway, this is the result I got (took over 4 hours to render) :

    http://www.vimeo.com/16765564

  • Sven Delle

    @ Shaeope
    Yeah, I know. But if you look at how Brad Peebler from Luxology (Modo3D) always manage to mention his actions when doing tutorials – no matter whether it’s a feature as simple as clicking the letter a on the keyboard (to fit all in view), you’ll see it’s easily manageable.

    Just trying to give feedback for Andrew to improve on – or ignore if he prefer.

  • Carrick Schreiner

    I have been having a few problems with this tutorial, I am using version 2.54 and when I try to set up the domain settings it doesn’t display the same one you show here and in the fire tutorial e-book, and I cannot find the initial velocity box. Also when setting up the voxel data I cannot find where to change the influence.

  • Shaeope

    @Sven Delle
    Sometimes it is hard for Andrew to balance, because the experts want it to be quick since they know all the beginner stuff and the beginners want it explained. Try looking at the other blender tutorials or the wiki for shortcuts. :D

  • Sven Delle

    Man you go way to fast from – as you say – a beginners perspective. You just say ‘make this object the domain object’ and right-?, alt-?, option-? click all over the place.

    Please, step down and take the time to explain what you do when you click (and tell whether you left-, middle-, right- etc click).

    Otherwise, great tutorial. Thanks.

  • Bon

    The Eminem Version Of The Song Is Better

  • Gus

    great tutorial, could you do one on making buldings easily plz and the new controlls for 2.5, thanks mate!

  • http://blenderpimp.tk/ Speed

    Dude I love the intro, and this is so helpful too. I personally don’t like viewing tutorials, cause I like finding things out myself, but I got frustrated lol. Very helpful here, and I love that song too Eminem – Toy Soldiers (lol I’m in the mix of making my first album too)

  • http://eatyourwork.net eatyourwork

    great tutorial. i’m fresh in blender but.. i have some problems in 2.54.. the smoke do not appear at all and don’t know where the problem is ;/ maybe someone could explain more details on it? thanks

  • bobby1234

    @bunny

    There is some good smoke and fire information in this tutorial

    http://www.blenderguru.com/creating-realistic-fire/

  • Wes

    Yes you really should make a tutorial on camera mapping

  • Clatyon Rustemeyer

    ok first of all…WOW! that was an AWSOME scene, what with the city in chaos and all. totally awsome tutorial video as well.
    i ama beginner with blender ANY version and yet with this
    tutorial i was able to make smoke like a SNAP! love it love it love it.
    i DO have a few questions that arn’t smoke related though.
    do you have any tutorials for blender 2.54 on how to do hair faces and bodies and eyes that are as simple as this one?
    i am doing a 3d mesh of a fire breathing dragon lol so anything on fire would be really handy as well

  • Wildrune11

    Wow! This is a great tutorial, it really helped me (really enjoyed the starting video too). But just a question, e-mail reply to me, my smoke turned out differently? It was much smaller and it emitted to the left (in side view, 3 on numpad), as if blown by wind. What have I done wrong, and how do I fix it? Thanks!

  • Bunny

    Would it be possible to release a written version of this at all?

  • http://suddenfish.net daryl

    I just started with Blender, and am pretty enjoying it! It’s fun to learn it with your tutorials. You’re awesome :D

  • Laertes

    and finally, me again, if ever someone else encounters my problems, here’s the solution I found: The duplicates are caused by texture mapping issues with the Voxel Data Texture. After just modifying the mapping size(which is sort of a dirty walkaround) I managed to find the difference between Andrew’s way to build the domain object and mine: Never(!) scale the cube in editmode. Apparently, blender does calculate(which makes sense) the texture coordinates on the length of the Edges of the Cube. If you scale the cube in editmode, the Edges grow longer( press N, go to “Mesh Display” section, check Edge Length to see this), if you scale it in Object mode, the edge length does not change in Editmode. That’s the point! Now this seemingly makes non-standard(i.e. not Tube, Cube or Sphere, really) domain objects a problem, but on the other hand – where would you ever need that?

  • Laertes

    uhm, well, I actually discovered that I wasn’t using 2.54 but 2.53, which seemingly didn’t like baking very much. Now, baking works fine, but still, rendering errors as described above appear. I could exactly reproduce the image posted above using blender 2.54…

  • Laertes

    As usual, great tut.
    Anyway, I’ve come to several problems using current Blender 2.5 beta(i think it’s 2.54):
    Whenever I try to simulate my smoke and then render it, the baking seems to be totally screwed. For example: I set up the simulation exactly as you did, it displays fine in the viewport if i just hit ALT+A. I give the smoke the material you tell me to, then I hit render and make it render the first few hundred frames. What happens? I get the Smoke twice, once where it should be, once about 1 Blender Unit above that. I postet a test image:
    http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/3734/somketest.png
    Now, i thought, okay, whatever, maybe it’s working better if baked. And so I did. But that threw me even to deeper confusion, because the render results didn’t change, but the viewport now kept simulating the smoke as though it was never baked(so, the framerate for ALT+A keeps low and everything), whilst with cloth simulations, baking works fine…anyone having any idea what I’m doing wrong?

  • Joel

    Near the end of the video you said you might do a tutorial on “camera mapping” – I haven’t read all the comments so I don’t know if I’m the first to say this or not, but let me throw my “YES, PLEASE DO!!” into the discussion :D Would love to know more about how you did that.

    Great information, thank you. Was frustrated with this yesterday trying to figure it out myself, and this is a great help.

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  • Phino

    every 15 minutes or so I´m at the point to ask me: “Oh no! Why did bleder this or why did it that?” and than i open ones of your tutorials and after 2 minutes or less i know it.
    Thanks for your work or as we say: “Tausend Dank Alter!” :-)

  • the12cook

    great stuff as always, any chance of the camera mapping tutorial mentioned near the end there in the making of section? it would be very useful to me and loads more of your avid viewers!

  • http://www.admc-inc.com Evan

    Good morning, I am an out of work architect in the US. I have started reviewing other modeling software and found Blender.

    Blender seems to be the ticket for the future and a great interface for modeling so so architects and design with it (using model imports and the like) and get it right to the animator…AWESOME!!

    I really like your video’s but for some reason today the weblink seems to be broken.

    Thank you for your work!!!

  • http://www.animaalgocom.blogspot.com David Montero

    Thanks for your tutorials, I love your tutorials. But I would like that you make it too in PDF.
    I leave my e-mail and I want that you answer me how I can import into a scene a model, like a car. Because when I import it, all the others thins dissapear!!!

    E-mail: davidms97@gmail.com

  • http://www.animaalgocom.blogspot.com David Montero

    Thanks for your tutorials, I love your tutorials. But I would like that you make it too in PDF.
    I leave my e-mail and I want that you answer me how I can import into a scene a model, like a car. Because when I import it, all the others thins dissapear!!!

  • Robert Brookfield

    I like the tutorial,but the smoke on the buildings in the background of the scene of the buildings looked like it was going to fast. Did you do that on purposes or was that part of your problem?

  • Matthew

    Andrew….. the smoke tutorial was great. I really like how you explained how you made it, as a college graduate from the field of computer animation… I am always interested in new stuff. and have really begun to like blender alot. I was wondering if you would be willing to do a tutorial tips on how to make the inside of a room fit into one camera view

  • leew4jc

    @Andrew: Great tutorial! Was exactly what I needed!

    Also wondering, what software did you use to create this tutorial? Especially the picture in picture of yourself?

    • walshlg

      Another great tut thanks, using 2.61 now but still have trouble with the smoke domain blocking lights, any ideas?

      Do I have to do render layers? Is this how you placed the smoke in your scene?

      • walshlg

        never mine, emitter object bounding box extended past bottom of domain

  • Nooob

    great tut! thanks! but when i hit render (the second and third render you made) nothing shows on my screen. stays gray. that is after you removed emitter and clicked none for the halo effect. sorry for being an idiot.. im using 2.53

  • Greg

    Hi
    For the flow object, there is nothing when i click where the particles should be. How do I fix this?
    Thanks

  • Alexander

    hi andrew,

    great tutorial! is there a way to freeze the voxel data an to create a realistic cloud with smoke?

    thx alex

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