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Share via E-mailDuring 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.
Do you have any tips or tricks for using the smoke simulator? Share your experiences in the comments below!
Great intro tut, thanks.
Do you have to render to layers and composite?
Headbang TIP: if you have emitters that aren’t smoking check to make sure that the BOUNDING BOX is completely within the domain, If even the slightest edge of the bounding box is outside the domain it won’t render the smoke, just the initial particles!
Thanks for the start Andrew, here is something that I’ve learned starting from this tut:
Using the Blender 2.61 smoke generator is a bit of trial and error so far. I wanted to be able to make puffs of smoke. Previously, one could control the particle generation rate but currently I don’t see a way to do this (its the particles that are used to make the smoke path). In the vid description are links to the tuts that I’ve used to get this far.
To make the effect of [i]puffs[/i] of smoke (ok they are more like sequential explosions) I set the smoke particles to get velocity from the normals to the emitter (flow object’s) faces. I then animate the strength of this effect. Also shown are that some of the problems folks are having with smoke flow can be ameliorated by turning absolute density off.
You may notice that it looks like sand falling in the middle of the sim. I don’t know why that is happening because I do not have any self effect turned on in the fields, never the less it appears that the waves of “smoke” are bumping into each other and when they do they seem to fall down. So here is what I’ve worked out:
[video=vimeo;34181361]http://vimeo.com/34181361[/video]
hmm, to get to the vid just go to http://vimeo.com/34181361
Awesome, thanks!
Rendering is not such a nightmare for me as you explained the settings so well.
Thanks again.
first this is awesome and it works perfectly with the old render engine… cant get it to work on cycles tho…
it’s the materials isn’t it?
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for taking the time to share such a helpful tutorial. This is especially useful with the blender overhaul we’ve been through recently. So many of the tutorials and docs out there are now out of date.
Since you asked; I think it’s good to see your face with the tutorial. It seems more natural, much better than a disembodied voice. Also, the short “making of” at the end was also inspiring. Forget the smoke, I want to go make post-apocalyptic piles of rubble!
Thanks for the tutorial. It’s a great start in understanding how to do this. I need to create smoke coming out a metal barrel – like someone burning something in it in an alley and composite it onto the live shot. That smoke is very different. Can you give me some guidance on that or point to an explanation of how to go about doing that; the darkness of it, swirling motion and rise, etc?
tangierc – at – gmail – dot – com
The smoke in the viewport keeps disappearing and reappearing, am I doing something wrong?
could you send this video to my email-box? I can not see the video online!
I am using Blender 2.62 following Andrews Smoke Sim.
Everything looks great in the display but I cannot get any smoke to render at all.
It looks great and animates in the 3D view port and I am able to fully manipulate it there. But no luck on the render.
I made sure the camera was lined up with the view by inserting an object into it.
The object rendered but not the smoke.
Domain object is using Voxel Data as well as the Emitter.
Do I still need a build? If so can anyone tell me how the down loaded builds are enabled?
Do I need to import something for the builds?
Help please.
Thanks
Evan
Right.
Andrew has an excellent tutorial on how to make a flamethrower. Its done in a more recent version of blender which means it has the right settings, and should have enough information to make smoke too.
Basically you need to do:
Get a domain & flow object and make the smoke (you’ve clearly done this)
Set the material of the domain to Volume (up by the top) and the density setting to 0
Create a texture for that material
Set type to Voxel Data
Set the domain object to whatever your domain is under the voxel data panel
Under the influence panel, uncheck emission and check density
Render!
Go back and change settings to make it look better
Thats the quick version, there’s more in Andrew’s other tutorials.
Also, make sure you’re using Blender Render and not Cycles, because I don’t know if cycles does smoke, though it might be possible to hack something together with the compositor and smoke rendered in Blender Render.
In the FAQ section, Mr. Price also suggests that you submit this question at blenderartists.org, it your query might be answered faster.
I think thats it,
ezra