shaping Fire Primitive

Mosk the ScribeMosk the Scribe Posts: 888
edited December 1969 in Carrara Discussion

Is there a way to shape a fire primitive other than simply scaling it?
I've tried turning the fire primitive into a group, which then lets you add such modifiers as bulge, twist, taper etc, but the fire no longer seems to render.

Thanks.

Comments

  • Kevin SandersonKevin Sanderson Posts: 1,643
    edited January 2013

    Haven't tried it but maybe use some geometry for the emitter that changes shape? And/or using Forces?

    EDIT: Just opened it up to take a look, maybe try playing with the Fire Primitive controls... there are different Container options - box, cylinder and sphere plus various settings beneath that, besides all the other options.

    Post edited by Kevin Sanderson on
  • WoolyloachWoolyloach Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    I haven't had a lot of luck - ended up getting Inagoni's Primivol for the fancy stuff:

    http://www.inagoni.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.4

    Hopefully someone else will chime in. :)

  • Mosk the ScribeMosk the Scribe Posts: 888
    edited December 1969

    I have Primivol but after a brief try, went back to the regular fire primitive. Followed that link you provided and saw that there's a way to assign Primivol primitives to any given mesh you'd like. That might be a great solution. Will look into that more carefully. Thanks for the link.

  • Mosk the ScribeMosk the Scribe Posts: 888
    edited December 1969

    Hey Kevin -
    Yeah, I have played around with those settings - and the result may be okay for what I'm doing. If you Google "Carrara boat wake", the top listing is a youtube video which shows how to use Fire Primitive for a wake in Carrara 6 Pro, and down below the video clip are the settings the poster used.

    Thanks


    Haven't tried it but maybe use some geometry for the emitter that changes shape? And/or using Forces?

    EDIT: Just opened it up to take a look, maybe try playing with the Fire Primitive controls... there are different Container options - box, cylinder and sphere plus various settings beneath that, besides all the other options.

  • Kevin SandersonKevin Sanderson Posts: 1,643
    edited December 1969

    Hey Kevin -
    Yeah, I have played around with those settings - and the result may be okay for what I'm doing. If you Google "Carrara boat wake", the top listing is a youtube video which shows how to use Fire Primitive for a wake in Carrara 6 Pro, and down below the video clip are the settings the poster used.

    Thanks


    Haven't tried it but maybe use some geometry for the emitter that changes shape? And/or using Forces?

    EDIT: Just opened it up to take a look, maybe try playing with the Fire Primitive controls... there are different Container options - box, cylinder and sphere plus various settings beneath that, besides all the other options.

    Cool! Thanks for the wake info.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,549
    edited December 1969

    After searching for quite some time for a way, myself, I'm relatively certain that, aside from the controls mentioned - no.
    However, Cripeman gave me the inspiration for a project I've not yet tried. Here goes:

    1 - Set up the fire primitive for an animation. Take the time to get the flames behaving just like you want.

    2 - Using square resolution settings, like 600x600, etc., frame in the primitive for an animated render - but leave the camera stationary.
    2b - the one exception might be to rotate the camera around the primitive for a different effect, while keeping the fire well framed.
    2c - Either way, you want the fire to fill the square image, but without going outside the boundaries of the render.

    3 - Render the animation using your favorite setting - to end up with a movie file (I use avi)

    4 - Now go back, and without changing anything else, set both color channels on the fire to pure white and render again. This will be used as an alpha channel texture.

    Now you have two animated textures to play with on any shape that you decide to model.
    I was planning to try this on some various billboard style, single polygon models with stretch morphs, as well as 3d models and experiment a bit - haven't tried it yet though.

    Hope this helps.

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited January 2013

    Gooday Mosk the scribe, long time ago I found a tut for making fire run along an s bent cylinder to mimic dragon fire

    from memory it was particle emitter emitted fire , the fire ran through a bent cylinder made invisable,
    physics was set so the fire only collided with the cylinder
    the result was a fire in the shape of the bent cylinder
    the tut might jhave been on the French forum site but I cannit find it
    I have inagoni plug primovol in but have varying sucess with it - lack of perservence on my part ;)

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited January 2013

    After searching for quite some time for a way, myself, I'm relatively certain that, aside from the controls mentioned - no.
    However, Cripeman gave me the inspiration for a project I've not yet tried. Here goes:

    1 - Set up the fire primitive for an animation. Take the time to get the flames behaving just like you want.

    2 - Using square resolution settings, like 600x600, etc., frame in the primitive for an animated render - but leave the camera stationary.
    2b - the one exception might be to rotate the camera around the primitive for a different effect, while keeping the fire well framed.
    2c - Either way, you want the fire to fill the square image, but without going outside the boundaries of the render.

    3 - Render the animation using your favorite setting - to end up with a movie file (I use avi)

    4 - Now go back, and without changing anything else, set both color channels on the fire to pure white and render again. This will be used as an alpha channel texture.

    Now you have two animated textures to play with on any shape that you decide to model.
    I was planning to try this on some various billboard style, single polygon models with stretch morphs, as well as 3d models and experiment a bit - haven't tried it yet though.

    Hope this helps.


    No need to go through the trouble of creating a mask. Enable the Alpha checkbox in the render room (not pre-multiplied-let the arguments ensue! ;-) ), set a black background color or backdrop in the scene settings and render to a format that can handle alphas, either an image sequence using .pngs or a video file that supports alphas. When you bring your fire back in, place it in the color channel and the glow channel of your shader tree. The alpha will automatically be there and respected by Carrara.


    If you feel you must use an alpha mask the other option that would be quicker than two renders is to take your fire into your video editor of choice and create the mask there. If it supports alpha channels it should be able to create a mask.

    Post edited by evilproducer on
  • cripemancripeman Posts: 63
    edited December 1969

    tackled this a couple of times ... for animations I like the particle emitter solution...

    here's something using textures.


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhoGO8nSGSI

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