Dust Trails for Running Figures from Sickleyield (or any other vendor)
Epic82
Posts: 126
I'd like to create renders of characters and animals running in dry climates, and I think a way to emphasize how fast they're running is by including a dust trail behind them. But I've searched high and low for a dust trail here at Daz and can't find one. HiveWire has a Dust Trail and Tool I could consider using, but I work exclusively in Iray and would like to have dust trail effects with Iray materials. I've singled out Sickleyield because she's created effects that are similar to what I'm asking for, like SY dForce Rocks And Boulders, but who the vendor is doesn't matter. Here and here are examples of what I'm requesting.
Comments
Nerd3D's Dust and Trail tool does work to some degree in Iray, you just don't get full range of colours. It's main problem is you have to be careful of camera angles, as it is made of a hundred planes, so from the side it looks nothing like dust - it can lso slow down a render quite a lot. Most people add dust/smoke etc in post with PhotoShop/Gimp/Paintshop.
And here's a recent 3DL render I did with the Dust and Trail tool, to give you an idea:
And a not so good Iray render of the same tool from a different angle, which has two instances of the dust tool, offset, but you can see the planes:
Sickleyield is the right vendor, but don't look at her rocks and boulders product (excellent as it no doubt is) look at her steam/smoke/fog products:
https://www.daz3d.com/fast-fog-iray-2-electric-fogaloo
https://www.daz3d.com/sy-swift-steam-iray
https://www.daz3d.com/fast-fog-iray
Each of those look like they contain props that could be repurposed as dust clouds - just change the colour and reduce the opacity a little.
Or, forget trying to render a dust cloud - just add one in in post. That's clearly what they did in the Getty Images example you posted, and really crudely too (the whole image is a really poor photomanip - we can see the sun is behind the runner, but he's lit from the front!).