Volcano

Dartanbeck

Putting it all together

Now, before I go to bed I open Carrara and load that scene into the Batch Queue of the Render room,

Set which camera to use and any other render settings for that animation,

Give the resulting render a name and place to save it right away in the Batch Queue

Now load the same scene into the Batch Queue again, select a different camera, set the settings, give it a new save name, etc.,

Now load the same scene into the Batch Queue again, select a different camera, set the settings, give it a new save name, etc.,

Now load the same scene into the Batch Queue again, select a different camera, set the settings, give it a new save name, etc.,

Wake up and check them out!

Okay, sometimes I have to wait till I get home from work the next day, depending on how long they take to render and how many I've set to render.

That Other Persona

Thanks again for the time and input.  There is so much to learn!

Here is my new test with the backdrop.  The volcano was rendered and then placed in the backdrop; the girl as done in a 2nd vid.  Worked great but I will have to practice aligning the scenes.  The smoke from the mountain needs puffing up, but this was only a test.  In the event of a real emergency...

Dartanbeck

That looks so awesome! :)

Keep in mind, when working on this stuff, that we don't always have to follow the real world physics. We have movie magic on our side! 

So you can always add more smoke anywhere you want, either using partcles, geometry, Carrara's Fog or Vol. Clouds, Primivol, etc.,

I love what you've got going on! Keep it going! :)

Dartanbeck

More: Don't forget that we can also use the Gravity settings in Particle Emitters to create forces specific to those particles. So you could use X and Y values to get particle smoke to run horizontally, and the Z value to create rise (+) or fall (-).

That Other Persona

Trying the local X-Y gravity now and it is looking good.  Also discovered the adjuster for particle size over life and that is helping as they disperse higher up.  Still needs a lot of tweeking but it is getting there.  Might try adding another emitter or two in the air along the flow path to add volume; delay the start and play with the settings.  I'm just looking for a total of 10 seconds.

Along the way I took a break and played with the ball emitter setting and could get nice explosions with it for static start points.  Will try spawning for a moving start point (the bombscoming out of the volcano).

 

Dartanbeck

So cool! I'm glad you're making good progress. I'm wishing that I could be doing this stuff along side with you... so I could give more practical examples, like some real numbers and such. I just don't have the time at the moment. But it works out better this way anyways... because you're discovering these settings on your own now... and that's much better in the long run. It does take a lot of practice and it almost takes a render to find out if it's working correctly. But it's all worth it in the end.

It's nice that we can use those gravity settings on a per-emitter basis. One set of particles can behave entirely different from others, and so on. The more I play with that awesome system, the more impressed I get with it. I've still never taken the delve into having particles give birth to more particles upon impact and more of those advanced functions. One day I'd like to get down and dirty experimenting with that though... I bet it gets pretty cool!

It was only fairly recently when I've found out what a Splat is. A Splat is an object that is exactly like the "Facing Camera" particle, except that it's not a particle. Still haven't used one, but I'm glad to know their there. When I bought the X-Frogs billboards for a few sets of tree-types, I wish I'd have known about splats. I used single polygon (4 vertices) planes to create my billboards. So I actually used two billboards per tree - both the same thing set 90 degrees from another - forming an 'x' if viewed from above, so that I could replicate them all over the place. With Splats, they're always facing the camera, so there's no need for the extra plane! Ooops... am I babbling again? I'm babbling again!

Roygee

Sorry to say, but the splat is seriously bad to work with - it is invisible in the viewport and has its pivot point up on the top right corner, so very difficult to place accurately.  Better off using a plane facing camera.

Their transparency does strange things when there are other transmapped items behind.

 

The first pick is splats and the second planes.

I'm pleasantly surprised at how well a camera fly-by worked - thoght it would be weird, with the trees rotating to face camera, but not at all :)  

Dartanbeck

Wow. Good to know. Thanks!

That Other Persona

Yeah, good to know.  

Ran some more easy tests last night.  This one shows changes to the air friction setting 10% - 40% - 60% - 8-% - 100%.  All other settings for the emitter were the same (except obviously for color).

The second shows the same emitter but with a different gravity on the X plane, leading to a flow off to the side.  For this test X was set to -1, -5 and -10 on the right.

These are simple to toss together; I am actually rendering videos, but to save time it is fine to just scrub the timeline and render the last frame  or take a sccreen shot.

I finally have started taking a more scientific approach and actually noting my parameters and screen shots.  Hopefully this will prevent me from having to reinvent the wheel every time.  Once I get a feel for how things are working I will go for the real thing.

Dartanbeck

Very cool!