Tutorial: Fake Volumetrics

Published by brian on December 1st, 2006 in Tutorials

Some of you might remember Colin Litser's cloud creation tutorial. Which took a look at creating volumetric cloud effects in Blender. But how about taking it a step further. Who hasn't wanted to blow up a building in a fiery explosion? (in 3D of course!) Or how about launching a comet into orbit?

Salvador Mata Rodríguez has provided us with an excellent tutorial on how to begin to do just that. The tutorial takes a look at creating volumetric smoke and fire effects in Blender using a mixture of procedurals. The smoke would make an excellent start in cloud creation.

Find the tutorial here.

Video demonstrations can be found here and here. (right click and save as.)
Download the .blend file here.

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27 Responses to “Tutorial: Fake Volumetrics”

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1 Eugene (etr9j) Dec 1st, 2006 at 8:40 pm

There is one step that some folks might get caught up on. He state: "The next procedural wil be a Blend again, but this time set to Sphere mode, with their map inputs in Win, Sphere and Z, mapped to a Alpha channel with Substract blending mode." But the image shows Nor, Flat not Win, Sphere. My suggestion is to follow the images over the text if they contradict.
2 Gat Dec 1st, 2006 at 10:16 pm

All I see when I click the link is a white rectangle
3 Gat Dec 1st, 2006 at 10:17 pm

OK, now it became a square, not that it matters…………….
4 quailman Dec 1st, 2006 at 10:21 pm

broken link…
5 NateB2 Dec 1st, 2006 at 10:39 pm

Right-click the link, choose "Copy Shortcut", and paste into your browser.

Don't ask me why it works…
6 NateB2 Dec 1st, 2006 at 10:51 pm

By pasting into your browser, I meant the address bar in your browser.
7 Bart Dec 1st, 2006 at 10:54 pm

The lightbox plugin (the one that's doing the fancy image display) is causing some problems these days; I'm not sure why. I've disabled it for this post and the link is fine now. I'll look into it later this weekend.
8 JD-Multi Dec 1st, 2006 at 11:43 pm

Really nice tutorial, I didn't try it 'yet', but I certainly will do it this weekend. :)
9 venomgfx Dec 1st, 2006 at 11:49 pm

Congrats for the tutorial my friend!

hope to have time to check it out.

cheers!
10 Mata Dec 2nd, 2006 at 12:14 am

Thanks :D I hope you like it and found it usable :)

Also sorry for any mistakes :S, english is not my native. I'll do all the corrections to the tutorial ;) and publish the fireball blend file.

:D
11 bluelife Dec 2nd, 2006 at 10:55 am

try doing that with a metaball-balls
it will look better,trust me
12 Brian Dec 2nd, 2006 at 11:37 am

My first test: http://www.cginsomniac.com/WIP/fire.jpg

Anyone else have one?
13 bluelife Dec 2nd, 2006 at 12:50 pm

Brian try the same but this time with a metaball instead of a sphere(and adjust the overall size and make rendersize very low)
14 Brian Dec 2nd, 2006 at 1:50 pm

First, I think I'm going to tweak the alpha prior to trying that. I'm pretty sure there might be some issues with materials since it will map to the whole metaball group. Unless that has changed since last I tested metaballs.
15 Bmud Dec 2nd, 2006 at 7:34 pm

I like engineering effects like this… I think if you use a Fresnel transparency ramp (or any other transparency ramp for that matter) it'll remove some of the artifacts.
16 Brian Dec 2nd, 2006 at 8:27 pm

Yeah. One noticeable negative about this effect is the thickness throughout the whole volume. Something easily fixed with some alpha/transparecy. I look forward to tweaking this more when I get home.

I'd also like to direct those looking further at creating fire effects to this oldie: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=35218&highlight=fire+particles

Definetly still a goodie.
17 Mata Dec 2nd, 2006 at 9:02 pm

Hello, this is a old cloud test with the same technique.

http://salvador.mata.com.mx/blends/clouds.avi
http://salvador.mata.com.mx/blends/volumfake.jpg
http://salvador.mata.com.mx/blends/fakevol.mov
18 Steve Dec 3rd, 2006 at 11:55 am

Nice tute, but yes as Eugene says follow the pics not the text, as they don't match up!
19 blendercross Dec 3rd, 2006 at 12:44 pm

Great Tut!!!
…and like Salvador Mata Rodríguez says at the end of that tut:

Ready! We don’t have fire/smoke plug in for blender, but blender itself can be capable of do almost anything you can imagine! Blender is great!

He´s right - but somtimes it is good if someone explain which way you can go,
becaus there are so many ways…

This is an example of my try to create an boom:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TzF4gq5gJQ
20 Brian Dec 3rd, 2006 at 2:27 pm

Nice boom Blendercross. Would you be willing to share the .blend with us?
21 blendercross Dec 3rd, 2006 at 4:55 pm

Sure!!

Okay - I am bad in Internet things! How can id this?
22 blendercross Dec 3rd, 2006 at 5:08 pm

Okay forgot my last post!
I hope it work - if not give my a call!
( was the fastet way to share that file )

http://www.hostarea.de/server-12/Dezember-efeb87ba99.zip
23 Mata Dec 5th, 2006 at 8:22 pm

I've just made some corrections in the fireball post ( thanks for the advice) and added some docs and other blends (fireball anim and cloud test)

http://salvador.mata.com.mx/blog/wp-images/fireball_tut/Blender_FV.rar
24 Brian Dec 7th, 2006 at 3:45 am

A cloud test with a variant of the shader presented here: http://www.cginsomniac.com/WIP/800×600cloudswithshadows.avi
25 Mata Dec 8th, 2006 at 4:43 pm

Hey Brian, that test looks so cool ;)

By the way, I've just made some corrections to the tut :D
26 brian Dec 8th, 2006 at 6:33 pm

Glad you like it. More corrections Mata?
27 Mata Dec 8th, 2006 at 7:02 pm

;)

well, Only corrections for some typos, I didn't notice that from Eugene:

"…There is one step that some folks might get caught up on. He state: “The next procedural wil be a Blend again, but this time set to Sphere mode, with their map inputs in Win, Sphere and Z, mapped to a Alpha channel with Substract blending mode.” But the image shows Nor, Flat not Win, Sphere. My suggestion is to follow the images… "

And added some extra files I mentioned before :)