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Copy the plugin and its key file wherever you need (for instance
into LightWave plugins directory).
Important for Mac users: copy your key file into the Current
Project directory, as defined by the Content Directory. You need
to copy it to each project directory you want to use F&S in
it.
Start Layout. Use Layout->Plugins->Add Plugins or Edit
Plugins (Alt+F11) and select smoke.p file. You will be told
that 6 plug-ins have been successfully added. You will find 4 of
them in Object Properties panel in Custom Object pop-up
menu, one in Generics pop-up and one in Procedural Texture
pop-up.
Keep your key file in a save place. Updates will not work without
it. Free future updates will be available in download section at
www.polas.net
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| There are six plugins in the package for various
purposes. |
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| This Generic plugin allows you to control all
Fire&Smoke components from one panel. You can find here
all common settings and main controls (that are not available
in other plugins), as well. Common tasks here are: Add/remove
plugins to/from objects, start/reset simulation, copy/paste
plugin's settings etc. |
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| Attach this plugin to an object from which you
want to emit particles. Particles will be emitted from the surface
of the object. You have many controls here for particle and
environment (wind, random vortexes etc) here. |
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| if you need your particle collide with something
in your scene add it to the collision object. The collision
objects can be animated in any available way in LW. |
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| it allows you to create custom vortex that you
can place anywhere in your scene to swirl particles. |
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| Plays baked particles from a file. |
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| It is procedural texture plugin to fix the problem
with HyperVoxels opacity. Use it to smoothly fade in and out
particles. It uses Appear/Dissolve settings from Fire&SmokeGenerator. |
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- Draw any shape in Modeler to create an emitter. Only quads and
triangles should be used. There are no other limitations. You can
use nurbs patches.
- Load this object into Layout. You can animate it in any way including
bones, displacement, 3rd party plugins, etc.
- Check if you have disabled "Play at Exact Rate" in your
LW properties ('o'). It should be DISABLED.
- Open Fire&Smoke Control Center from Generics pop-up menu.
- Attach Fire&SmokeGenerator plugin to the emitter from ControlCenter
panel or Select Fire&SmokeGenerator from Custom Object popup
menu from item properties panel ('p').
- Click 'START/STOP Simulation' button (Control Center) to start
simulation. You can also use LW Play button it is recommended to
use START button from Control Center.
Once particles are computed their movements are cached
and will be recomputed only after you Reset Simulation.
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important:
If your emitter/collision objects are animated you should avoid
skipping uncomputed frames. When you skip uncomputed frames
they would be computed based on last know emitter/collision
object geometry (without their movements) and you would get
unexpected results. It is important to compute frames continuously
(frame by frame) to retrieve proper objects geometry. The best
method is to use Control Center and its START/STOP Simulation
button or LW play button. You should also disable 'Play
at Exact Rate'
in LW Properties panel ('o'). In other case LW can
skip frames during play. |
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Usage of color gradient is very easy but it is slightly different
from LightWave built in one so you may have some problems at the
beginning. Gradient area is divided into three horizontal segments.
The top area is for adding new colors. Click in any place there
and a new color will be created in clicked position. The middle
area is where you can see your color gradient and you can select
colors to make adjustments. The bottom area is for deleting colors.
Click the box and clicked color will be removed. There is only one
disadvantage - moving existing color. You cannot simply drag it
inside gradient preview (unfortunately LW doesn't allow this). There
is a slider above the gradient preview for moving actually selected
color. You will get the feel of it shortly. Just select the color
you want to adjust and move the slider. The color will follow the
slider movements.
If you are satisfied with your gradient or you need to try different
combination of colors and don't want to loose currently created
you can easy store it in presets system.
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| Modeling - emitters
and collisions objects should have no non-planar polygons.
For the best results use quads and triangles only. Nurbs patches are
also supported. |
| The most important advantage of Fire&Smoke
is that you can animate emitter and collision objects using any LW
tool. This plugin doesn't limit you! You can use bones, displacement
maps, morphs, motion designer, 3rd party plugins like Impact3 - anything.
You can create you scene and animation and add fire&smoke at the
end - it will work with any object you created. |
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toroid
(with cut part) |
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vortex area it is radius
of the ring |
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vortex radius it is radius
of cross section |
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In order to work with Fire&Smoke you need to know what
a vortex is. How it looks in 3D space. It may be comparised
to toroid shape. If you are not sure how toroid looks in 3D
just open the modeler and use appropriate command in Create/Objects
menu.
Only three settings are needed to describe a vortex:
Vortex Area - it is radius of
overall vortex shape.
Vortex Radius - it is radius of
vortex cross section.
Vortex Spin - maximal velocity
of vortex's swirl.
Particles that are near vortex "surface" get maximal
swirl velocity. Particles inside vortex get smaller velocity.
Influence of vortex fall off with distance to it's surface.
Particle velocity got from twister may be lowered by
'Max Speed' setting from particle tab. This setting
it is limiter for particle speed - to slow down particles
that moves too fast. Without it particles under influence
of many twisters in some cases may get really big velocity
and overall look of a fire/smoke may be worse.
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Those two settings allow you to fade in and
out particles at the beginning and end of their life. Appear
setting gets value in frames. In most cases particle should
appear really fast in 3-4 frames and this is why you can specify
it in frames. Dissolve it is an opposite parameter to Appear.
It allows to fade out particle at the end of its life. It
is percentage setting. You can adjust particle life span and
don't need to change dissolve it is always in % of particle
life time. Maybe you think that it isn't constantly - one
setting in frames and second in percent - but you find it
useful I think.
Unfortunately the current version of HyperVoxels don't read
this value from LW Particle. You can use Fire&SmokeOpacity
plugin to fix this HV feature.
Disslove is non-linear to give more natural
look of fade out.
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wind in world coordinates
when you move the object wind vector
will not change. blue line indicates global wind direction.
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wind in local coordinates
when you move the object wind will
change to point to null object.
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You can control wind by setting its velocity in axis direction
and you can control wind by a null object. Both settings will
be mixed to set final value of wind direction and velocity.
I found that it is much easier to control wind by an object
then by setting numeric values.
Wind direction is drawn as a blue line. All emitters have
also blue arrow that indicate wind direction. Using 'wind
controlled by an object' you can easy control global
wind that affects all emitters. Sometimes it may be difficult
to control wind velocity by object distance. For your convenience
there is 'manual velocity' setting.
Set it to 0 to disable it. Non zero value overwrites wind
velocity.
You may need also control for a wind in local emitter coordinates.
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You can paint a weight map on your object to specify
areas with different particle emission.
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weightmap painted
on an object in modeler |
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weightmap used
as an emission weightmap in layout |
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there will be maximum emission on the areas where
weightmap has +100% value. There will be no emission where weightmap
has -100% value. If 'Weight Cut off'
is checked weight map will be taken like two values - there
will be no smoothing between +100% and -100% values. |
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In real world fire extends during burn. It is
possible to simulate this effect in Fire&Smoke. When you
set 'propagation' value to non
zero particles emission starts on areas where weightmap is
set to 100% and will be smoothly extended to areas where it
is set to 0% and then to areas with -100% value. 'Propagation'
parameter controls duration of this effect (in frames).
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too big bounding box |
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optimized bounding box
object divided into two separate pieces
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too big bounding box |
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optimized bounding box
nurbs object divided into two separate
pieces
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Try to create collision object as simple
as possible to speed up simulation. Try to break apart collision
object to pieces with smallest bounding box.
Of course you can use not optimized collisions
objects but it slows down computing time. All particles inside
bounding box are checked for collisions.
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To allow HV to see particles from Fire&Smoke you need to check
'Show LW Particles' in F&S settings. When this feature is turned
on HV will work with F&S identical like with LW built-in ParticleFX.
For faster preview you can turn it off - this hide LW Particles
and HV drawings and have no influence on rendering session. 'Show
LW Particles' will be automatically turned on during rendering session
so you don't need to turn it on manually.
You can force HV to use particle colors data. Check 'Use ParticleStorm
Color' in HV settings. It forces HV to read color from LW internal
buffers. If you get color flashing errors during animation you can
use Fire&SmokeOpacity plugin
on a color channel. It is a bit slower but it gives proper values
to HyperVoxels.
The primary task of Fire&SmokeOpacity
is to pass opacity values to HV. You can add it to HV Dissolve texture
channel.
In order to use information about particles you have to select
apropriate 'Data Object' in Fire&SmokeOpacity settings. Plugin
is unable to find data object automatically. As a 'Data Object'
choose the emitter (or Player) your texture is attached to. You
can select different object and then colors or opacity values will
be taken from selected object and you get different results. Second
setting of F&SOpacity is 'Particle range' it should be similar
to HV particle size.
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If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, problems, etc.
feel free to contact me:
e-mail: olo@polas.net
ICQ: 81081247
IRC (ircnet): channel #idreams
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