"gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message 
news:web.4b300fd19aba8bda34d207310@news.povray.org...
> "Captain Jack" <Cap### [at] comcastnet> wrote:
>> Some assets, if purchased specifically for a
>> development project, may be figured in as a cost
>> to the client,
>
> Yeah, it was the smoke. I in effect viewed smoke plugins as an asset
> specifically for the film.
>

It kind of depends on what you specialize in, too. If your studio is known 
for smoke and other fluid effects, you probably just treat that software as 
overhead.

The best smoke generator I know of (that isn't completely custom) is built 
into Houdini, which is about the top of the mountain for pricing. The best I 
know of that's in most studio's reach is RealFlow, which is still pretty 
pricey, even for a single core CPU.

However, you can get some really great results with the particle-based fluid 
generator that comes free in Blender. Turbulence4D is in beta, and some 
people may have access to it for free. For the programmatically inclined, 
there are some free algorithms with code floating about in the 'Net. Robert 
Bridson and Ron Fedkiw are both big names in the fluid-simulation-for-video 
field, and there's a lot of academic papers published by them that would be 
helpful for someone trying to do it on their own. I have Bridson's book of 
his compiled SIGGRAPH notes, and, while the math makes my head spin, the 
ideas are all there, including some pseudo code for solving the PDE's for 
different scenarios, including smoke.

I don't know what was actually used for this particular video, but there are 
some pretty spectacular free tools out there. With some patience (okay, a 
*massive* amount of patience) and ingenuity, it's possible to make stuff 
like this without a big cash outlay. You may spend a couple of hours per 
frame in rendering, but I think it's possible.

--
Jack

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