There's an effect that I've been working on a fair bit lately, but no matter
what I seem to do, it never looks right. I figured that I'm probably not
going to get much further with it on my own (I've probably spent 50 hours
working on it now.... with basically no progress in the last 40) so I
thought I might see if anyone here has some useful suggestions as to how I
might proceed.

I've attatched a copy of the look I want for the effect (or more precisely
the look my friend wants, I'm doing this for him) I'm not sure if you're
supposed to post animations here that you didn't make yourself, but I'm not
sure where else to put it (it'd be too vague to describe it otherwise) Also,
this is my first time posting to these newgroups, so if this is a little out
of line, I apologize.

Now, I've manage to achieve most of the effect using media (the faint rising
stream of energy internally which you can't really see on such a poor
quality clip), however I can't get the outline to look anything near right,
more specifically, it's not spikey enough and I'm having a hard time getting
the little tufts of flame to seperate from the main body along the top, or
get a more jagged edge along the sides.

Now, I suspect that the outline for the origional effect was probably hand
drawn, with only the internal parts being done by computer, but nevertheless
there must be SOME way to achieve a fairly close approximation without being
able to draw (since I can't :-) )

I've tried dozens upon dozens of combinations of media with layered
densities with density maps, and nothing really achieves this effect. I
tried using sort of spiky meshes as the media container, but that actually
makes it look worse (the spiky bits look far too solid) I've perused a great
number of old threads in the newsgroups, but didn't find anything really
useful. So again I ask, can anyone help me here?

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'flame.mpg' (250 KB)

"James Bulgin" <jam### [at] nfsympaticoca> wrote in message
news:406ef9a1@news.povray.org...
>
> Now, I've manage to achieve most of the effect using media (the faint
rising
> stream of energy internally which you can't really see on such a poor
> quality clip), however I can't get the outline to look anything near
right,
> more specifically, it's not spikey enough and I'm having a hard time
getting
> the little tufts of flame to seperate from the main body along the top, or
> get a more jagged edge along the sides.
>
> I've tried dozens upon dozens of combinations of media with layered
> densities with density maps, and nothing really achieves this effect. I
> tried using sort of spiky meshes as the media container, but that actually
> makes it look worse (the spiky bits look far too solid) I've perused a
great
> number of old threads in the newsgroups, but didn't find anything really
> useful. So again I ask, can anyone help me here?


At first i thought there must be a way to use media for this. Then I reread
what you had to say about what you were trying to achieve and the part about
sharp outlines does seem problematic for something like media to be both
semitransparent and sharp. The obvious solution then might be either a
pigment pattern or an actual object (like blob), but I can imagine problems
with both. A 2 dimensional pattern won't be 3D, a shape would be too
sharp-edged.

Sorry that I'm not being of real help here, just wanted to try and flesh
this question out a little more. Which, by the way, might be asked at
another of the groups to get more input.

Bob H.

Post a reply to this message

James Bulgin wrote:

> There's an effect that I've been working on a fair bit lately, but no matter
> what I seem to do, it never looks right. I figured that I'm probably not
> going to get much further with it on my own (I've probably spent 50 hours
> working on it now.... with basically no progress in the last 40) so I
> thought I might see if anyone here has some useful suggestions as to how I
> might proceed.

<snip />

Whew, this is a rough one. To get more of a sharp edge on media like 
"wrinkles", you can use a color_map in the density like this:

density
{	
	wrinkles

	color_map
	{
		[0 rgb 1]
		[0.5 rgb 1]
		[0.6 rgb 0]
		[1 rgb 0]
	}
}

I don't know if this will help or not :-)

-- 
Respectfully,
Dan P
http://<broken link>

Post a reply to this message

Actually, the problem is less of a sharpness inside the media than a
sharpness on the outside. I'm fairly satisfied with what I have achieved on
the inside, actually. Really, the part that I seem completely unable to
replicate is how the little tufts of fire energy seperate from the main body
on both the top and sides, giving it sort of a smoothed jagged apparence.
I've tried various combinations of spherical and gradient densities, but I
can at most get a very ocassional tuft and only on the top.

Post a reply to this message

Actually, just in case it might come in handy somehow, I think I'll post one
of my better looking versions of this effect. Perhaps it might be easier to
give pointers if you had a better idea of what I've already achieved.
Actually, it's kind of hard to make out some of the details in such a poor
quality video, but oh well.... Note that the sword is just a placeholder,
and this isn't much at all what the final scene will look like, not that I
suppose that matters

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'test14.mpg' (204 KB)

> Actually, just in case it might come in handy somehow, I think I'll post
one
> of my better looking versions of this effect.

This won't play for me; I'm only getting what appears to be the first frame.

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

Post a reply to this message

James Bulgin wrote:

> Actually, the problem is less of a sharpness inside the media than a
> sharpness on the outside. I'm fairly satisfied with what I have achieved on
> the inside, actually. Really, the part that I seem completely unable to
> replicate is how the little tufts of fire energy seperate from the main body
> on both the top and sides, giving it sort of a smoothed jagged apparence.
> I've tried various combinations of spherical and gradient densities, but I
> can at most get a very ocassional tuft and only on the top.

Best I could come up with is:
http://<broken link>/3dgallery/images/fire.avi

Source is at:
http://<broken link>/3dgallery/source.shtml?fire

-- 
Respectfully,
Dan P
http://<broken link>

Post a reply to this message

fak### [at] emailaddress news:4070bd39$1@news.povray.org

> This won't play for me; I'm only getting what appears to be the first
> frame. 

Same for me, I guess it's broken, how about re-encoding and posting again 
(on an URL)?

-- 
http://www.raf256.com/3d/
Rafal Maj 'Raf256', home page - http://www.raf256.com/me/
Computer Graphics

Post a reply to this message

Hmmm.... it's just an mpeg-1, or at least I think it is. I tried to avoid
more advanced codecs on the assumption that some people on the newsgroups
wouldn't have them. However, I'll have another look at it and see if
something else works better. (And if it is actually mpeg-1 or not)

Post a reply to this message

Thanks a lot for giving it a shot. It's doesn't really adress my origional
problem (although that's probably because I wasn't specific enough), however
it does seem to ruffle and break up more than my version. I'll have a little
look at the source code now and see if there's anything I might glean from
it. Thanks.

> Best I could come up with is:
> http://<broken link>/3dgallery/images/fire.avi
>
> Source is at:
> http://<broken link>/3dgallery/source.shtml?fire
>
> --
> Respectfully,
> Dan P
> http://<broken link>

Post a reply to this message