Animated fireplace fire?

mavante

I'm doing an animation using an interior that has a fireplace, and I need to have a fire going in it that isn't a static image of "fire."

Has anyone successfully faced this challenge? If so, can you point me to a small animated fire product that can work inside a fireplace set?

Gordig

There are a number of morphing flame props, like this one. You could try animating various morphs to see if they’re believable enough for your needs. I can’t speak to how well that would work, as I haven’t tried it personally. Another approach is to get a flame or even specifically fireplace video asset and just composite it into your animation after the fact. 

mavante

Gordig said:

There are a number of morphing flame props, like this one. You could try animating various morphs to see if they’re believable enough for your needs. I can’t speak to how well that would work, as I haven’t tried it personally. Another approach is to get a flame or even specifically fireplace video asset and just composite it into your animation after the fact. 

Thanks for the tip on the morphing flames. Might be worth a try, and I can return it if it doesn't work for my scene.

As for a video composite solution, unfortunately the script calls for camera motion around the characters and set, including the fireplace, so I've already eliminated using stock fire footage composited.

A colleague just clued me in to a possible solution that the ubiquitous mcasual created for his mcFoyer set—and it's free!—so I'm going to give that a try, too.

 

Gordig

mavante said:

Gordig said:

There are a number of morphing flame props, like this one. You could try animating various morphs to see if they’re believable enough for your needs. I can’t speak to how well that would work, as I haven’t tried it personally. Another approach is to get a flame or even specifically fireplace video asset and just composite it into your animation after the fact. 

Thanks for the tip on the morphing flames. Might be worth a try, and I can return it if it doesn't work for my scene.

As for a video composite solution, unfortunately the script calls for camera motion around the characters and set, including the fireplace, so I've already eliminated using stock fire footage composited.

It could still work if your editor has 3D tracking capabilities. Admittedly, DS isn’t really ideally equipped for such a thing , but you could potentially export the camera as an FBX and use that to track the flame in. Again, not probably the most practical solution for what you’re doing, but it could be done.

mavante said:

A colleague just clued me in to a possible solution that the ubiquitous mcasual created for his mcFoyer set—and it's free!—so I'm going to give that a try, too.

Oh, that Jacques. I’ll have to check that out when I get home.

 

mavante

Gordig said:

It could still work if your editor has 3D tracking capabilities. Admittedly, DS isn’t really ideally equipped for such a thing , but you could potentially export the camera as an FBX and use that to track the flame in. Again, not probably the most practical solution for what you’re doing, but it could be done.

For all the above, yes, I could, technically, but I have three words for you: Budget, budget, budget. 

Gordig

Hey, break me off a piece of that budget and I can do it for you. 

benniewoodell

I've done it with KindredArts' fire pack, it's just a lot of keyframing rotation and scaling. But if you're able to comp it in and render in layers, you can easily make a fire in Blender and export that as an alpha channel png sequence, then comp it in wherever you need from Daz and in the Daz render, just have an emissive sphere where you want the fire to give the light onto your subject or environment. 

Wolfwood

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/?item_id=76201

Morph for that one looks interesting, and its free.

mavante

Hey, @Gordig, assumes "pieces" not in evidence.  I'll keep you in mind, though, if bigger budget projects come along!

Thanks for the ideas, @benniewoodell, but I'm kind of bloody-minded about doing it all in one DS pass, if I can pull it off, and usually I can. I've only dabbled in Blender, and for this limited project would be too much of a learning curve for me to invest.

Wolfwood said:

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/?item_id=76201

Morph for that one looks interesting, and its free.

Thanks, Wolfwood! Had no idea that one existed, so have addded it to the "flickering fireplace" arsenal. I'm even thinking that it may work combining one of the morphing flame gadgets with mCasual's fireplace rig. Will be testing it later this week.

ETA: I hate autocorrect with an immeasurable passion.

 

Sevrin

If you need a lot of fire, there's always Embergen