Surfacing setting for smoke

yoshinobufuruya1988

HI, I am playing with original concave object, mapped with smoke like texture on it to depict smoke around Figure.(Please refer #1 of attachement)

It looks pretty nice when scene light setup is dim as rendering output(Please refer #3 of attachment)
However, problems arises when following condition is met.

• --Scene is blight(sunset setting is around 12:00pm)
• --Light Emitting object is located close by(e.g., Fire, lightinig, meshlight, etc)

I have problems of following.

• Concave  object is clear to distinguish between air and object.(Please refer #2A of attachment)
  •  -Requirement1: I want to make object vague between air and object.(I play with cut-off opacity but this disappears object)
• Concave object has shadow of figure on it as well as concave object has its shadow on ground.(#2B of attachent)
  •   Requirement2: I want to disable shadow on concave object, I donot want shadow of concave itself too.

I am afraid there are multiple ideas to get closer to idea output but, at lease I came out with what I am trying to do as Red  colored Text.
Thank you.

 

NorthOf45

Does the smoke object need to be concave? If your camera angle is tangential to the curved surface, it will always show a hard edge. There are a few smoke-type products that use planes parented perpendicular to the camera so that they always face the camera, and do not show sharp edges. Some planes have a picture of smoke with soft edges before reaching the edge of the plane so that you can place it near something without having to cover the entire field of view with smoke.

As for shadows, there is a hidden property called Cast Shadows that you can turn OFF for a particular figure or object. (Right-click on the Parameters tab and select Preferences -> Show Hidden Properties). It isn't realistic, but that might be what you need.

NorthOf45

I forgot about HD Volumetric Clouds, which, although huge, could be scaled down to monster size. It is basically an irregular surface and uses volumetric effects to mimic clouds. The properties can be changed to get different effects (there are presets for different clouds, but most would be too thick for your purpose).

There is another that has volumetric flames and smoke Pyromantix - Volumetric Explosions (haven't got that one, yet), that does basically the same thing, but, you know, smoke. They might also be too dense for your purposes, but can be tuned.