Volcano
That Other Persona
Posts: 381
Would like to get some ideas on making a working volcano. I want a simple animation showing a rising ash cloud (smoke), bombs, and a lava flow down the mountain. Think cartoon level.
I have been playing all night with particle emitters and have made some progress. Also had a peek at Carrara Dark Arts and the smoke trails video there, but I can't get my smoke to rise. I can get the color to change over time and then disappear (partical shader and alpha channels, all new to me today), but a sprite might be better. How do I make a quick and easy one? I have a couple of art and photo apps, but not PS.
After seeing the breaking waves on another thread, I wonder if it might be best to just animatethe lava flow by hand in the vertex modeler.
Any ideas?
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Comments
A Volcano! Now I want to work on your project!
I think you could create this using geometry and animated displacement maps and let the particle emitter spew out rock objects and lava clumps, especially if it doesn't have to be all photo realistic.
If the volcanic cone is made in the vertex modeler, make a copy of it and then select geometry from the copy for your "paths" of flowing lava. Give those flowing paths an animated displacement map and shade them like lava.
For the rising ash cloud - more geometry. A while ago I was working on making explosions from geometry, something I want to pick up again. Here is an early test, it might give you some ideas:
Lastly, you could make models of various rocks and use a particle emitter to spew them up into the air. Those should render very quickly.
These are just ideas that quickly came to mind, I haven't tried them for a volcano.
I was going to suggest something similar for the lava on the vertex object with a few exceptions:
The separate object would likely be easier, but I was going to suggest to simply select the lava flow paths as a separate shading domain and use an animated shader to create the flow of lava down the side, using color gradient controlled by elevation or something similar.
For your particles woes I have some ideas:
Try using "Facing Camera" as the particle object then put a check mark into "Use Particle Time for Shading"
Paint a simple cloud and use that to help control alpha and a color gradient in the particle's shader (or just download this one)
For the rising smoke, simply go to the "Advanced" tab of the shader room and set the Z gravity from the default -10.00 to a positive number. Try erasing the minus sign and see what 10.00 gives you.
We also need the particles to fade over time. So in the shader's Alpha channel, we select Operators > Mixer and use our cloud image in Source 1 and a value 1-100 set at "0" in Source 2, which gives the equivalent of black. For the controller of the mixer, we go to Natural Functions > Particle Shader, and set the "of Particles" button to "Age"
Please note that, in my haste of creating screenshots, I haven't yet set certain shader channels to "None" which really should be to help from adding unnecessary render time.
The following are not needed for this example shader and should be set to "None":
Highlight
Shininess
Reflection
Transparency
Refraction
Sub-Surface Scattering
Translucency
Depending upon the desired effect, you could use a color gradient, controlled by the cloud image (use in the "Shader" field of the Color Gradient) in either the Color channel or the Glow channel or both.
You may also wish to use the image in the Bump channel. But I'd start by just keeping it simple until you get the emitter behaving the way you want it to work.
TIP: Once you get the particle emitter set up the way you like it, save it to your browser and delete it from the scene to work on the rest of your scene to save you from having the emitter calculating every time you change time or move the camera, etc., then just drag it back into the scene when you need it again.
Desert Dude,
I can't wait to see your example of Geometry Explosions! I've been having vision in my mind ever since I've read your post above! That is one awesome mushroom cloud you've got there! Do you add morphs for animating it? Animated Displacement, perhaps?
This video uses the Ocean primitive to animate the lava (Click to Play)
Wow Dartanbeck, that lava lake is really cool looking. Clever use of the Ocean primitive!
Thanks for the comments about the explosion. It uses both morphs and displacement in the shader. There are two models, one fire and one smoke, duplicates, shaded accordingly. At the time I hit a wall because of two things. One was my "successive" morphs were going wonky and, for lack of a better term, "multiplying" themselves in magnitude. The other was animating the displacement under the Transform tab when noise Space was set to World - nothing happens, for all noise types. So if I remember correctly, the displacement is not animated in this example - it just gives that illusion. Now that I have the morph problem under control it will be easier to make more varied shapes over time, and I gave up on animating the World Space under the Transform tab...I just wanted to see it to test.
Great suggestion - yes yes, would be much easier. As usual, so many options to try!
Gotta love that about Carrara. There really is no 'only one way' for anything!
To use a particle emiter for fluid simulation, use metaballs as the particle object, and experiment with different sizes and size variations. Then apply your lava shader. This approach would take some patience and clever thought on how to set up the flow paths, but would likely turn out really awesome looking.
One last suggestion for flowing lava...if you like Carrara's native terrain and terrain shading tools, you can use the 3D paint tools to paint a black and white mask to add a lava shader for the flows. See this thread for inspiration:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/20149/help-with-3d-paint-in-carrara-7-8-pro
Awesome plan!
I use Howler, and I'm sure that other image editors have animation options. With Howler though, it's really easy to take any image and turn it into an animation. Then, in Carrara, we can use animations (either sequenced images or avi) as texture maps in most of the channels in a shader. I usually go for Color, Highlight (sometimes Shininess too), Bump and Glow. But Alpha, reflection, transparency would certainly make differences in your animation. I wonder how a displacement animation would fair?
On the subject of Howler (just in case you might have it), we can see the results of our height maps in the 3D Designer. With the latest release we can even export various types of map information which are useful for texturing and other various functions, as well as being able to export an OBJ file!
couple of things I've exported from Howler as OBJ and brought into Carrara
Oh wait... For the second (bottom) image, I actually just saved as a height map and texture/bump maps in Howler and loaded them into the Terrain editor in Carrara... sorry for the mistake on that
The first one was exported from Howler as OBJ and replicated in Carrara into a grid.
Edited to correct yet another mistake! LOL
Thanks for the replies! There is a lot to try out this weekend! Several suggestions I have never tried before so this will be a learing experience for me. Hopefully a good one!
I love it! Helping tocome up with ideas always gets my gears moving more smoothly on my own projects as well! I'm still always getting more and more amazed at how incredible this software is - especially after hearing negativity about it. It is a bummer if we try and try and try and keep running into issues that block our path to our final outcome - something that just isn't working. For me, I just try and come up with an entirely different technique if what I'm trying first gives me a headache - often by coming in here an asking you, my fellow Carrara users! :)
Anyways, I've come up with another idea while I was jamming drums with my band tonight (Awesome gig! The crowd was wild and fantastic!)
What if you remove or make invisible parts of the mountain where you want the lava flowing, and then use lumpy, morphing cone-shaped vertex objects to create t, he flow?
Like have the cones begin smaller than the first, and they're squashed almost flat vertically. The first one would be just the right size to fill the mountain, the gaps that you've either removed or made Alpha = 0%, and as soon as the top begins to move (by morph or just scaling, if that works) down, the next one widens to fill what would otherwise become a gap, and grow downwards as the first one scales to the bottom, and repeat with as many morphing cones as you need for the time of your animation.
Just a brainstorm that hit me tonight.
Also, here is a cool bit of backstage goodness on lava:
(if it doesn't start you at 9:40, that's where the lava talk begins)
I watch these 'Making of' videos (especially for this show as it is my favorite TV show ever!) quite a bit when I'm relaxing ;)
I also watch PhilW's training courses a LOT. Always capturing techniques that I haven't been doing yet, so it kind of bakes itself into my head so I'm either ready to practice when I do get to doing the stuff, or I know exactly where to find the instructions within the course material.
For the particle emitter topic above, I usually load in the one that he provides in the Working files, and tweak that one - even adding my own shaders, etc., It's just that I have his in a very handy spot in my "My Objects" portion of the browser ;)
I finally have the complete collection and just love them - sopacked with useful training on just so amny things about Carrara! I enjoy this style of learning so much that I'm also hungry to buy Mark Bremmer's course from VTC - I'm actually really surprised that I haven't picked it up yet, because I like his way of teaching as well. I almost never bought any of these things, thinking that I knew enough to get my own stuff done. Oh my, am I ever glad that I've changed my mind on that pitiful notion! LOL
Don't forget the animated metaballs...
Another nice one, DUDU!
I have never used metaballs outside of the particle emitter... Will have to try them.
Probably make for some awesome lava, eh?!!! :D
Dudu, great one. Meatballs is the way to go. Thinking out loud with what Dart was saying, you might try to combine several shaders with the displacement mapping function. Consider a basic terrain shader applied to a volcano like height map. Then consider a black/white opacity map that tells C8.5 where to apply a lava shader instead. Then consider making a second map that applies displacement in the displacement shader channel. Now consider applying the same opacity map to limit the displacement to only those areas where the lava shader is currently being applied. Then consider tying the lava and displacement shaders also to elevation. Then consider making elevation dependent upon time. Might be able to extend lava down volcano over time. Just a thought. Can't test right now but maybe later. On my iPad right now
Oh, it looks like desert dude already was on this one. Should read the thread first
One thing to keep in mind through all of this is render time.
Just be aware that displacement mapping will not only slow your render times to a crawl, but your work space system responsiveness as well.
That's why I've added the link to the 'behind the scenes' link. Joel is from ILM and has some really great ideas and is constantly (like me) trying to accomplish tasks in the fastest, most efficient manner. TYhis not only goes for time to build, but also time to render, share files, save files... the whole nine yards. When something is only seen partially for just a second or two, or three or even less, we can really do some amazing things that are much simpler than what one might think, and can even look better in the end.
There's a huge difference between appearances designed for a still compared to animation. Still images are right there, in your face. People can't help but to inspect an image for things that stand out as being 'not right'. Not sure why. I prefer to just look at the image from the painter's perspective, and take in the feel conveyed, rather than being a critic on technique. Whatever. But in animations, there are far fewer people who will actually pause the video in search of miostakes or short-comings. It's the 'timing', framing, camera and moving objects movements, contrast, pacing, etc., that determines how the viewer will perceive to work.
All of that in mind, it can often be a lot more productive to use separate layers of objects, like simple primives or whatever, with the appropriate shader on it, floating amongst the flow, than to waste precious resources on displacement rendering. Again... this is not a be-all end-all idea... I was only mentioning this for the project at hand, where it might be a lot easier and more efficient to 'make' the bumps instead of working them out in a displacement map video.
Played around quite a bit yesterday and ended up confusing myself and getting sidetracked and maxing CPUs for long stetches. No problem at all for a Mac Pro; silent the entire time. My brain, well, that is a different beast entirely.
Hopefully with a night's sleep and second machine online to to help render, today I will learn something. This happens with decreasing frequency these days so . . .
I may be back later with more questions than answers!
To all, thanks for your replies as always!
Dartanbeck is on to something. Keep it simple, doable, satisfactory. After another day, some success, lots of failure, but a bettter grasp of things than I had before. Displacement did slow things down quite a bit; called on a third machine to speed things up! At the end of it I thought I should have saved all of the tests and kept notes about the changes, but I can do that later for review.
My practice today led me to animating various paramaters of the shader tree and I got a mix of something that looks good enough for my needs: a multichannel mixer with two Daz lava shaders blended with a value over time. In one of the shaders, I also adjusted the glow channel over time to make the flames flicker and then fade to dark, as if it is cooling.
Added this to a vertex object shaped like a blob that has a morph target to gradually flow. So far I am still on a flat surface, but I can make this work well enough on a slightly curved mountain using that vertex object as the guide. As this is a gloopy blob, it is fine if the shader stretches with the blob; however, for other needs, this might not work (any way to fix it?)
Now I am going to try an idea I got from DesertDude's nice wave and make multiple morph targets in the flowing blob (or several blobs) so that it can spring a branch or two as it eases downhill. That should do it.
Particles or maybe just geometry on a motion path for bombs is next, then to consider the ash cloud. Geometry sounds good there.
Brief play yesterday, the explosion modifier works well for blowing up the volcamo cone/tip ;)
also you can animate the lava flow down the side of the mountain by animating the elevation parameter in a blender channel with a mix of textures via ;operator' mixer.
depends how real you want it, would work well for a schematic
Very nice idea for the exploding tip! Works great.
Volumetric louds work great for clouds of many, many types! ;)
Be careful with particle emitters in that, if we overdo to particle numbers with intense shaders, we can really bog down the system. So experiment first with lower numbers. I've even pulled off keeping the lower numbers of particles and just made their siz larger for this, just to make an example gif, but it looks SO much better with lots of smaller ones:
Looks nice, Dartanbeck! Ran a lot of tests tonight on smoke settings and followed your advice for fewer, larger particles and it goes great. I have a nice plume rising straight up. It has a great texture map working, too. Thanks!
Question with smoke, or the ash cloud: is there any way to have the smoke rise and then hit a stream of air that blows it off to the side? I need it to blow over a town near the base of the mountain; then I need another emitter to rain ash over the town (if you have never experienced this don't worry; it is not pleasant!) I looked at Cripeman's tut on force control but he sets the particles to use scene forces. My scene has gravity pulling on all the lava. I put in a directional force to counter the gravity and a point force to pull the smoke but isn't working so well; might need quite a bit of tweeking. Tomorrow I will try geometry for the ash cloud but I wanted to give the particle emitter a shot.
AND-- After several days of trying out lots of new things I had never tried before with some success, just by chance, I looked back through the included particle emitters and there was, drum-roll, a volcano. A little tweeking and I could get lava flowing fairly well down the mountain and have a second emitter blasting upwards for the initial explosion. The test mountain is a vertex object so I just created a slight depression to lead the flow in the direction I wanted. Am still working on a more controled flow with vertex objects. The included lava needs a few tweeks to its shader.
Right, so now you set the camera to dramatically focus on what you've got going on... that's sounding really cool!
Then you make another scene that doesn't include the focus on the lava. Use forces in that scene to control the needs of the smoke and yet another scene from within the city showing that the Ash is taking over. A lot of good cinema effects are done in stages like this. To put them all together in one scene, if needed, you can do that using the Backdrop channel in the Scene portion of the instances tray. Create an animation of what you have so far in the background using the rule of thirds to get the volcano into a dramatic position, and have the camera move at least some, but not too crazy. Then load that animation in the Backdrop of the next part.
I can't wait to see some of this!
Thanks for the enthusiasm, but... When I was 5 I drew a picture of myself, like many people have: round head, body, 2 arms, 2 legs, all sticks. My artistic abilities have developed so much over the decades that I have finally determined that the arms, body and legs could actually better represent reaility if they were a little longer. Me, Stretched.
This has been a fun adventure the past few days and I will keep fiddling with it. Dartanbeck, your artistic angle is appreciated. I will see where things go. My learning process often seems like lots of slugging to get one step forward, followed by a free fall period backwards.
EDIT
Just tried a backdrop for the first time. That is cool. This time things are odd looking, but I had not created the first movie with using it this way in mind, so the angle is off.
Right. It takes practice.
With your above comment, I'd just like to add some ideas, please forgive me if you already know this stuff:
Animate using many video renders
In TV shows and movies, everything might seem like a single, smooth stream of vision. But if you look closer, the shot taken from a single camera rarely lasts longer than a few seconds - often even only one second, sometimes even less! This works great for keeping the drama and also keeping the audience from getting bored.
Trying to animate a volcano in a single shot might be possible, but it will look much, MUCH better if you make it up of many shots from many different angles. To save time doing this, here is a technique I use a lot to give additional mileage to the work that goes into an animation:
Let's use the lava flow work that you've already made as an example
Since you already have stuff moving, let's film some of it. I have a feeling that you already have a camera in your scene. We're not going to stop there. Insert > Conical to get another camera into the scene. Select your volcano and type "0" (zero) to center it in view. Now scroll in and get a nice, dramatic view of the moving lava. Now skip to the end of the timeline that you're using for your animation. For starters, let's try and keep that to no more than six seconds, but one to three seconds would be better. Now change the camera, either climbing up the mountain against the flow of the lava, or perhaps rotating around the mountain... something that shows off your handy work in the best way possible.
Before making any more changes, select that camera and give it a name, if you haven't already. After that, duplicate it and change the name of that new camera. Duplicate it one more time, just for giggles.
Now go back to looking through that first camera that you've just animated. Find it in the sequencer and select the space between the two keyframes and set that to "Bezier" in the tray on the right. While looking through it, scrub through with the time scrubber and have a look at the motion. Sometimes it can be really nice to select the first keyframe for the camera, hold the Alt key while dragging it out to, say, a half of a second... perhaps a whole second if it's more like six seconds long. This copies and pastes that key along the timeline. Now, if those tweeners are set to Bezier, even though the positions of the camera for those keys are the same, if the following key takes the camera somewhere else, the bezier will add at least some movement between those two identical angles, which adds a bit of human feel to the motion. That's a very basic example, but even those simple techniques can really improve a shot! I'll often do the same thing at the end, with the last keyframe for the camera as well. This will give a short pause at the beginning before the major camera movement begins, and then holds the ending position a bit before the render is done. And like I said, with those Bezier curves as a tweener, the steadiness will not be purely steady, which is nice, and can even be tweaked out to be quite dramatic, if you wish.
Now set your view to the next duplicate of that camera. For something just a little different, try swapping the two keyframes, the start to the end, end to the start, and then apply the technique we've just practiced - perhaps even with different timing for the pause distances.
Take your next camera and set up an entirely different animation.
Continue doing this for any angles of animation that you think might look really cool. Even set up at least one camera that almost doesn't move at all, except for some subtle motions due to the person holding the camera shifting weight or dodging a spark or loosing footing, etc., For action movies, they often even move the camera so much that it's impossible to make out details of anything, just to illustrate rampant motion going on.
The problem with Backdrops is that they remain exactly as they were filmed, no matter what the camera does. Now, with some anticipation and practice, we can change that from a problem to an advantage. Just film the backdrop footage to be how you want the camera which is using it to be moving. For examples, see the camera animations we've just set up above. But if those don't work for this, say... too close up, too much motion, whatever... set up another camera or set of cameras just for use as backdrop footage. When doing this, save the scene with those moving backdrop cameras set up so that you can use them in the next step. Just hide the volcano in the scene, add the new stuff, set the Backdrop to video, and use those same cameras to film the new stuff!
For rendering what you have now, without having your particle smoke yet, try popping in a volumetric cloud (Tip: Don't close (X) out the volumetric cloud modeling window or you'll get Carrara stuck forever! Instead, just switch to the Assemble room)
Try setting the underside flatness to 0% unless you want flat, lower the density to get more chunks here and there, increase sharpness a bit while lowering the scale modifier if you want it to be more of a harsh filament-like smoke - raising the scale modifier and/or lowering the sharpness makes it more cotton-like. Change the brightness setting, perhaps try changing the color to a dark dirty grey or reddish orange for more fiery plumes, bright yellow-white with high-intensity lights to creat fiery explosion appearance, etc.,
Back in the assemble room, with the cloud selected, go Edit > Center Hotpoint, then scale the thing down to the right size that you need. The centered hotpoint helps when it comes to moving it around while in camera too. Give it a bit of rotation and scale change to animate it. Do some test renders to see how it looks. If it's too bright, go through your lights and set some of them to not include the cloud(s). In the cloud's settings in its model room, you can set it for Sunlight Only or All Lights. No other options. If you're not using a Sunlight, it will automatically use all lights in ther scene. But it won't use lights that are told not to affect it! ;)
Example, the bright fiery substance in this image is a bright volumetric cloud with an intense bulb and other intense lights on it, surrounded by another cloud that doesn't have much lighting at all