A new volumetic primitive plugin is in the works. And I'll be posting some previews. The plugin thus far includes a new and MUCH improved fire primitive, a new cloud primitive, a smoke primitive, and a fog primitive. A simple but nice feature I'm showing here is the gradient control with the fire primitive, its not limited by a set amount of colors, you can have 50 different colors if you wanted.

Also there is a selection of preset shapes. From the classic sphere, square, and cylinder. To more advanced like the square with a cylinder cut in it, so you can have fog or flames in the corners of a room, but not in the center.

Can you shade it with the regular shaders? Markd

Am I seeing double? It depends on how you define shading. You can use a shader to define the noise pattern, and then use a gradient to color, so in essence you can.

Here is a quickie example of what I mean. I used a Veloute Shader to define the "noise" of this cloud. And a gradient to shade it. Also in this example 3d shadow is implemented, so the cloud casts shadows on itself.

Here is an example showing eight different colors defining the gradient. There is a slight banding from the drastic color shifts in the gradient that could be fixed if I increased the blending and noise, but just wanted to show an example of the amount of colors you can use. Please excuse the gradients of the jpegs I hope they are good enough quality.

Message edited on: 11/22/2004 08:12

Attached Link: http://www.vizualds.com/e107_images//newspost_images/FireAndSmoke01Comp.zip

And the new smoke primitive combined with the new fire primitive. What is WONDERFUL about the primitives is that you can animate the scale, rotation, offset of the noise. Also attached is a zipped up animated rendering of the fire primitive and the smoke primitive together.

Very nice! No idea where the double post came from. . oh well. So you can use a gradient to control colors. . . but you can't assign a regular shader for setting the colors? For transparency and stuff? Markd

I believe actually that you can use a shader to control the color as well, but I'll get back to you on that.

Looking forward to this! I've never been satisfied with the volumetric options currently in C! Thanx for creating these. Question: How are the render times?

The render times are fairly good. The flame and smoke render took only a few seconds to render.

WOW! THAT's impressive. When are you figuring on releasing this beast? And for how much? :D

Message edited on: 11/22/2004 13:08

I am wondering if you can add Beazer function in it to increase noticable shape of volumeteric? Keep in mind I can help you make one in programming email me if you want. FYI I need some help with new "Light Emitter Aura" plug in.

Being as I'm not the developer, but the tester and contributor of ideas and presets etc. I'm not sure when it will be released. GWeb, what do you mean Bezier function? There are controls for blending and noise of the clouds, and there is a ramp function being implemented that controls the hardness and the softness of the primitives.