Smoke trail

[WolfZorro]

Hello

Could someone please enlighten me as to how to best create a trail of smoke coming out of the back of an airplane (for skywriting). The smoke has to dissipate after a couple of seconds.

Since the plane doesn't fly in a straight line, but maneouvers around, a detailed smoke is needed, but not sacrificing speed. The problem is that both the smoke container and the isooffset node (particles -> metaballs -> isooffset) become too slow as soon as I pump up the detail. In addition, if I do it with metaballs and isooffset, it seems to wobble like hell, even though the shading looks acceptable. The pyro smoke simulation makes the smoke tail look enormous and I can't seem to make it detailed. Making the simulation with only the particles doesn't seem to look good, even though I can control it much better.

Thank you

Edited April 8, 2010 by WolfZorro

[WolfZorro]

Actually, sprites with the Sprite Fog material seem to do the trick.

It seems, after experimenting a bit, that pyro simulations are most useful for static explosions and bare Isooffset is more for static clouds and volumetric rendering.

Edited April 8, 2010 by WolfZorro

[ikarus]

id use a particle simulation for a density field of a smoke object for the most control