Rendering metaballs as volume

[Lukich]

I have been away from Houdini for some time so I'm probably out of touch with reality, but what is the current stand on rendering metaballs as volume?

Yesterday, I tried a very basic sim: particles with metaballs copied onto them, with object set to render metaballs as volume and a billowy smoke shader assigned to them. Frame per frame it looked good, but in motion the noise on the metaballs is swimming like crazy and I haven't seen any options to clamp the noise on the smoke shader.

Should I be using spheres instead of metaballs? Or should I create a very long fluid container and emit volumes that way? In short, what these days is the best practice for rendering volumetric smoke for, say, a missile trail?

Thanks a lot,

Luka

[exu]

I have been away from Houdini for some time so I'm probably out of touch with reality, but what is the current stand on rendering metaballs as volume?

Yesterday, I tried a very basic sim: particles with metaballs copied onto them, with object set to render metaballs as volume and a billowy smoke shader assigned to them. Frame per frame it looked good, but in motion the noise on the metaballs is swimming like crazy and I haven't seen any options to clamp the noise on the smoke shader.

Should I be using spheres instead of metaballs? Or should I create a very long fluid container and emit volumes that way? In short, what these days is the best practice for rendering volumetric smoke for, say, a missile trail?

Thanks a lot,

Luka

Hi Luka,

Did you setup a rest position?

if i may not wrong, you need this to noise follow the particles/metaballs... because this effect seems to be that your noise it's fixed in world space, not in your geometry...

note that if your particles are too fast, your smoke will be blured all the time and noise will disappear, for a logical reason ..

cheers

[Lukich]

I haven't seen the rest position on the Billowy Smoke shader. I know about this option, but it implies that you need to create your own shader. I was just curious what's the approach to rendering things like smoke trails without the use of sprites. Thanks for your response!

Luka

[Neil]

hi, do you remember the "FX TOOLS"?

It will let you know how to creat heavy smoke with metaball.

In SHOP ,you will find how it fix "crazy noise".

key word is "metaball loop".

you can learn how to setup and use it from this:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=852&Itemid=241

hope you like it. .