Harry Potter Particle Effect?

[cenamorado]

Curious how this particle effect is done, I'm trying to find a way to do this now with volume advection for a phoenix with no luck.

Are they using it as a source for points with a shader for the actual animal/

If anyone can give me a example file, insight, or any ideas how its done I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks

[pclaes]

This was done by Dneg, the animal mesh is rigged & animated & shaded. Then they used curves as trails in combination with curl noise.

It's old, but I studied this stuff when it just came out and I was back in uni:

http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/gallery/view/435/Procedural_Trail_Tool

-- looks like the files are still there. I haven't tested that in a long time, so it might be broken, but it should also give you some ideas.

At the moment you could probably improve it by turning those curves into volumes and using them as emitters for sims & combining the different sims for the final effect.

-- If you don't want to sim, then a cheap fake is to override the velocity vectors of the curve with whatever you want and you will get larger abstract blurring and mixing velocity gradients. This can look quite cool, kind of like aurora borealis.

-- Also do a search on odforce for trails, it's a common thing.