Advice for realistic dust sim... How to?

[cwalrus]

Hi guys - 

 

I'm trying to match the look and behavior of the dust cloud in this shot:

 

 

I've gotten this far:

 

https://vimeo.com/157737509

 

And I'm exploring other avenues - but I have a long way to go as you can see.  Currently I have several assets:

 

1 - a large cloud in the BG to fill the space

2- a Hero cloud in the foreground, who's behavior I'm eager to tweak

3- several particle systems, including a massive one that shoots out from the tire in the back, which I'm going to try to use to advect the particles.... maybe?

 

Any advice on how to further tweak this? 

 

Thank you!

[Atom]

What is driving the look is the fact that those debris particles are leaving dust trails. You may want to factor that into your scenario.

Smoke Trails From Debris

[bandini]

*Atom posted just as I was writing this*

 

Looks pretty good so far. Needs a bit more disturbance and confinement, I think, as it gets blobby at the end.

 

It's missing a feeling of gravity. In the reference, you can see a lot of small debris that shoots from the tires and arcs toward the ground, leaving expanding trails of smoke. I think that would help a lot. You have the debris, but I think you need more, and they need to emit smoke back into the sim.

 

I think you also need an additional sim with less density that rises above the main dirt sim. You can kind of see two layers/thicknesses of smoke behind the truck in your reference.

Edited March 4, 2016 by bandini

[paulh]

There will be some pieces leaving dust trails (so those would be acting as emitters), but also try having some rbd rocks (or particles, or both) simply moving through your dust sim, affecting the vel field. Those pieces will pull your dust around and add some chaos without needing to add extra density to your sim, which can be tricky to get to look right.