Dust Simulation Question

[catchyid]

Hi,

This is a very general question and I am looking for some ideas/hints/directions. 

In summary, I need to simulate what happens when horses run in desert, i.e. at each foot step ground particles rise up then fall slowly (maybe with some disturbance too). I am not sure what the right way to simulate this effect is: this is not particles simulation because the effect should look like a contentious volume and not particles, however it's not also smoke simulation because particles might fall quickly on the ground, i.e. they won't suspend too much in the air flow/turbulence created. I "think", maybe a particle simulation should be created and use it as a smoke source, but again, the smoke simulation must be configured to fall down quickly?!

BTW, the same "effect" occurs when you drop a heavy box on the floor, when car wheels go very fast, etc.

Any ideas will be appreciated

[derjcmp]

try watching this video on the 8 minute mark. You can emit particles just like he did but in an much higher ammount. After that you can use a volume rasterize to create some kind of dusty look.

[sandford]

I always blast my animated mesh to the parts I need (feet for example) and just use an attribute transfer onto the environment mesh (floor or whatever) to set up the emission areas and then blast by colour to remove the remaining area of the ground.

With the remaining points you can add velocity with some noise to randomize it a bit and then feed that into a 'vdbfromparticles' and a 'fluidsource' and then merge those together, then feed that into a null and use that as your input in your source volume in your DOP network.

If I have time, I will make an example for you within the next few days. I use the same method every-time in production and only ever add extra nodes if really needed (usually just velocity modifiers) and get great results with a simple volume surface shader.

[catchyid]

Thanks Derjcmp and Sandford.

Sandford, don't worry about making an example, I've got some basic setup that is similar to yours, just need to experiment a little bit to get good results

Once more, thank you guys for your input