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Anatomy of Fire - Aesthetic


fxrod

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Hello All:

I would like to know if anyone in odland could recommend some resources that describe the characteristics, behavior, and motion of fire from a visual standpoint. I'd like to dissect the properties of fire using an anatomical approach, with more emphasis on the components of fire than on the mechanics. This would include the physical properties of fire -- how it moves, why does it behave in certain ways, etc.

I believe that it would be useful to all FX artists to really understand natural phenomena from an artistic perspective, in the way that an animator studies anatomy and physical behavior in animals.

Please post your thoughts and references. These could be books, websites, videos, etc.

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maybe not exactly what you are looking for but i always love looking at the action essentials dvds from video copilot and also artbeats to get some hi quality footage to refer to. Youtube is also a great source, there seems to be more and more people posting stuff on there every day. You can just look up : explosions, and i'm sure you'll find a lot!

as for the more "technical" information behind fire and smoke, i'd be interested to hear what people suggest for that!

thanks for starting this, i'll keep tabs on it and if anything more useful comes to mind, i'll be sure to up it here

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It is not specific to fire, but I did just put my thesis online on houdini fluids and getting more control. Some of the scene files and tools I made are online as well. Hopefully this will help you to better understand them. It is linked to quite a few siggraph papers. It sort of puts the mathematical equations next to the equivalent microsolvers.

As mentioned I hope to create some video tutorials on them soon.

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It is not specific to fire, but I did just put my thesis online on houdini fluids and getting more control. Some of the scene files and tools I made are online as well. Hopefully this will help you to better understand them. It is linked to quite a few siggraph papers. It sort of puts the mathematical equations next to the equivalent microsolvers.

As mentioned I hope to create some video tutorials on them soon.

Glanced at the thesis real quick. Nice work!

Essentially, I'd like to create some well-researched, 3-5 page documents that would summarize fire characteristics (look and behavior). I believe that as TD's, it is our job to really understand the visual qualities of phenomena, without needing to have a degree in Fire Science. To take this further, I'd like to start coming up with a compendium of fx elements that we can refer to and better educate FX artists. (water, wind, etc).

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Again although not really Houdini specific, you might want to have a look at "Deconstructing the Elements" by Pete Draper (for 3dsmax).

http://www.xenomorphic.co.uk/gallery_dte.htm

It has got some good tips and a lot of those techniques are transferable to Houdini. He also has got reference material at the start of each effect, which again is quite useful.

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I'd think you'd want to study a lot about the motion of eddies/vorticity in nature ( the rotational tendancy of fluid, what gives us all our cool swirls), and how heat affects turbulence and air velocity, ...the basic principals of combustion are nice to understand as well.

Edited by essencevfx
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Again although not really Houdini specific, you might want to have a look at "Deconstructing the Elements" by Pete Draper (for 3dsmax).

This is really useful! Doesn't have to be software specific and the same concepts can be applied. If you know of any others, keep 'em coming!

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I personally also get inspired or sometimes read tips from artists/researchers like:

Allan McKay (3dsmax), http://www.allanmckay.com/ (tutorials & products)

Daniel P Ferreira (3dsmax & houdini), http://www.wonderslime.com/ (tech demos!)

Miguel Salek (houdini), http://www.msalek.com/ (sweet high detail effects work)

Duncan Brinsmead (maya), great tips on cgtalk in maya (fluid) dynamics threads

Borislav "Bobo" Petrov (3dsmax), Amazing particle tests with krakatoa by frantic films.

Eetu (Houdini), extremely inspirational and cool effects work:

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