Hey, does anyone have any tips on doing stylized smoke?

I've tried it with particle effects before, and if you constrain some big lumpy particles to a mesh shaped vaguely like a column of smoke, then it does give an interesting effect.

I was wondering if anyone knew of any other approaches on how to do it.

I really wanted to know about how to make a non-blobby anime type of smoke, which looks more fluid and sort of splashy looking, rather than the blobby lumpy smoke I was talking about before.

The blobby/billowing smoke looks more like what you'd see in a Disney movie, while the splashy smoke literally looks more like a cohesive splash of water, and is what you'd be more likely to see in an anime. You know, like if you saw an object hit the dirt, making a sort of splash of smoke.

Could cloth be useful here, to fake something? I don't think particles is the way to go for this. Or perhaps just a mesh that's partially transparent, and then use squash-n-stretch to more flexibly distort it.

Comments? Tips?

I've always thought there might be a way to make smoke by creating smoke clouds out of a bunch of popcorn-shaped "cloudlets." As the cloudlets distort, shrink and spin, the toon renderer would simply see one giant irregular mass, ever twisting and billowing.

You might want to post a screengrab if you're trying to mimic something specific.

I would animate smoke shapes (whisps splashes- whatever) in 2D and use them as animated Sprites. This will give you a lot of control over the look, so it can be very anime, but let you take advantage of the automation provided by the particle system.

sounds light volumetric dust

here is a simple sample probably overly dusty

[attachmentid=16736]


V13beta2 project

[attachmentid=16737]

it end too quick but that because I was trying to do this too quick

Hi John, thanks for that. Well, I guess that wasn't the look I was seeking. Volumetric effects aren't very toony in my opinion. I was looking for something that's bounded by lines, rather than a dispersal of little dots.

can you post an example of what you want..a simple jpg

Hmm, couldn't find a good one, but how about this:

http://www.animebin.com/pictures/true/trigun/smoke.jpg

Again, volumetrics seem to be a feature more designed for 3D photorealistic rendering, rather than for stylized non-photorealistic toon-rendering.

The only thing I can see volumetrics being useful for in toon rendering is perhaps for fog.

In my opinion, everything in the toon look is about lines, or movement of lines. So therefore everything should be represented through lines. Volumetrics don't seem to produce enough line definition, because they don't have enough body.

So what do you suggest? How can you express the movement of a gas as lines?

The best way to get that effect is to bite the bullet and draw it by hand.

Just last night I was watching (a pretty bad) anime with CG spaceships battling it out, but I noticed when they blew up they were using traditionally animated smoke and explosions. cuz it just looks better!

LOL, that's what I thought you'd say. But is there some kind of procedural way to do it, even if in 2D?

Seems to me that someone has to make up some volumetric or particle FX that are custom-made for toon-rendering, rather than merely adapting the ones made for general 3D purposes towards toon-rendering.

Cartoon flames are another one that would be nice to do procedurally, rather than having to painstakingly draw them by hand.

This might be of interest to you:
http://graphics.stanford.edu/~aselle/paper...rtoon-smoke.pdf

just tried another idea and used toon render


[attachmentid=16769]


project 13 beta

[attachmentid=16770]

Not too bad, John. It would probably look better without the toon lines on the smoke. Or at least make the toon lines a better color than black. Perhaps make them some averaged color.

Now that I think about it, I don't see why Hash splines/patches done in 2D can't animate similarly to the curves or filled objects in Macromedia Flash. Alright, I'm not claiming that the polynomial order is the same on an H-spline and a Flash curve, but they still look like animating curves which could be useful for depicting rising smoke.

Billowy smoke is also characteristic of anime. Akira, shown in this screencap, had some of the best-looking smoke effects in the history of animation -- and they were all completely hand-drawn. It's possible to approximate this with toon-rendered blobbies, but it takes a very long time to render.

For puffy smoke I like the way it was handled in Zelda: Wind Waker. Very easy to do in AM using spriticles.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3431552942591673238

Last Exile had some excellent CGI smoke, but I think it was done with LightWave hypervoxels.

Wow, those film stills look good, but Hash doesn't have hypervoxels.

Could it be possible to create an animated displacement map decal that could be used to simulate smoke instead of terrain?

had a few minutes so took sphere model from cd squished it made rmaterial with sine turbulence and applied as displacement material,bump material, and color material then did quick 30 frame animation





[attachmentid=16819]


v13 displacement does a great job

yeah was gonna say that you could use turmulance to make the smoke the way you want it to look.and picture could get very complicated making a new animation for every time you use smoke in a scean.mabe you should do diffrent things for diffrent scean's pariticle can't always be the answer depending on what ur doing

Hi guys,
sanman, AM can do a lot of effects like the ones you want very easily with the tools that are currently available. So because pictures speak louder that words I tried a quick test to see if I could make the anime smoke in both the billowy cloud style and the wispy smoke trail. Here you go:

[attachmentid=16870]

[attachmentid=16871]

Both of these were created to be fully animatable and to render fairly quickly. If you are interested in how they were made, let me know and I would be happy to explain my process.

Javier

The pic is really cool, but just imagine how much time and effort that would take to do by hand-drawing. Blobbies may take some time, but at least they're procedural and you can do something else while they're number-crunching. I really love procedural methods as a crutch.

Sprites take less computation, but they won't look as good. Perhaps a combination of the sprites and blobbies and animated/turbulent displacement map would be optimal.





Wow, Javier, I just read your post, and your images looked great -- both of them!

Please enlighten me with your knowledge!

The first image looks like lots of blobbies at high density. But could that render fast like you said?
The second page looks like you took a 2D patch and just made it semi-transparent. Looks nice as a still, but can it animate in an attractive way?

Thanks,
Both images were created using procedural methods. As to whether the wispy smoke would animate well,
here's a mov to show how it looks.

[attachmentid=16873] (sorenson3)

I will try to write up a small tutorial for you, as it entails a lot of material work, which I know can be confusing. So I'm going to try to make everything as clear as possible.

Javier

Thanks, Javier. I can definitely use these effects in my work.

Just in case you were wondering about the other smoke effect, here's an animation of the billowy cloud type. Doing this type of effect with blobbies would require tremendous computing power/ a huge amount of rendering time. This method renders each frame in a few seconds. Both methods a quite simple really.

[attachmentid=16880] sorenson3

Javier

Really nicely executed examples, Javier!

Awesome stuff!

Is that an animated displacement map on the mushroom cloud?

I totally agree. The results looked very nice.

Gee, it makes me want to start a Toon FX thread, to ask more questions like this, in the hopes of getting similarly good answers. After all, these extra FX are what spice up the basic toon image/animation. The difference between a B and an A+.

Other stuff I had questions on:

-Toon flames (I'm thinking that whatever was used in that wispy smoke method might be applicable to making some cool-looking flames)

-Toon style specular highlights (for toon-style metallic/chrome/glass, as mentioned in another thread)

-Toon style water/liquid (again, that wispy smoke method might be adaptable to doing water/liquid)

-Toon style motion FX (velocity lines, streaks, etc, tremulation lines, etc)

hey would you mind posting some prj files?
and you mean like particle water?

All the effects you listed can easily be done. However, it is difficult to provide a good answer for any of them without knowing what the specific use will be. For example: What kind of shot will it be used in?(long, medium, close-up) How long will it be on screen? What kind of style are you using for your movie? Will the effect need to interact with another object's geometry? etc. etc.
I find it is easier to plan out your scenes and shots then worry about how to produce effects for them. I'm sure no single answer is going to cover every instance that a particular effect is needed. That being said, I should have a tutorial up in a few days. In it I will try to explain more fundamental AM concepts, so that you will be able to problem solve for yourself. AM is a very deep program, and the answers are there, you just have to be a little creative as you look for them.

[attachmentid=17048]

Javier

Thanks for the reply Javier, and nice pic. Just to be clear though, I was looking to do a large fire, rather than a matchstick flame. So I was visualizing large leaping tongues of flame, and so on. Your approach to doing the wispy smoke seemed like it might be useful for doing flames too. Anyway, definitely looking forward to your tute, and playing around with the results myself.

Any word on those tutorials? If you don't have time, a quick description would be cool, I'm very interested in your results