Displaced smoke with emFluid

[Maximus]

Hey guys, im tryin to learn emfuid and im having a bit of an hard time to create a smoke that looks like this one in this image



Anyoone have a quick setup to start with to achieve this kind of look? i went trough all the demoscenes and documents online, node by node, but im missing something i guess, the smoke i get usually is quite soft and smooth.
Also i would like to render it with redshift, has anyone tried emfluid with rs? exporting the simulation in .vdb then using the redshift volume grid.

Its kind of a challenge because i dont want to go on houdini just for this

any help would be greatly appreciated

thanks!

[Bullit]

That look is very HQ

Did you tried Explosia for Softimage?

[Maximus]

That look is very HQ

Did you tried Explosia for Softimage?

as far as i know its not developed anymore neither you can use it commercially, not sure i have it installed or if there is any tutorial/documentation, im quite new/confused about smoke effects in general.

[Mathaeus]

As far as I know that's photo, heavy processed later. I'd say, shape of that smoke type should be relative easy to get, this kind somehow is matching to old fashion smoke inside particle spheres, like in examples of Binary Alchemy volume particles coming with SI installations, from SI 7 above.
Tricky part is shading, to get all that scattering-to-shadow variations even with very diffuse lighting like here (no direct sunlight), one will need a stong GI engine, this could take ages in CPU renderers like Houdini Mantra (if we are around Houdini). RedShift or Octane seems to be only choice.
To avoid soft smoke, should be enough to increase density to get contrast and dramatic look, perhaps every smoke shader everywhere, has some density parameter. For start, you increase density by factor 100 or 1000, just to see how it's going. High density smoke should be faster to render as well. Good luck.

[Maximus]

As far as I know that's photo, heavy processed later. I'd say, shape of that smoke type should be relative easy to get, this kind somehow is matching to old fashion smoke inside particle spheres, like in examples of Binary Alchemy volume particles coming with SI installations, from SI 7 above.
Tricky part is shading, to get all that scattering-to-shadow variations even with very diffuse lighting like here (no direct sunlight), one will need a stong GI engine, this could take ages in CPU renderers like Houdini Mantra (if we are around Houdini). RedShift or Octane seems to be only choice.
To avoid soft smoke, should be enough to increase density to get contrast and dramatic look, perhaps every smoke shader everywhere, has some density parameter. For start, you increase density by factor 100 or 1000, just to see how it's going. High density smoke should be faster to render as well. Good luck.

i read people everywhere talking about cranking up "density". Just confused a bit here, what density you talking about? during the simulation or in the shader?
Redshift Volume Material has scatter coefficient, absorption and emission. If i crank up the scatter coefficent everything blow up to full white

here is where i am at at the moment. and yes that is a post processed real photo.

[Mathaeus]

i read people everywhere talking about cranking up "density". Just confused a bit here, what density you talking about? during the simulation or in the shader?
Redshift Volume Material has scatter coefficient, absorption and emission. If i crank up the scatter coefficent everything blow up to full white

'Density' in SI, Maya or Houdini is a shader parameter, it controls how strong is alpha for ray marching, eye ray, shadow ray, so on. Usually there's separate density parameter for shadows. Let's say if value of 1 is a light transparent smoke, something like 1000 is looking like snow or wool. Absorption sounds closest of these three, two others are definitively not. Anyway I'd ask on RedShift forums. Should be some equivalent in any serious renderer.

[Maximus]

almost, need to shape it better
need more fractal details

[Bullit]

Sometimes if it you are not closing up movie you can get away with image sharpening. I actually believe the image you posted is sharpened but does not explain all detail.

[jonmoore]

The trick I like with emFluid is to make sure to use the Refinement setup on a second pointcloud that references the main sim at exactly half the resolution. You can dial in a decent amount of fractal noise detail without too much of an overhead.

[kampffmeyer]

Hey guys,
I'm quite new to emFluid and I'm struggling with some details. So far I've managed to tweak the smoke compound so I like the cloud.
What I need (I've attached a screen shot) is a smoke element I can move around, rotate and (if possible) even scale to fit my scene. I'm using filmed and tracked footage. Here, the horizont isn't always even, so I'd like to rotate my smoke simulation (instead trying to rotate the whole tracking scene).
Is somebody here who can help me?
Eric told me I can't move or rotate the point cloud itself, but I can't find in the compound where I can set the direction. Best would be that the "up" would be the y axis of my emitter. So if I rotate it, the local y axis would be the new "up" in which direction the smoke grows.

Thank you so much!
Wolfram