VFX 3:

Smoke

Idea Summary

1. Simulation

Idea Summary

For this assignment this was my first time using Houdini. We were to make a smoke spritesheet and use it for something- I chose steam for my coffee for the next assignment.

1. Simulation

To create smoke, it needs an area to spawn from.

Start with a sphere
Use mountain1 to deform it
pyrosource1 to actually sample the mesh and turn it into points
volumerasterizeattributes1 to turn those points into volumes
And pyrosolver1 to distort the points like smoke.

2. Sprite Sheet

After exporting 64 frames of the smoke simulation, I fed the files into Houdini's mosaic1 node. Set the images per line to 8, and connect that to the rop_comp1 node to export the sprite sheet.

Don't forget to toggle this option when selecting files for the mosaic

3. Implementation

The Niagara emitter for this simply spawns particles that slightly go up, and scales the alpha in and out. But since it spawns from within the coffee cup, it often clips noticeably with the liquid.

A quick fix was to make a gradient mask at the bottom. I did this with a box mask node set in absolute world position. The top of my smoke sprite sheet is also a little clipped off- so I added a linear gradient at the top to hide it.

Conclusion

VFX_04_cwang2.mp4

Resources

Virtual plane tutorial: https://youtu.be/SoNK_hQzELg?si=0EsrwZNp4RJHGpom

Mug: https://fab.com/s/087b5f196cd1

Coffee texture: https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=coffee%2Bmug%2Btop%2Bview&asset_id=286531991

Environment: https://fab.com/s/087b5f196cd1

Very cool bottles to check out:

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