Visual Effects
Blog
For this project I am recreating burning incense smoke in Houdini. The video above is the reference I will be using for this project.
Project Blog
5/27/25
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This is my final render for the project.
5/25/25
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I got a new render with an updated texture and lights.
5/24/25
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By decreasing the birthrate of the points in the popnet I have gotten my points to die quicker so they are not freezing in random places but the issue is still not fully resolved.
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I have also gotten out a render of my scene
5/23/25
From my last post I fixed my banding issues and got my custom velocity working.
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I have the custom velocity working on the smoke sim and it is going in the correct direction.
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I have some banding issues but they don't appear in render view
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Some points from the popnet are freezing I currently patched this issue with lowering the birthrate.
5/21/25
Using the notes I got from class I worked on a couple things.
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adjusted the look of my pyro source by changing my density, temperature, direction, and fixed the banding
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I adjusted the look of the wisps and fixed the direction
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I also started creating a custom velocity field
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current issues are lots of banding with the wisps, source smoke and wisps are not lining up with the velocity.
5/16/25
I have continued to work on the direction of the smoke but I am running into animation and stepping issues. The points that are being used are freezing and not moving when manipulated by the pop wind node. I tried manipulating wind speed and direction as well as the air resistance but there is something that I am missing. When the pop wind is ignored the points constantly move but not with the pop wind. In addition to that I need to match the speed better to my reference. I changed the temperature of the pyro source node but this net me little results. I opted to change the time scale of the smoke dop network and this seemed to work but I will also look for other solutions. today I also worked on look dev and created a simple wood texture for the incense box, created and scene set up, and match the lighting of the reference.
5/14/25
Today I worked on getting the smoke to blow in the right direction. I achieved this by using a pop solver and using a pop wind node.
5/12/25
This week I am going to try to get the smoke to blow in the right direction. Currently I am using a normal solver to create my smoke effect however when I try to use wind on the pyro solver it breaks. I am trying a pop solver instead of just a solver to get the effect that I want but I am unsuccessful so far.
5/10/25
Today I looked at Alessandro Pepe's cigarette smoke tutorial on his FX Thinking blog to help me get a more accurate effect. He used his pyro solver to get the velocity for his effect then used points to create the actual effect. I like this method because I like the amount of control I have over the effect. I also did some look dev today and created the wood stand that is in my reference.
This model is will be updated and I will have to texture it. But this is how I am achieving my smoke effect.
In the sop level I am using a box to create points then in the wrangle node applying age to the points. I am merging in the pyro solver and converting it to a vdb to get the velocity. Last putting that into a standard solver.
I am then using an add node to create curves for the points created by the solver. which is then put into a resample and a convert to make it into a NURBS curve into another resample to cap the length. Finally I have a wrangle which sets my pscale and ages my density so the smoke has different thickness. This all goes into a volume rasterize and connected to a vdb to get the density and voxel size which creates the smoke.
This is inside the previously mentioned solver which created the points for the effect which is then converted to lines and aged so the points die and don't create a super heavy cache.
5/9/25
Today I was using just the pyro sparse solver to create the effect that I wanted I changed the density, temperature, and timing of the smoke but I want getting the results that I wanted.
Main issues
Too much disturbance it needs to stay in a stream, more density, not going in the right direction, may need to be faster.
5/7/25
This first week my goal is to create my smoke effect and get a foundation for my project. I am going to achieve this by using the pyro sparse solver and using the billowy smoke shelf tool as a base for starting the effect. First thing I did was change my source to a tube so it more accurately depicted the end of a incense stick.
Main issues
Smoke it too bubbly, too fast, too dense, not blowing in the right direction.