topic Help with polygonal flames in 3ds Max Shading, Lighting and Rendering Forum

Help with polygonal flames

Anonymous — Fri, 04 May 2018 11:27:57 GMT

Hi,

I was received this project file with the plane and flames, but it is an animated polygonal flame with noise and a few soft selections edit poly applied. How can I go around to texturing it to make it look like flames? I am struggling because it just doesn't look right, I can't get soft edges etc. and it must be like this.

Re: Help with polygonal flames

Francisco_Penaloza — Fri, 04 May 2018 16:23:22 GMT

Texturing flames will be complex in this situation, because if the geometry bend or fold that will create shadows on itself. Now this will varies if you are trying to archive photorealism or cartooning style.

Depending on the render engine you are using, you can disable the self-shadowing or use a mix of self-illuminated material.

The softness also depends on your texture, but if there is overlapping geometry, the effect will break.

You could try to cover that with some motion blur or DOF if you can control that part of the animation.

Cheers

Re: Help with polygonal flames

madsd — Sat, 05 May 2018 15:46:33 GMT

If the pipeline gives room, you can use a volume and render an animated volume material, it is resolution independant of mesh and you can make a box apear to have trillions of faces.

I've also compiled a couple of fire shaders using fBm which are quite convincing, do note you need max 2019 to run those nativly with all the benefits it provides.