Help!! How to achieve a realistic thruster exhaust?
 

Hi,

This thread appears to come up fairly often after completing a fairly lengthy search of the forums but pretty much all of the results were never finally discussed so I'm hoping to get some solutions. I also posted this into the Dynamics forum (hasn't been double posted).

I'm about to start working on a project that requires thruster exhaust effects from a missile (that being both the ejection exhaust and smoke plume). Some users have suggested I look at RealFlow but not sure if this is really necessary. Dynamics are certainly not a strong point of mine so I envisage a lot of initial work to get the desired affect but really need a good solid grounding in the right direction to start with. I'm looking for any training material that could assist us in developing this shot. The camera is intended to be rather close at ignition so we are looking for a detailed solution.

This is what we are trying to achieve:

http://www.vernk.com/images/XPRS2005...yRickClapp.jpg

My client is wanting something as close to photoreal as possible. It will eventually be composited onto a live plate. We do have a budget for some training material if required so if anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated. In addition to any comments on if RF4 could be of advantage.

Thank you to anyone that can provide some help.

Regards,
Nick.

link is dead

i dont know if this is something u may want to look at here
but it may be a bit basic

r u talking about the thruster rings like from an after burner from a jet

u could do it with dynamics/fluids
look in mayas visor

sorry i couldnt be more helpful

I wouldent use realflow at all for this, complete overkill and most of the job is in the shader rarther than the actual simulation. As a "close to" simulation will do considering that its going to be composited and that you can change the look of the simulation via bias settings and transprancy maps.

To be honest theres loads of ways to do this, particles and fluids combined would be my way, make a fluid simulation for the main smoke, with a ramp attached to the incandesence to control the look, with a mess about with the opacity and the imput bias for the incandessence it should look pretty good, and then use particles for the others.

As I say theres no singe shot solution for this, what I would suggest is digital tutors fluids kit and mayve the gnomon pyrotechnics dvd (not seen it myself so couldent comment).

Ohh also have a look into overburn, a great little free plug in that might give you some ideas if you reverse engineer them