How to color a rocket trails cloud?
 

I'm trying to get a nice flame/smoke effect for a missile that I'm going to use in an animation.
I can get a very nice smoke effect but nothing flame wise.
How can I make the cloud particles change color,glow intensity and so on with age ?
That should make my attempt at a realistic missile in flight possible :)

Do you have complete or unlimited version of maya because for flame type stuff I would use fluids, if you are just using particles you will need to give us some more details on how you have shaded your cloud etc.

Chris

Exaclty. Also, a missle doesnt really show flames in its' trail, just a super-hot red/blue glow, that quickly tapers to smoke/steam.

A rocket, or meteor will have flames before the smoke, so is that what you are trying to do?

If you look at the pic below, I made this trail using a basic particle cloud renderType, and just tweaked the colors/intensity in layers in post.
SAMPLE

I have the PLE version :(
Basically it's just cloud particles from a omini emitter at the appropriate emission rate. It's shaded with a
Here is a render of what I'm trying to do(no missile yet I'm just using a sphere for now)
It needs more tweaking(smoke color,lifespan,opacity etc) but overall if I could just get a small amount of flame then smoke I'd be happy. I thought about a second emmiter but my computer doesn't support hardware rendering so I can't render anything but blobby particles,spheres and clouds.

Well, instead of explaining what tons of others have explained over the years, here is a link to a free tutorial explaining the technique I learned from many, many years ago:)

I think it will get you exactly what you want:)

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutori...cs_fx/205.html

Thanks :D