I Need Smoke...
 

I need a good way to make smoke like that of an 18-wheeler belching from its exhaust pipes. I tried using the missle trail tut they got at Highend3D but it just doesnt look right. Any ideas?

I got great thick dark smoke from using sprites and the smoke imagery in the maya "gifts" folder in the Maya program directory:)

Make sure to use raytraced lights for best results.
And because they are pre-rendered images, it renders REAL fast too!

Check the docs for how to set-up sprites, and also check the readme in the gifts/smoke folder:)

Good luck!

also, I have a tutorial on great thick missle smoke in my second explosions video tutorial here on SM:)

maybe it's just me but I can't find my gifts folder?? I'm using Maya Unlimited 6.0.1... did a search on my harddisk for "gifts" and it did´n't bring up anything...

Sorry, I'm using Maya 5....

Not sure about where it would be for 6 or later, but if you look in the docs under SPRITES, it should tell you where these files are... hopefully:)

hmm, strange.. Maya itself also mentions the Gifts folder. Ah well I guess I'll have to look through the mess in my Maya folder and see if I can find them somewhere. Thanks for the reply.