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[v5dj]

Hey, Im not quite sure where to put this thread or question.

basically Im trying to make a rocket fire from a plane. Ive spent two days animating the rocket and putting the trails together etc, but it doesnt seem to be giving me the results Im looking for.

The rocket trail is seems fine but, the tail doesnt look very realistic, its straight and doesnt puff out at the end, if that makes sense. As you can see from the picture.

The rocket is being fired from an F-18 jet, its not in the picture.

Ive made the trail using Maya emitter and particles and its coloured with a ramp shader.

Doesnt anyone have any ideas how to, make the tail look a bit more realistic?

And one other question, I was trying to give my scene a more realistic look, for the lighting I have some image based lighting (thats the background) and a directional light set to .5 with raytracing, Ive also got Mntal Ray with final gather on, is there something else I can do to improve the final animation?

Thanks for any input & happy Xmas

[LauriePriest]

The particles is a sensible approach, usually if the trail doesnt have to be interactive I'd simulate a small puff of volume that dissapates quite quickly (emitting from a sphere with some noise for temperature, density and velocity emission). Then instance that simulation on particles with the life of the particles driving the frame to pick.

Then just some noise on your particles will get you something ok. Ideally you would want the flame component to be a short fire simulation which you can attach to the exhaust of the missile.

I don't do much volume rendering with mental ray but it looks like your partices are very flat lit. Can you describe how they are being shaded at the moment. I'd expect that if you have an IBL and a volume shader that it would start looking alot better. Volumes look good when you have some noise in them and indirect shading. If your volume is flat shaped and your lighting is flat, it will look ... flat.

Laurie