smoke-filled ceiling in bar - how?

Doing a scene in a bar where I really, really want the smoke-filled kind of layered look - thicker at the ceiling, with density tapering off lower in the room.  Been looking at VDB - and it looks like it's primarily for animations - though I have seen a few tutorials on using Blender smoke flow into a volume.  Can't seem to make that work, because we're dealing with different coordinate systems, and I need the effects of buoyancy to get the tapered-density look.  However, I can't do buoyancy as a vector, or it'd be much less difficult.  So - ideas, hints, pointers, etc?  Thx much.

Comments

  • crosswindcrosswind Posts: 6,831

    If it's not for animation but just static render, personally I always suggest go for post-work in Ps or Affinity or Gimp, by using Brushes. There're quite a few high quality Smoke brushes from Ron and Giko in Daz store, as well as other 3rd-party sites.

    Post-work can bring you really amazing VE than a pure render...

  • atoxicatoxic Posts: 141

    a long time ago I did something similar by using a plane (white / offwhite) with opacity map (grey to white) in front of the camera

    Nice Days and Nice Renders

    atoxic

  • jbowlerjbowler Posts: 794

    nkluksdahl said:

    Been looking at VDB [* * *] Can't seem to make that work, because we're dealing with different coordinate systems, and I need the effects of buoyancy to get the tapered-density look.  However, I can't do buoyancy as a vector, or it'd be much less difficult.  So - ideas, hints, pointers, etc?  Thx much.

    I bought the VDB stuff too and couldn't get it to work; I wanted pretty much the same as you.

    Did you try the "fog" stuff, IRC it was broken recently but mathematically a smoke filled room is of fixed density so distance-to-object is directly related to the smoke density, just like fog (well, real, white-out, fog).

    Of course that's not very artistic and ideally we want a ceiling of fog/smoke with Claude Rains actually higher than us for once with only his funny hat disappeariing into the incredibly thick smoke.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,508

    Just an FYI - The iREAL Animated Clouds do Not need to be animated. They offer a really nice depth without having to go VDB and have some cool options. 

    The ones used here have a really low opacity but we can make them quite dense if needed

  • May have a sort-of solution.  Huge smoke domain in Blender, 0 buoyancy, modest initial heat, smoke emitter on one end of the domain volume.  It fills a volume starting from one end moving down.  This may be a hack to get around buoyancy, gravity, and the different axes between Daz and Blender. Going to try it, and I'll post my results.  (It may have the advantage of a big volume so that I can move it around for the best effect in a shot.  If this experiment doesn't work, I'll go with the graduated mask in front of the camera.

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