Environment/lighting artist
Final Project
VFX 428
VFX_428/update_05
I did some more tweaking to the simulation to get it more in line with the reference.
Further Tweaking
One of the largest issues I was facing was too much divergence within the smoke. This was fixed by expanding the coverage of the wind force to cover the entire simulation.
In the previous sims, the disturbance setting was too high. This caused the smoke to look a little too noisy.. I fixed this by lowering the setting from 50 to 25 to bring back larger swirls in the smoke.
Disturbance set to 50.
Disturbance set to 25.
Bringing the velocity source strength down to 0.1 helped reduce the speed of the smoke as well.
Here's the current look of the sim with a volume visualization node to indicate where the fire and smoke will be when rendered.
VFX_428/update_04
This weekend I took some time to refine the pyro sim of the burning oil rig.
Smoke Simulation Refinements
The smoke was being influenced too much by the wind at its base, so I used a custom velocity technique to gradate the wind intensity as the smoke rises.
This is achieved through a point VOP that adds noise to a velocity attribute created by a static volume.
Below is a test render I did before the custom velocity implementation.
I determined there was an issue with voxel size, so I corrected it to be a more fitting value of 0.4 instead of 0.5 for more detail.
To the right is a flipbook of the new test with more detail and the custom velocity.
Fixing Unexpected Behavior
Unfortunately the sim behaved properly until around 500 frames in. The wind started to push it wildly off course.
A workaround I have currently is to use the volume remap node to fine tune the look.
VFX_428/update_03
I started work on the initial smoke simulation without the pyro as well as a basic scene setup for the separate render I'll be doing with the higher resolution pyro simulation.
Smoke Simulation
To start, I blasted away most of the oil rig so that I'd only be emitting smoke where the deck of the oil rig is.
I then used a pyro_source node to initialize all of the attributes I need. I then use a volume_rasterize_attribute node to convert the attributes into an emission volume.
The actual DOP setup for the smoke is a modified version of the shelf tool's billowy smoke. I plan to do more, but below is a basic, low resolution simulation of the smoke.
Camera Setup
The camera setup for the small scene is relatively simple. It's just using a simple noise CHOP to create some camera shake.
VFX_428/update_02
I ended up changing my mind on the project and I decided to merge it with my project for my Digital Lighting and Rendering class's final project. I've gathered a few references below.
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This first reference of the Deepwater Horizon disaster back in 2010. It offers a shaky but accurate reference at approximately the distance I need.
These stills also provide various examples of the types of smoke/fire you'd find in an oil rig fire up close and at a distance.
VFX_428/update_01
The first step of getting started on this project was finding a reference! I chose to do a pyro sim based project. The reference is below.
I've broken this down into 4 pyro sims. Numbered below, I need a sim for the larger flames (1), the inside smoke (2), the smaller frames on the window sill (3), and the smoke outside the window (4).
