Hello, I'm trying to generate smoke for an industrial planet's surface. The only way I can think of doing this (without a particle generator) is drawing it in by hand. Okay that works. But what if I want an animation.

My version of Strata doesn't include a particle generator. The only other app I have that can use particles is Adobe After Effects 5.5 PB. And when you make smoke with that, it's just a bunch of dots.

Any advice?

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All hail the Clean Air System
Wouldn't you like to know what I know.

If you use an earlier version of Strata than 3.0.3, try downloading the latest version.
Try this out, it may work:

- Open Adobe Imageready (if you have it, if not, use a free animation program).
- Draw some smoke by hand, and then import it to Imageready.
- Keep drawing smoke to you've got at least 4 images of smoke (they must be different, of course).
- Animate it (if you don't know how, read the imageready manual).

I think that should work

By the way: Is it really possible to animate planets in Nova? I dunno, do you?

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"To play ev nova or not to play ev nova, that is the question" - Shakespear

I dunno if it's possible to animate the planet per say, but it is possible to put a movie into a mission window. So instead of having text for the end of the mission I'm going to put a quicktime movie. I'll see how it turns out.

I really can't introduce a new version of Strata in the middle of a project. I'm going to have difficulty switching to 3.8 when I get it. For the next project I do I should have particles, but as it stands, I can't switch.

Hmmm, drawing smoke, srawing more smoke, animating, looping...

The result is interesting, rather choppy animated smoke. I'll put that in for now, and see if any more suggestions come in.

Thanx

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All hail the Clean Air System
Wouldn't you like to know what I know.

If you have the Production Bundle of After Effects, (I think that's what the PB stands for), you can make smoke easily.

All you have to do is go into Particle Playground, set the particles to move and spread like you want your smoke to. Than apply a Gaussion Blur to your smoke. Set the particle size to 2.5 or something like that, and set the blur amount to 15 or 20. Vola, animated particle smoke. If you get no result, move the Blur layer underneath the particle playground layer.

Also, just for the record, you can create fire pretty well by animating particle age, and color, and blurring it. You can create ship exhaust (something probably often needed in EV) by putting in color that becomes quickly transparent. You can do some pretty awsome stuff with After Effects.

Hope that helps.

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The Evil Spoonman
Albatross!!!
"Life is to important to be taken seriously."

(This message has been edited by Evil_Spoonman (edited 12-03-2002).)

Quote

switching to 3.8

When the **** did 3.8 come out? Is it free?
I've never heard of Strata 3d version 3.8!!!??!??!
Is it really avaiable for download?!?

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"To play ev nova or not to play ev nova, that is the question" - Shakespear

Quote

Originally posted by Clean Air System:
**I dunno if it's possible to animate the planet per say...
**

A animateing planet is just like a ship spin.
Just make the planet animate loop in like 6x6 frames
All Nova planets have a spďn resource and just add how many x and y Tiles it takes to animate.
They can also be set to animate randomly, so you can make a planet have what seems to be random lighting or such.
Nova bible has better info.

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Ecky- ecky- ecky- ecky- pikang- zoop- boing- goodem- zoo- owli- zhiv'
Now lobbest thou thy keyboard towards thy monitor, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/arcangel_c/roguethoughts.html")Rogue Thoughts.(/url)

(quote)Originally posted by HomeWear:
**(QUOTE) switching to 3.8
When the **** did 3.8 come out? Is it free?
I've never heard of Strata 3d version 3.8!!!??!??!
Is it really avaiable for download?!?

**(/quote)

Strata 3.8, (url="http://"http://www.strata.com")www.strata.com(/url) , it's the Mac OS X version of Strata 3D. Take a look...

(edit) stupid UBB Code(/edit)

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All hail the Clean Air System
Wouldn't you like to know what I know.

(This message has been edited by Clean Air System (edited 12-03-2002).)

Someone made a ststion where htere are pods spinning around, but his problem is its goeing to fast.

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-Unreal Centipede
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(url="http://"http://www.voy.com/121329/")Join my anti-confederation fourm(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by Unreal Centipede:
**Someone made a ststion where htere are pods spinning around, but his problem is its goeing to fast.

**

That can be fixed with a little tweaking.

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While preparing dinner, Edna accidentally opens a can of whoopass.

Quote

Originally posted by Unreal Centipede:
**Someone made a ststion where htere are pods spinning around, but his problem is its goeing to fast.

**

Explain in more detail...

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All hail the Clean Air System
Wouldn't you like to know what I know.

Smake in Strata... hmm, I can remember doing this once... Give me a minute...

Yeah, easy peasy! See:

<<edit - made smoke darker>>

I dont have time to describe how to do it right now, I will post that later, but for now, just let me say "effects tab". Something to do with the fountain effect

ewan

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(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/ewan/")"In this world gone mad, we won't spank the monkey - the monkey will spank us!!"(/url)

(This message has been edited by Jules (edited 12-04-2002).)

Would I be wrong to guess semi-transparent metaballs?

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I like long walks, especially those taken by people who annoy me.

Quote

Originally posted by Ernimtir:
**Would I be wrong to guess semi-transparent metaballs?
**

Very. I made the tower, and inside - near the top - made a sphere. I gave this sphere a fog texture (grey tones). Then, I applied a fountain effect to it, with grey particles, which have a dark grey mist texture applied to them. I made the particles big, have negative weight, and generally played around with the settings. If you just render the image as it is,, you will see nothing but if you render frames "40 to 40" or "30 to 30" or similar (basically any value above "20 to 20"), the fountain will have evolved to show something that looks like smoke.

ewan

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(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/ewan/")"In this world gone mad, we won't spank the monkey - the monkey will spank us!!"(/url)

I don't know how realistic the results would be, but a quick, semi-decent way to get smoke is to draw it with the paintbrush in any graphics program; turn it into an animation by drawing it frame-by-frame (start with some, move it around, repeat; or, if you're introducing some then fading away, you can do that too). I've done this with explosions and gotten results that weren't too bad.

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Mike Lee (Firebird)
Visit Cymltaneous Solutions: (url="http://"http://cs.paching.com/")http://cs.paching.com/(/url)
(hosted by (url="http://"http://www.evula.org")evula.org(/url))

Quote

Originally posted by Jules:
**Smake in Strata... hmm, I can remember doing this once... Give me a minute...

Yeah, easy peasy! See:

<<edit - made smoke darker>>

I dont have time to describe how to do it right now, I will post that later, but for now, just let me say "effects tab". Something to do with the fountain effect

ewan

**

I'm not that happy with your smoke. That appears to be an industrial smokestack. Have you ever noticed that smoke tends to churn and billow out of smokestacks. What you have is the kind of smoke a cigarette emits, just in a different shape. Also smokestack smoke is usually higher above the ground where the wind is stronger, therefore it tends to have a wind to pull it off course. I have very rarely seen smoke go strait up like it does in your image.

Anyway, enough of that, you should work on your smoke...

Just to illustrate my point, here's a smokestack...

Notice how the smoke billows up and then get's taken by the wind out of the picture. That's the kind of smoke you want.

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The Evil Spoonman
Albatross!!!
"Life is to important to be taken seriously."

(This message has been edited by Evil_Spoonman (edited 12-05-2002).)

(This message has been edited by Evil_Spoonman (edited 12-05-2002).)

Quote

Originally posted by Evil_Spoonman:
**I'm not that happy with your smoke. That appears to be an industrial smokestack. Have you ever noticed that smoke tends to churn and billow out of smokestacks. What you have is the kind of smoke a cigarette emits, just in a different shape. Also smokestack smoke is usually higher above the ground where the wind is stronger, therefore it tends to have a wind to pull it off course. I have very rarely seen smoke go strait up like it does in your image.

Anyway, enough of that, you should work on your smoke...

Just to illustrate my point, here's a smokestack...

Notice how the smoke billows up and then get's taken by the wind out of the picture. That's the kind of smoke you want.
**

I wasnt too pleased with it either, it was just something I made to illustrate the point that you can make smoke effects with Strata. You will notice that I have now updated my image so Strata's wind effects affect the smoke (particles are getting blown by the wind. I have also made the smoke darker, and more polution like (not too coherent there but you get the jist!).

The first images were just quickly thrown together to illustrate the point.

ewan

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(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/ewan/")"In this world gone mad, we won't spank the monkey - the monkey will spank us!!"(/url)

Lol, classic, you should make a cigarette, and then use that smoke you had before. All the same, I think you should add more billows to that smoke. It needs to be denser, and it needs to come out of the top, not spread around. Anyway, enough of that. I'm a perfectonist (even though I can't spell it).

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The Evil Spoonman
Albatross!!!
"Life is to important to be taken seriously."

Quote

Originally posted by Evil_Spoonman:
**Lol, classic, you should make a cigarette, and then use that smoke you had before. All the same, I think you should add more billows to that smoke. It needs to be denser, and it needs to come out of the top, not spread around. Anyway, enough of that. I'm a perfectonist (even though I can't spell it).:)
**

Actually, I might make one just for the fun I could use it as a comedy ship, and have the smoke as the engine glow! Love the idea, thanks,
ewan

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(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/ewan/")"In this world gone mad, we won't spank the monkey - the monkey will spank us!!"(/url)