I'm not all that familiar with P6 yet, having just upgraded from P4 (huge difference between the two). For my next animated CG project, I want a scene where the character ventures outside into a sandstorm. Is there a way to generate or fake a realistic (and animated) sandstorm in P6? I also have access to Max 8 at my art school, but I won't have any 3DS Max classes until next year so I'm really only familiar with some of its interface and basic functions... but I will use it to generate the sandstorm if I can find an easy tutorial to follow.

I would really appreciate any help you guys can give me. I want this next project to visually blow my other one out of the water, which I spent a year on with P4 (and like 5 other programs for Post work). Thanks!

Actually, I am into working on a sandstorm for my little video myself. :-) I was thinking maybe Atmosphere on. But I dunno. That might be harsh on the system. I am not done yet on my scene to go ahead. Will see what others write.

Hi, I would set it up using particle sprites with trans maps by poseworks

Cheap solution: Take a torus. Scale it way up, like 2000% Parent it to some other simple thing like a box, off-center as seen here. Expand the x-scale of the box so that it stretches out the torus. Apply a Noise node to the transparency (and maybe also the color) of the torus. Then you can animate the Y-rot of the torus to get a steady, straight-looking flow along most of the scene.

Attached Link: http://ockhamsbungalow.nstemp.com/Movies/sand.mpg

Here's what a figure looks like in the middle of the storm, and a super-short MPG of the effect.

Cool, I'll have to check that out. How in the hell did you come up with something like that?? I would've never thought of that <_<

I'll experiment a little. Thanks for the replies! On a side note, I just noticed that P6 renders shadows on an invisible ground plane!!! I know it isn't much, but it really annoyed me that P4 couldn't do this, and for all the animated/static backgrounds I integrate into my projects (such as Terragen landscapes), these ground plane shadows will finally make it look seemless. EDIT: I wonder if Jepes' Steam product at DAZ would yield decent results? I'm not sure unless I loop the same textured prop over and over at amazing speeds to create that intense wind effect... but I could also do this in AfterFX and add motion blur to the steam layer in order to save render time in Poser (I do this a lot... I'll substitute blur in Poser and instead do it in AfterFX).

Message edited on: 01/19/2006 01:03

Attached Link: Snowstorm with Particles 2

Particles 2'll do the trick, but I've already given myself one shameless plug today, so I'll link you an example and keep mum on it ;-) Ockham's method would probably yield pretty good results if you used multiple spinning torii. Another thing that you could try (if you're willing to brave the render time) would be using heavy atmosphere with clouds and noise nodes, and then animating the clouds and noise.

"Another thing that you could try (if you're willing to brave the render time) would be using heavy atmosphere with clouds and noise nodes, and then animating the clouds and noise." Heh, I'm a coward when it comes to render time. I use Poser for animations, so I need the best quality with the fastest results. I'll try these methods to see which looks and works best, and I'll have to take a look at that Particles program. It's nice to see Poser finally moving up the ranks and working with atmosphere & particle fx (as you can see I've been a P4 user).