Hi! Well I'm stuffed on this one. I need help with the dust clouds/kick-up from the down-jets. I've tried everything I know but nothing looks right including what I've done here. If I can't fix it this one's going in the shredder..:-( All suggestions welcomed with open arms........

hmm....for the kickup - have you tried trees... make the trunks invisble, and make the leaves dirt coloured to give that debris in the air look... dust - I'd just try some volumetric polution spheres and see how that goes. Though you may need some more lighting under the ship to see any of that though.

I postwork all my volumetric effects now. Its way easier.

<strong>bandolin</strong><br />
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u could try a heightmap in the terain editor combined with the clouds you already have, give them both the same material

Attached Link: http://www.petersharpe.com/Tutorial32.htm

Have you ever used the classic peter sharpe tut on making water splashes with terrains? (try using a boolean of the terrain duplicated and stretched too) would work great here with a volumetric dust texture.

Message edited on: 02/28/2006 09:41

I think I would go with Flak's suggeston. This is a quick emulation of your scene. Dust cloud made from 3 speres with cloud mat, altered the diffuse and ambience colour to suit. No added lights. You can always mess around with size,position and transparencey of these.

Johnyf, i think you are the one that gave me the settings and which volumetric cloud to use for the kick up effect you used. Bryster in all honesty it only took me ten minutes to tweak the volumetric cloud and get it looking like the exhaust wer actually kicking up dust..Like Johnyf stated use 3 spheres under each side and it will work a treat.. Now if you ask him nicely i'm sure he'll show you the one he used :)

Hmm... I seem to remember from a previous thread that you don't want to have a shuttle take-off look. Nevertheless, you might want to consider making the clouds a little more dynamic.

The above is an image that I did a while back. Ignoring the poor modelling of the rocket, the cloud effect was achieved by using multiple volumetric spheres with the "Burning Tire Smoke" texture applied to them. You avoid overlapping them so that you don't get those annoying volumetric artifacts; instead, you overlap them from the point of view of the camera. This makes it look like one large cloud effect rather than the several cloud spheres that would appear from any other POV.

You might try a variation on this technique, but the dust kickup that you have should not be simply a round kickup; instead, it should have a much more irregular shape. Also, you might try making the ground indent somewhat underneath (all that dust had to come from somewhere). Otherwise, it looks like a landmine exploding. =)

Message edited on: 02/28/2006 12:56

WOH! That's what I love about you Guys! Loads to think about here! I like Flak's tree idea and JohnnyF has it nailed pretty good for a wip. Shiny is right, this thing is landing, not blasting-off. Imagine slow and gently - bit like ET's Christmas tree ornament of a ship. OK, Back to the treadmill. And many, many thanks! to everyone here;-)

Well thanks to you Guys I'm making good progress with this. The tree foliage idea was wot done it! (although I didn't manage to get rid of all the branches. This is coming along great now and after a few more tweeks I'll post it in the gallery. Again, thanks to all of you for your advice + C&Cs!!!!!

Chris.... Sorry I am late with this.... I made a volumetric dust mat when we did our July DTE challenge.... It is in the back room.... give it a shot... Here it is on a stretched sphere.... You will have to tweak the speed, base density, color, etc to your liking.

Wade

Hey bryster. I've made a texture that works well for this kind of stuff, as you can see on the pic there is the texture (on a sphere) and a few rocks. IM me if you want to get this texture. cheers.

Love the detail on this model. The landing dust, I believe needs a little less density (more dust like). My 2 shillings worth. markostimpy.............

Hi, Guys! Sorry I'm a bit late replying, but I've been away from home for a few days. Swade: That looks great! Thank you so much! I'll try that for sure. Pidjy: Your work looks a little TOO violent for what I need - more like blast-off than touch-down....But many thanks just the same! Marko: I agree. It still needs tweeking, but it's come a long way to get where it is! I'm also thinking about the empty space on the left half of the pic...mmm A few more years work should do it!!!!!! Many thanks once again to everyone for your more than generous help and valuable time. I'm truly grateful to those who drop what they're doing and set up a new scene just to help out an old hack like me! ;-)