ockham posted at 11:14AM Fri, 06 March 2020 - #4382626

After lighting an actual candle for comparison, I think you've got it. The shape and gradients are just right. The only difference I see is that the lower part of your flame is too blue, too much like natural gas. The lower part of the real candle flame is simply more transparent than the upper part, showing the background more.

I was absolutely delighted when you said "After lighting an actual candle for comparison" !

When I started this I was convinced that I knew what a candle flame looked like. Needless to say my initial attempts were so bad that I wouldn't want to post them ! It wasn't until I actually lit some candles and watched them, in daylight and by their own light, in still air and with a breeze, against both light and dark backgrounds, and from all sorts of angles,that I really started to see what they looked like. I'm actually really looking forward to trying to do some realistic candle flame morphs

Regarding the blue - agreed, definitely too much blue in the lower part of the flame. I think that we need to make the flame more transparent near the centre at the bottom. So I'd guess that the Transparency network needs something like an Edge_Blend (Inner_Color=black, Outer_Color=white) combined in some way with v_texture_cordinate using some appropriate simple Maths_Function ? And need to make sure that it doesn't affect the middle/upper part of the flame.

(In fact my first 'reasonable' attempt at a candle flame shader used an Edge_Blend for Transparency, but I had the colours completely wrong. So to avoid confusing myself I removed the transparency network and concentrated on the Ambient_Color network. When that started to look right I put a Transparency network back,but without any Edge_Blend.)

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