Hi All, I was wondering, is there a way to make waves of heat in an animation? Like for a desert scene in Vue? Thanks, john...

Maybe some smoke with particles? Fata morgana?

For an animation smoke will add to your render time. Try making some kind of transparency with diffusion or blur, and placing that in front of the camera, and then animating it slighty. If you are using pro try the vibration effect, but on a very slow speed. Haven't tried it, but sounds logical to me.

Agree with numanoid about animated material. By the past I used an alpha plane in front of the camera (linked to the camera too) with a kind of water material. Default water material at the begining, then I changed some parameters like colors, shadow, etc.And I animated that material , along, X, Y or Z...in fact can't remember exactly. But that was working. Of course renders could be more longer. For the little story, now I prefer to make heat effect in poswork (Afetr Effect); more fast.

In traditional 2d animation they would use a piece of rippled glass moved in front of the camera for that kind of effect. I bet you could do the same thing with a "virtual" piece of rippled glass, that is a mesh with ripples modelled in and a refracting glass material. Don't ask me about the technicals though because I havn't even recieved my Vue in the mail yet. :D

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I saw a post about this in the Bryce forum, I have not used Vue so much that I now if this method is possible here.