hi - I'm just finding my way in Bryce and was wondering if I can create smoke rising from a chimney? Can I do particle effects, or can I manipluate clouds in some way?
Any tips or where to start out would be great.

first step as always would be the manual.

Bryce does not have particle effects as such, but you do have volumetric clouds in the materials libraries.

Welcome to the forum derelttil.

For clouds, create a ball, then give it a 'volumetric' MAT. Copy the ball and place it slightly lower the the original; and make it slightly smaller. Repeat the same process till you have a string of balls all slightly getting smaller, and then render. You might need to adjust the MAT a little, and bear in mind that it will take a long time to render.

Another way is to us a 2D plane and apply a smoke from a chimney picture to it, and placing that in your scene. This will look more realistic maybe , and render so much faster.

Great question!  I agree with the last post from dhama, but you may want to start from the lowest source to the next ball being a little higher and larger placed behind the previous one (sort of like a stair step.) this one may be slightly more transparent than the first one.

The example here is from a piece that I did a while ago. I started with a small ball of "cloud" and then behind that I duplicated that cloud and raised it and then enlaged it a little. The next one I did the same thing but I made it more transperant and so on, remembering to repeat the same for the other nostril on the other side of the dragons snout..

 Be careful not to let the ball of clouds intersect one another because the results will not look good at all! Hope this helps you!

Rick KIng

There was a posting recently in this forum, where someone had a huge smoke ring, composed of metaballs.

I went with this approach; small metaballs gradually getting larger the farther you get from the source, and also a little fainter as it rises. The @#$% part is finding a cloud texture that works...;)

Quote -

 Be careful not to let the ball of clouds intersect one another because the results will not look good at all! Hope this helps you!

Rick KIng

Indeed, good point. You could place them from your POV as if they were connecting, but have them gradually further away in the z plane. This will ensure you don't get those ugly lines when rendering.... put them connecting and render , and you will see what I mean.

great - thanks for all the replies!

rickking thats a kewl looking dragon great image

Thanks deadman67.

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php   Smoke and flames.

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php   More smoke and flames.

These are oldies.  The smoke plume can be made in any modeler just make an irregular tube and use a dirty cloud texture on it.   The fire and explosions are just an irregular object that kind of looks like a rock.  Easy to make in any 3d app.  Then  you layer a smoke textured one or two with a fire textured one or two.  Rotating and resizing as you find artistically satisfying.  The whole affair can even be animated.

Smoke and green plasma flames with particles...volume mats are your friends with tweaking.

Or modified and tweeked on stretched spheres for rising smoke. tons of tiny spheres randomized are good for particles.

Oh I used that spheres and smoke method (actually I used "Low Smog" on the spheres) on a bowl of burning frankincense:

Here's the wireframe: