Sparse Billowy Smoke shelf tool

Creates thick cloud-like smoke rising from a spherical base.

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Important Nodes
Learning from this example

This shelf tool sets up a sparse pyro simulation of a rising smoke stack, with a meter-scale base. The setup can be used as a starting point for simulating scenarios such as chimney smoke or cooling tower steam. Optionally, you can use ML Volume Upres node to upscale and sharpen the smoke simulation using a pretrained ONNX machine learning model.

Pyro simulation in the viewport. Colorspace: ACES, Voxels Size: 0.025.

Pyro simulation rendered with Karma. Colorspace: ACES, Voxels Size: 0.025.

Important Nodes ¶

smoke_base1

The smoke_base1 node generates the geometry which is used as the source for the smoke simulation. You can switch out this node for another geometry object if you'd like to modify the look of the base.

ml_volumeupres_2x

The ml_volumeupres_2x node upscales and sharpens the low resolution smoke simulation. This is useful to generate a more detailed simulation without the need to re-simulate the smoke at a higher resolution. Optionally, use the slower ml_volumeupres_3x node if you need even more upscale details.

pyrolook1

pyrolook1 node sets the proper viewport visualization settings for the smoke and creates a matching render material.

Learning from this example ¶

To...	Do this
Change how fast the smoke starts to rise	Modify the Buoyancy Scale on the pyrosolver1 node. Increasing its value will make the smoke rise faster, while decreasing it will slow down how fast it rises.
Determine how fast the rising smoke slows down	Modify the Cooling Rate on the pyrosolver1 node. Lower values will keep the smoke hot for longer, so that the buoyancy force will continue to accelerate it.
Control how fast the smoke disappears	Change the Dissipation parameter on the pyrosolver1 node. Higher values will make the smoke rapidly disappear, and smaller values will force the smoke to stick around for longer.
Change how much the smoke breaks up	Adjust the Disturbance parameter on the pyrosolver1 node. Higher values will break up the smoke more, while lower values will result in a more smooth-looking smoke simulation.

Sparse Billowy Smoke shelf tool

Important Nodes ¶

Learning from this example ¶

Shelf tools

Using the shelf ¶

Technical ¶