Hi,

I am trying to create an ink-in-water effect with particles. I am pretty happy with the motion of the particles - I am advecting them with a smoke simulation.

My main question is about texturing/rendering solutions. What is working (somewhat) for me is to render millions of particles with low opacity - when they overlap I get nice wisps and details (If I get permission, I'll post a test movie). But, the results are still pretty grainy, like a Krakatoa render - not smooth enough for me, and the render time is quite high.

I'm wondering what other solutions there are for this type of effect - in particular how to handle rendering and shading. Any help or example .hip files would be appreciated.

Thanks!

I was able to get permission to post two tests so far.

http://www.adamswaab.com/mograph/FluidTest04.mov [adamswaab.com]
http://www.adamswaab.com/mograph/FluidTest05.mov [adamswaab.com]

I'm really trying to get this to look smoother - less grain, but still have an inky feel to it. No large blobby surfaces.

Unfortunately, I think the solution is simply “more”

Deleted - duplicate post

Deleted - duplicate post

Allegro
Unfortunately, I think the solution is simply “more”

I don't know first hand about what is needed but don't just add “more” particles by increasing the number of particles in your simulation. It's much better to run multiple simulations (with different random number seeds) and then to tell Mantra to render them together. For some ideas, see pbowmar's posts from this thread (2nd and 3rd pages) on odforce from 2007:

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?showtopic=673 [forums.odforce.net]

Yes, sorry I should have been more specific. I've been able to get 100million particles to render (as points) by doing a few different simulations of 2 million particles, and then then bringing them in with a delayed load. I'm sure others have pushed the numbers even higher. Such as with the Psyop dot commercial where they had their own particle procedural to crank the numbers up at render time.

But even in that ad, you'll notice some grain…

Thank you! It's good to know I'm on the right track.