I'm working on a futuristic war scene project in college just now and I need to create a rocket contrail for it. I decided to have a go at it in Pyro FX as I had never used it before and wanted to learn a bit more about it. However, I cant seem to get the results i'm looking for in my renders… I have both low and up res activated and raytraced shadows is turned on and everything, but the smoke still appears really flat and unrealistic in the renders, even though it looks as if it should be rendering out a hell of a lot more volume and shadow information even from the viewports….

does anyone know what I am doing wrong, and what I can do to fix it?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks!

I would work in low res exclusively while you are working on this.

Which pyro tool are you using?

What kind of lighting are you using?

Have you got the scattering turned on?

Yeah I have been working in low res, but when I been doing test renders I've switched both on to see if it makes a difference, but it hasn't really.

i'm using the fireball tool.

The scattering is something i'm not too sure about, do I have to create scattering files before i render off, or does it calculate scattering when you render it anyway… sorry i'm new to Pyro and dynamics in general so don't really know much!

I'm using 2 spotlights and a point light with raytracing switch on.

thanks

Yes, you need to generate the scatter files as a separate pass, then your render will pick those up.

It would be best if you could provide an example file, with pyro tools there are so many variables it can be hard to offer suggestions.

Also, when rendering volumes, you'll get better results with deep shadow maps, rather than raytracing…