Thea for SketchUp: Quicktip Videos

[Rombout]

What do you mean "But, I think we are getting close and closer to what I've been wanting now since I first got Thea (thinking it could already do this)."?

Well if you user 3dmax or Blender, perhaps c4d can do it to, you can use animated textures. With blender for example i can use a texture sequence and when i render the animation, each frame a different texture will be used. So say you manually paint 30 orso of these textures, yeeah thats a lot of painting. Then using the animation export option ie blender it will pick one of the textures for each frame. This will cause it to move as well. You could always add extra motion to the flame use some deform tricks.

But for these kinds of things you would need a modeling app which can do all of this and also is supported with the Export to Thea. I know Blender4Thea supports animated textures because ive tested that i while back, never used so wasnt sure it would work.

[duanekemp]

Specifically, what that means, I suppose, is that I'm less ignorant of what Thea can and can't do without post than before I purchased it. And before the purchase, I saw some incredible things done that I believed were produced by Thea. What I discovered is that the demo I was looking at was made with several modelling solutions that just weren't/aren't probable in SketchUp even today. However, one of those wishes I had was volumetric blue flames for my spaceships. And in four years... I'm STILL looking for a solution that works in house without dealing with post. I think we are getting closer and closer all the time. However, this example here is excellent but, works for a single camera perspective. What my holy grail is to get this look on a model that (for example) rotates on a roundtable. If that could be done, then I could animate my ships coming and going without noticeable "edits" and changes from frame to frame.

You are right about the abilities of other soft do accomplish these types of issues. However, I'm a SketchUp guy and don't know another software. Therefore... continually looking for solutions that lets me pull this stuff off in SU.

But, like I said... this is the closest thing to what I've been looking for with that added bit of "heat". I've seen several examples of how to get some good looking blue flame and some have almost been believable... good cheats anyway. But, I'm liking this very much.

[Rombout]

Well the other solution is the plane trick. I show a quick example of that setup using the BW version of that flame okay. Because of the planes are rotated your faking a shape in 3d using 2d planes. The i rotated he planes at 15 degrees of 12 (2 grouped planes) so it covers 180 deg, which makes it a perfect 360 circle.

I made a long plane in the shape of the flame, then i used the mask i made from that Mask ID. There was 1 issue i had with emitting planes, it only is single sided. So i added a copy of that plane and flipped it. Then i made copies of this double group, 12 times to get small spacing. This way the flames look good from many angles and still keeps its shape.

However get that heat effect is nearly impossible without post work. You could try adding a glass plane or something with small ripple effect. But it will never look as good as the post work i done, that is quite normal actually. ALl CG is almost done with post work.

Here's a screengrab, you can see the flame now is visible from all angles. No camera trick this time


The link doesnt show properly, right click "open new tab" works though

[Rombout]

Here's a different scene where i used the same principle to fake smoke. This one is animated, i had one shadow issue, but i can fix this now with this same setup using glass in the material i think

[duanekemp]

You ARE a very creative, thoughtful, smart man.
This is very cool. I'm curious about the rendering the planes because of the effects of layering that can go so badly.... But, I will get back to you more on this tomorrow as it WAY past bedtime.

Thank you Rombout!

[Rombout]

The effects of layering?? not sure what you mean by this.

There is a issue of shadows with planes, so i turn of off cast and receive shadows. That way you dont see that these are actually planes.

[duanekemp]

Here's a screengrab, you can see the flame now is visible from all angles. No camera trick this time

Yesterday that animation did not play at all... it sat like a single still frame! Today... seeing that animated makes this a whole new subject! Seriously... seeing the demonstration you shared changes my responses as if it was a brand new post!

Thank you!!!

[Rombout]

Sill i dont get your post about layering?

[Bob James]

Here's a different scene where i used the same principle to fake smoke.

How did you make the mask to get the shape for the smoke?

[Rombout]

The smoke is an fake animated one. Its uses the same principle of a couple planes with clipping masking.

But this one is setup using animated particles in blender. Than for each particle that object with the smoke planes is assigned. When you add a lot of them it sort looks oke