Tutorial Details
- Software: Blender 2.5
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Completion Time: 30 mins
- Scene File: SceneFile.zip
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
Twice a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of Cgtuts+. Today we’re taking a look back at Gottfried Hofmann’s introduction to smoke simulations in Blender 2.5. This tutorial was originally published back in June of 2010, and proved to be very popular with our Blender users. So if you missed it the first time, why not check it out now.
In this invaluable, in-depth series we’ll be taking a look at smoke and fire simulation techniques within Blender 2.5, and who better to take us through this process than the man behind the official documents himself, Gottfried Hofmann. Prepare to be amazed at just what Blender can do for free.
Introduction & Pitfalls
There are many tutorials out there that cover how to set up a basic smoke simulation in Blender 2.5, but things can be quite tricky and there are many pitfalls you might run into along the way. This first tutorial explains how to avoid many of the problems that might occur, saving you some valuable troubleshooting time.
Video 1
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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.
This tutorial is Day 1 in a series – Go to Day 2 and Day 3.
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By Gottfried Hofmann
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It looks awesome, almost like fumefx.
Thanks for the tutorial, I´ll be waiting for the Day 2.
this is one “smoking” tut!!!!!
(pun intended)
A very needed tutorial. Thank you so much.
wow, great effect!
Great teacher skills ;-)
Your help is very appreciated. Thank you
Great tutorial. What flavor of Linux are you using?
Thx Pascal, it’s nice to hear that :)
Jim: I did this tut on Ubuntu 10.4. For the screencast I used RecordMyDesktop…
@Jim
I’d imagine he’s using Ubuntu Studio. A multimedia creation flavor of Ubuntu.
http://ubuntustudio.org/
I look forward to doing this tutorial later on today when I have time.
how long does it take for you to finnish a days tutorial coz I just can’t wait for the next one
Fogfrogblog: The next one is already there since a few days:
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/blender/introduction-to-smoke-simulation-in-blender-2-5-day-2/
thanks awsome, but liquid tutorial needed here ; )
awesome tutorial… CGtuts definately needs more like these…
Thanks, this is so cool!
Loved your tutorial! Thanks, wanted to make a (hopefully) useful comment. The reason you have to turn density down to zero is the smoke gets applied to the texture stack. The texture stack is how you combine multiple effects one on top of the other. I know it doesn’t seem to make sense, but I do a lot of point density volume affects to my volume material and the texture stack allows me to combine smoke with them for some really cool effects. Unfortunately it isn’t really intuitive to most users, but after you get the hang of it you can do some pretty amazing stuff.
Thanks for the tip, nrk!
Matt
Good to know! Thanks NRK!
It just doesnt work. When i bake it all I get is a still smoke cloud. No move at all.
Thanks, nice and detailed!
Mist
sweet a tutorial on smoke and i think you guys should make a tut on fluid and cloth just helping…
help me….
i follow all step…
but i can’t render the image…
just when i render i always meet grey image…
i can’t see the smoke anywhere….
please help me… T.T
Excellent Tutorial!
I’ve been looking into simulating fire and smoke for a while but buying 3DSmax and FumeFX filled me and my wallet with Dread. That and I didnt want to desecrate my mac by installing Windows.
Oddly I never thought about looking into free software such as blender. Well you live and learn. I’ll give this a go :)
P.S Matt that Camera still needs texturing ;)
Could anyone help me? It appears that no matter what version of Blender I run, I do not get a “Smoke High Resolution Cache” menu. I get all of the others, including the standard “Smoke Cache”, and also the “Smoke High Resolution”.
I really want to get into particles in Blender, but I am finding problems like this to be a serious barrier.
I am running Win 7 Pro 64Bit.
Cheers
Bizarrely, I just opened the scene file attached at the top (didn’t notice it at first) and it has the “Smoke High Resolution Cache” menu. Blender seriously confuses me. Is there something I need to toggle to make it work normally?
Cheers
Chris: The caches have been combined, the difference between hi-res and low-res cache ain’t no more!