Fire!

[IlovePascal]

Hey, check out my first fire!

I cant say this thread was very useful for any of this...but the important is that I did it! Jst needs to be smoother now I guess



Any comments on improvements?

[Huehnerschaender]

Yes, fire begins to look like fire when you add the following:

- The particles should get more and more transparent in time
- The particles should rotate and grow a bit in time
- Very essential: Add smoke

Greetings,
Dirk

[IlovePascal]

thanks! Im definitely do that! Just a few questions beforehand :

When you say I should rotate them, do you mean like around a central vertical axis? If so, I already do that.

You also say they should grow in time...isn't that counter intuitive? I mean like, in my program, they become smaller with temperature (which decreases with time of course) and disappear when they are colder than a certain temperature. Why phenomenon would make them grow big? :shock:

About the smoke, should it come from the tip of the fire or rather from the whole burning area?

I'll make them more and more transparent when I get OpenGL working (I still haven't managed it... )...


Cheers

[WILL]

My recomendation.... light a match and watch it. Nothing tells a story like the real thing.

Just be sure to put it on something so your fingers don't burn.

[Huehnerschaender]

thanks! Im definitely do that! Just a few questions beforehand :

When you say I should rotate them, do you mean like around a central vertical axis? If so, I already do that.

You also say they should grow in time...isn't that counter intuitive? I mean like, in my program, they become smaller with temperature (which decreases with time of course) and disappear when they are colder than a certain temperature. Why phenomenon would make them grow big? :shock:

About the smoke, should it come from the tip of the fire or rather from the whole burning area?

I'll make them more and more transparent when I get OpenGL working (I still haven't managed it... )...


Cheers

All this depends on which kind of fire you want to have and if it is 3D or 2D.

If you just want a torchlight or candle, then you are doing fine.
If you want to make explosions which e.g. should appear on an exploding petrol canister, then the things I mentioned need to be done.

The rotation and growth gives some motion to the fire. Growth only makes sense if the particles get transparent fast, or it will look strange. Also the smoke is very important to be transparent. I usually use a single texture for smoke and a single texture for the fire. The fire texture is used with different sizes and rotation and growth factors. This way the fire/explosion has enough motion and different color areas to let the viewer hardly recognize it's only one texture. Same to smoke... a single texture can be drawn as black smoke and white/gray smoke... rotation and growth factor (and of course life-duration factor!) makes it all very animated with only a single not animated texture... the single particles do not live long enough and move "too fast" to be investigated by the viewer. The more motion is in the fire, the more realistic it will look like.

But as I said in the beginning, I am speaking of fire in 3D space using Billboards and not all should be valid for small flames or candles and such things...

[jasonf]

The absolute best fire I've seen in a game was in the original Unreal. It used realtime texture manipulation to make a really cool fire effect. When I saw it I was quite chuffed as I'd designed a similar effect myself, although the Unreal one was definately faster. I remember standing there watching it for ages..

I think that's the sign of a good fire effect. If you can make a pyro like me stand watching the flames, then you've cracked it

I was recently wondering how to make a decent Volume fire. But I don't think it will be possible until someone starts accellerating Voxels. Then we'll see some NICE Fire :twisted:

[NecroDOME]

I remember standing there watching it for ages..

Done the same, also with the water and skys...

[jasonf]

That first level when you make it out of the ship and you look up in the sky, the birds flying in the sky and the sun, fish in the water. All standard game tinsel now but amazing back then.

I've seen some fantasticly rendered fire in movies too, which looks so realistic. It's only a matter of time before it's possible to make completely believable fire in a game.

The spinning, growing particle trick can make some amazing effects, but every game uses this trick now and gamers' eyes are getting use to it.

I've just had a look at the planet unreal site, it's got some screen shots. It looks so dated now. I remember thinking it was the mutts nuts at the time.

[jasonf]

OK, I've just looked at something at the GarageGames site (home of the Torque engine) and they've got an add-on pack (for Torque only) which has some really nice effects. http://www.garagegames.com/products/102/ I've posted this here because they have a video of the effects and it may give you some ideas about how they are done... and if you can figure it out, let me know.. 'cos I can't

[IlovePascal]

Cool, thank you guys!

Now, there is one more thing I would like to ask (for the moment! )

What should my particles look like? Should they be a single pixel of a certain colour, or a wider circle, or something more complex, like a small btm for example, or something else?