Smoke gets in your eyes

[Jo Yardley]

I am looking for smoke for the ceiling in my club.

A bar is not a bar without lots of people smoking, so the ceiling should be almost hidden from view by smoke.

I don't know it I need an emitter or just an animated texture, what do you suggest?

Have you seen any, where can I buy it, etc!

 

PS we need a forum section just for people looking for stuff.

[Irene Muni]

There are many grave yards (it's an example) with smog on the ground. What about that smog in the ceiling?

[Perrie Juran]

The smoke itself would not be hard.  There are many candles that 'smoke' as well as incense burners and cigarettes.

The challenge would be figuring out the parameters to make the cloud of smoke hang in the air.

[Qie Niangao]

You'll probably want a combination of both an animated texture surface and some particles. The particle part is tricky because your barroom is probably not circular and you probably don't want smoke leaking out of the walls, so the animated texture surface can cover the parts lacking particles. You might emit particles from a keyframed motion prim that skirts the walls or something, but even with that, I don't think you could get satisfactory coverage without the textured surface, too.

Particles are also tricky in that they're "sprites" -- they always face the cam -- so anybody camming from near the ceiling is apt to see the shape of the smoke effect differently compared to people viewing it from a normal viewing position.

If you have both particles and a partially transparent surface, alpha-sorting may be a problem. I'm not sure how common alpha-sorthing glitches still are in modern viewers, for different combinations of deferred rendering and fast-alpha.

[Kenbro Utu]

My immediate thought is an animated sculpted surface much like the sea foam simulators, only with a very slowed down smoky haze for a texture.  How to give it a feel of depth is stumping me at the moment.

[Jo Yardley]

Yes I think that an animated texture on a prim is probably best, to create depth perhaps use two.

Maybe have texture move in one direction on the top prim and in the other direction on the bottom one, to give the illusion of it moving back and forwards?

The water in my pool does that and the effect is pretty decent.

[Nuhai Ling]

For a room-sized area I would go with a multi-layer animated texture first. It provides complete coverage, is less likely to be seen oddly at angles, and a lot less lag-inducing than multiple particle emitters. Plus it should be subtle rather than looking like the fire department needs to be on the way!

One other important thing; if you own the sim you have a great tool in region settings to create haze and ambient mood lighting. Check out any of the zombie / / vampire /apocalyptic sims to see the affect.

Hope that helps!

[Kylie Jaxxon]

What a cool idea for authenticity

 

[Canoro Philipp]

you will need also a semi-transparent cone shaped prim around the lights in the roof until you reach the edge of the smoke, if you want to give the effect of light crossing through smoke.