Final Render

Here is my final render with my reference.

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My file consisted of using a pop curve, along with gas forces to recreate this fire tornado.

Inside my popnet is a popvop to force my points to follow the given curve.

These are the gas forces I inside my dop net to create a vortex.

My settings for my gas forces.

Look Dev Renders

This is the render I have so far. The biggest challenge was finding a balance between getting the correct vortex shape and minimizing the amount of banding caused by my gas forces which in turn creates the vortex.

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Reference

Combining Techniques & Look Dev

This flipbook is using a curve to control a popnet that is driving my pyro source.

These tests are using a straight line rather than a curve. The hope was to keep the pyro as tightly wound as possible.

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Reference

What I have so far is a combination of manipulating my popnet with a curve through a pop vop, and using multipls gas forces to create a vortex.

Using curve to control popnet

I used an example file Professor Fowler showed me to use a curve to control the points being produced from a popnet.

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Reference

Exploring Different Techniques

This tutorial explained the volume deform node and how it can be used to manipulate pyro.

These are my tests with the volume deform node. It’s pretty versatile, but it’s a very heavy node and takes a long time to cache. The results are nice, but I struggled getting the look I wanted.

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This tutorial explained how to manipulate pyro with a curve and the gas curve force node.

These are the test I did with this method.

Ideally, I would like to find a way to invert the pyro to get the desired shape. The way this method works is the pyro forms around the curve instead of following the curve.

This test is a combination of my first test from this blog post and gas curve force. Although pyro is still being generated from the entire grid, the pyro that is following the curve is the closest I’ve gotten to my reference thus far. I’m wondering if I can somehow use an alpha to mask out the pyro that doesn’t follow the curve.

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Reference

Research & Development

I’ve never simulated flames in Houdini before, so I know I needed to do a lot of research to get started. First I looked up more references from different natural disasters.

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I was looking into a lot of tornado tutorials in houdini so I could understand how to manipulate forces. Houdini has a lot of pyro shelf tools, so I would able to get flames working relatively quickly, I just needed to make sure I could match my referencce as closely as possible. These are the tutorials I came across.

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The progress I’ve made so far only uses information from the first tutorial. I’d like to find a way to incorporate the rig pose node from the second tutorial to further manipulate the shape of my pyro and easily change its direction without changing the values for my forces.

Reference:

Finding a Reference

For my final project I wanted to explore fire simulation. This is the reference I would like to recreate.

This is the original video: