Tutorial: Flow Maps & Advanced Materials in VFX

imbueFX

Hey all,

I'm back to share my latest tutorial on imbueFX.com. This is an advanced level set that covers how to generate flow maps with Maya Fluids, and how to utilize the motion vector data in your particles. I also introduce the concept of combining flow maps with detail flow maps.

Take a look at the first chapter on Youtube

And the store link here

Almost 2.5 hours, only $10. As always, thank you all for the great support you've given me over the past year, Polycount!

Computron

:thumbup:

duoxan

awwwww yea! still gotta watch the adv shading haha.

imbueFX

Thanks guys, I hope you enjoy this one

passerby

hey you mentioned the export problem with the paint fluids tool, all you have to do is manually add the extension, due to a little bug.

so instead of just select tiff and typing a name and saving make sure it is name.tiff before saving.

i got that option to work fine in maya 2012

imbueFX

Wow it's really that simple of a fix?!? Thank you for pointing that out! I plan on doing a follow up chapter next week, so I'll add that in there

passerby

imbueFX wrote: »

Wow it's really that simple of a fix?!? Thank you for pointing that out! I plan on doing a follow up chapter next week, so I'll add that in there

ya i figured it out since in the save dialog it pops up you will see the file filter dropdown is show the wrong thign all togeather.

passerby

also a thing im very curious about is if a method like in your tut would work with flow maps using world coordinates, so you can effect the flow by where the particle is in the world?

imbueFX

I started thinking about that the other day in my head, there's no way (that I know of) for the material to influence the position or velocity of a particle. I should sit down and play around with that to see what I can find.

However I hear that UE4 has some new particle-specific material expressions that will help for things like this. Plus they also have a script that allows you to export a 3d fluid's velocity on a per-voxel basis, and that will push your particles around. They use that heavily in their elemental demo.

I'll let you know what I find!

sinistergfx

Great tutorial! I hope to see more people utilizing flow maps for cool effects!

For those interested, I made a couple Photoshop actions for working with flow maps: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1781778&postcount=154

imbueFX

Thanks Will! And thanks for putting that action script together, I've had a few people ask me already if there was a way to do the math outside of UDK. Cheers!