Black Smoke

Spoon

Hi guys,

I'm trying to do some black smoke. However, "cutout" gives me either no or full transparency, "dither" is noisy, and "add" only adds values, so I can only make white smoke - do I understand that correctly?

Am I missing a completely obvious button, for totally normal alpha blend somewhere?

I read in an older post that it isnt supported, but hoping it has been addressed now.

Bonus question, if the above is too easy: Is there a way to lock a camera, but nothing else? When I click the lock icon on a camera, I also cannot move anything else when viewing from it. Am I doing something wrong?

vertex_

So the idea behind achieving that sort of transparency is to render out two high resolution images (I go for 8K) - one render using additive transparency and one using dithered transparency. Then take the two images, overlay them in Photoshop, and resize to desired resolution.

This tutorial by Marmoset is very helpful, and it comes with a scene download too: http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/glass

For the camera: I have experienced this issue too. Not sure if it's a bug or intended behavior. Quick workaround - duplicate the camera and unlock it. Using the unlocked camera in the scene will allow you to manipulate entities. I usually have an additional camera in my scenes that I call SetupCamera for this purpose.

EarthQuake

Dither should work well for black smoke, it will look noisy in the viewport but looks much better when rendered out. Render out at 2x if you to reduce noise further.

Spoon

Thanks guys, I will check out the dither