UDK Fire

devingeesr

Now I know what your saying to your self here we go again with another noob asking about fire really, really dude it's called google go look it up and stop wasting our time. I know I know but i know how to make fire. So now it's like what the heck are you wasting our time for? Well I'm trying to create the effect that fire gives off where it looks like the enviorment is bending around it. Take this example I found on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4IfCDj4N-E&feature=related

This is some nice fire and you know why because it looks like real fire it has all the effects that fire give off. So my question is how the heck do I make that effect and more important what is it called? So I'm assuming if you read this far you might want to invest a little time in helping me out. With that said thank you for your time!

devingeesr

How do you embed youtube videos here?

tyddynroger

the heatwave effect, never tried it personally but i know in a max plugin i use, it adds blur around the particles to achieve that effect so maybe look for somthing like that in the unreal particle editor.

passerby

@devingeesr

just paste the URL in and change the https:// to http://


EDIT:
For the heat distortion effect, make your self a noisey kinda normal map, and multiple it on the material shader and plug it into distortion, than use that material in cascade as a particle.

if you want a exemple i can take some screen shots from UDK of my setup for heat distortion.

devingeesr

FOUND IT! well after all that time typing this thing I find it. Wow I feel like a butt! So ummmm thanks every one! You know what show me the best example that you can find of this effect so that I can compare and expand on this idea!

devingeesr

Thanks passerby for your input I will try that when I get home!

passerby

ya here is a example of the normal map i made for this.



made it by simply paiting black on a white BG with a really rough brush, than running it threw NDO, to create the normals, using the nvidia filter or crazy bump would have the same effect.

than here is the material



very basic just a translucent material with opacity tat 0 than in the distortion i got the normal map, and what i did was multiply it by 2 to give it more effect in the distortion, and multiplied that by the vertex colour alpha, so when i bring it into cascade i can do a alpha overlife on it to make the effect fade out as the particle dies.

once that is done it is just a matter of adding a new slot in your cascade effect for your fire and setting parameters up, so it uses this material, and has some spread in it's initial location, and does anything else you might want to do with the particles.


also note, the distortion input works by displacing the position of the pixel behind the material according to the input map.

Red is the X Axis, and Green is the Y Axis, and im not sure if it makes use of the blu channel or not, so in most cases you will want to multiply it by a number to get above 1 values in it.

if you want help with any other effects let me know i have been doing a lot of experimenting with VFX in udk for the last few weeks

devingeesr

Sweet! thanks a lot and I will most def hit you up if I have any questions! I'll post the fire when I'm done!