animated heat plume

[solar fleet]

Hey Guys, been a while.

am attempting to render and animate a heat plume like would be seen coming from a jet or rocket exhaust. haven't really came up with anything on my own and was hoping someone here had cracked this particular nut before.

is this even possible in TS? I hope so, blender gives me a headache.

thanks

[v3rd3]

It has been a really long time for me but what I remember about my own efforts in this area follows. I used the method below because I did not have time to learn how to script the effect. The project goal was to show a jet moving along a runway taxiing along. Nothing too realistic and I am sure scripting would be more efficient, but it did work enough for my purpose.

First create a hot air effect for the overall jet exhaust. I used a cone to establish direction of the exhaust. Applied a gradient texture with transparency to create the first layer of the exhaust. Texture should be very fine particles to create a slight haze effect. Used a second cone with an wave animation (largely transparent) to illustrate heat. Used a plane with an animated texture vertically to create the heat wave rising from the exhaust.This should create the illusion of the atmospheric distortion from the jet exhaust.

Depending on how realistic you need the heat effect to be you will need more objects of different sizes to complete the illusion.

Next, the jet engine burn detail
Create smaller cones for the color cones coming from the engine. Depending on the engine you are repliacating/creating this could be a single burn or muliple. Arrange the cones in the burn pattern you are looking for. Adjust the length and width of the cone to suit your pattern. Use transparency to feather the flame edges and nest the cones using different colours.

One suggestion would be to create the animation of the engine exhaust and heat signature as an item unto itself and export the animation. Bring the animation into your jet scene and position it on a plane perpendicular to your camera.

I will try to dig through my archives to see if I can find the project or my notes from that time.

[solar fleet]

thanks for the quick reply. will try your instructions and see what happens.

[borgcone]

Something like this?

This is an example I made using tS2 (Japanese version) in 2001 where I used:
- "Sphere" and "Deformation tool"
- "chrome 2D" as the reflectance shader
- "glow" as the transparency shader
- "Lens Flares" as the post process shader
- Local Light (Lens Flare is on)

You can get an animation by simply moving the light and/or by moving/rotating/deforming the sphere.

(Edited to add)

This is for tS 7.61 Model side.

(Edited to add)
You can add heat shimmering/haze effect by putting a "distorted glass" between the sphere and the camera like this. For animation, just move/rotate the glass.

[solar fleet]

had not seen this before. will give it a try and thanks.

[borgcone]

If the fire is not necessary, you can get the shimmering air by using only the distorted glass. In the example below, I'm using a cube with a photo (as a texture map) for explanation, but you can simply use your 3D scene instead. The glass here is circular (a thin cylinder) and it also has "glow" (transparency shader) in order to blur the boundary.