#Making LAVA look REAL
13 messages in this thread
What is the best way to make boiling LAVA and give it that bubbly appearnace?
Judy
Judy,
I needed a good lava flow for a volcano I animated. I made a good map in
animator pro, then just slid it along as a cell to animate it in anipro. The
resulting map was applied to a morphing mass in 3ds. For more 3d realism you
could model a few bubbles and make them come to the surface. The new hide
feature that can be keyframed in R3 works well for making them "pop". Just hide
the bubble then replace it with a poped bubble for a few frames then hide that
one and repeat the action.
Andrew McClary
This Lava unfortunately is not flowing lava — it is bubbling in a pool and I
only have 5 frames to animate it in! How did you model your bubbles? DId you do
it all with maps or what?
Thanks
Judy
Judy,
you might try smoke.sxp (if you have it), coloured orange and black used as a
texture and possibly a bump map. It's animated and might give you 5-frames you
could use.
5 frames ain't gonna do it! But… make your pool a flat surface with a self-
illuminated orange materials. Go rent T2 and study the scenes with the molten
metal at the end. (That was backlit plastic). Once you have the pool, add some
bursting bubbles. Rent Fantasia and study the bubbles bursting in the Dino
portion. (I remember seeing a Disney special when I was a kid where the
animators studied bubbling mud for that.) You need to create one bursting
bubble sequence, and then duplicate it and vary its effect in time. To make the
bubble, I'd probably start with a sphere that scaled up, and then use Hide keys
to switch to two or three models of the burst bubble (looks a little like a
crown). You might also use a slowly changing animated texture map for the
surface of the pool.
– Jack
You are right — you can't do much with 5 frames — but that is all the game
can have. And the size can only be 320×100. I can only use 16 colors! I got
some fairly decent looking stuff (albeit no bubbles) using ripple with a low
amplitude and the smoke ipas as a texture map and morphing between the various
iterations.
Their current lava is color-cycled orange water!
Judy
Judy
Just make a shere and make it move up through a pool. When it gets to the top,
pop is by replacing it with a "exploded" version of the shere for just a frame
then hide it and start over. If you want more bubbles just make incedent
copies of that one in the keyframer then slide each ones action a frame or two
in the "tracks" so they appear randomly timed.
All this coupled with a good texture and new luminance map for glowing areas
and you have lava.
Andrew McClary
Graphic Alchemy Productions
I doubt if the exploded sphere would make it in 5 frames with 16 colors.
Morphing between various iterations of Ripple with a low amplitude and the
smoke Ipas seems to give a sort of "seething lava" effect — albeit no bubbles.
I will keep that suggestion in mind for future projects.
Judy
Judy,
With 5 frames and 16 colors, your best bet is to sharpen the old stylus and rev
up Animator Pro for a little old fashioned freehand animation for those
bubbles. It will probably take you less time than playing with it in 3DS.
What are you doing this effect for that limits you to 16 colors?
Andrew
It's part of a game — it's a front scroller and the lava is just bubbling and
seething in a pool.The reason I have only 16 colors is due to the fact that the
rest of the 256 color palette is in use for walls, floors,monsters, weapons,
spell effects etc. — you get the picture. The lava is actually about 320×100
What I have done is a 5 frame morph using ripple with a low amplitude. I am
not going to color fit into their palette until they make up their mind about
which one they like ( I rendered several different versions).
Judy
Some time ago I created a 4 frame FLC, with Animator, of lava flowing down a
hill. It's available in "What's New" as LAVA68.ZIP.
If it's in the ballpark of what you need I wouldn't mind trying to do bubbly
stuff. What's your deadline?
Thanks for the offer. I like your lava. I now have some lava that they like.
But I am having trouble color-fitting it into their palette. I only have 16
colors — some of which I never used to start with. They changed their idea for
their lava after they created their palette. All of their colors are very muted
and it makes the lava look terrible!
I need to check out your stuff and see how you did it in Ani Pro. I have
never tried the animation stuff in Ani Pro. So I will be getting back to you
with a million questions!
Judy
Be glad to help.