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Volumetric Fire - Gregory Duquesne

Volumetric Fire
Anyone who has seriously considered making realistic fire knows how hard it is to get the correct
look and more importantly the correct dynamic behavior. The problem can be tackled in different
ways: usually animators use particles to simulate the motion and then various rendering
techniques to render these particles so that they look like fire, this solution is used in another
tutorial on HyperVoxels.
Another way to see the problem is to consider the fire as a purely fractal phenomenon and
attempt to simulate it just by using textures. There is a well known technique that consists of
applying a fractal noise texture to a plane and move the texture along the Y and Z axis to give it
vertical velocity combined with a turbulent like motion (that comes from the motion along the Z
axis). That's a good solution mainly because it's fast, but there are some obvious limitations, in
particular it is not possible to fly through the fire and it can not be seen from any direction. Here
we propose a different method using a volumetric distant light:
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Start Layout.
Move the light to 0,-1,0 and set its orientation to 0,-90,0. In the camera view the light should be at the
bottom of the screen facing upwards.
Open the Light Properties panel. Toggle Volumetric L ight and click on Volumetric Light Options. Now
you should be in the Volumetric options panel.
Open VIPER, render an image. For faster previews, switch to draft mode.
Click on Edit Texture. In the texture editor set the Layer Type to Procedural Texture.
From the volumetric light panel click on "Texture Only". What that means is that the only thing that
we will see in the light is the texture. This is usually better when trying to achieve texture effects with
volumetric lights.
On the same panel increase the Luminosity to 500%:

From the texture editor, set the Falloff to 25% on Z. You should see the texture attenuated along the
axis of the light (always Z).
To have something that looks like flames we need to stretch the texture along the axis. A ratio of 1/3
is usually good for this type of effect. So let's set the X and Y Scale to 0.5 m and the Scale to 1.5 m.

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10.
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We have something that starts to look promising though it's not of the right color. To set the color,
let's add a Gradient Layer, keep the input parameter to "Previous Layer", this way we can remap the
values from the procedural to what we want the fire to look like.
Set the Alpha value for the first key to 0%. Now add 3 keys one at parameter 0.35, another one at
parameter 0.5, another one at parameter 0.65.
Set the Alpha value for the third key at 100% and set its color at ( 244, 139, 023). Now you should
see a nice looking flame. Note that by moving the keys you can change the overall shape of the
flames.

So now you should have a pretty decent looking fire. What we did so far is just set a texture and
remap its values using a gradient. In the gradients most of the keys are transparent except one,
which means that the fire will be mostly transparent except for one key which creates the orange
flame like effect.
At this point we can experiment with different parameters for turbulence and see how they affect
the fire, we can also change the procedural to something different like crumple and see how it
looks like. But let's keep Turbulence for the moment, what we need to do now is to give the fire
the motion it deserves.
A simple way to do it is just to add an envelope on the Z position for the Turbulence layer. To do
this, select the Turbulence layer and click on the Position tab. Activate an envelope for the Z
position by clicking on the E button. Add a key at frame 60 with a value of 5 m. Render an
preview in VIPER (make preview). After everything is rendered you should have a nice fire
animation.

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This is a good start but we miss a crucial property of fire: there is no secondary motion in the
flames themselves, the fire looks very well behaved and that's just not the way it is in nature. To
do that we can use the "Texture Displacement" technique: by adding a texture displacement
before "Turbulence" and by animating it we will get some really interesting secondary motion:
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Add a Procedural Layer. Move it to the bottom of the list, that makes it the first layer in the process
order.
Set the number of frequencies to 2, that will reduce the render time.
Set the blending mode to "Texture Displacement". Now what you should see is that the flames are
distorted. By setting the active state of the layer on and off you can see how it affects the overall
texture. Another thing that you can notice is that it increases the render time significantly, that's
because a texture displacement is 6 times more expensive than a regular layer.
Now set the Z scale to 3 to keep the same ratio and make the texture move along the Z axis like the
other one. The experience shows that using a velocity which is 2 times the velocity of the base layer
gives some nice results, so set an envelope on the Z position with a key at frame 60 and a value of
10m. Of course, this is a total heuristic with no proven relation to any physical reality, but at least it
looks good.

That's it we now have a nice fire with secondary motion going on, all that without the help of any
objects, particles or image sequences. The big benefit of working with volumetric light is that you
can fly the camera around and through, it will always render correctly. Here is a view of the flame
when the camera is facing the light:

Finally, we can change the look of the fire so that it looks more like a heavy fuel fire with more
contrasted flames. For that we need to make the fire more opaque and luminous which is like
increasing the density of the medium. Set the values of luminosity and opacity to 5000 %:

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About render times:

The render time for the second animation is higher than the first one, but we have the extra
realism of the texture displacement, so depending on the level of realism you want to achieve,
you can tune your render times. One thing that is important about volumetric lights is to make
sure that they are not using raytraced shadows especially if you are working on a large scene,
unless you really need it. It is also important to keep in mind that in this example, most of the
render time is being spent on the texture evaluation, therefore optimizing the texture is what's
really important here. To optimize a texture there are just a few simple rules to follow:
z

z
z

For procedurals the render time is directly proportional to the number of frequencies (or octaves), so
use the right number of frequencies. Try to see what happens if you reduce the number of
frequencies and if it's visually acceptable. Reducing the number of frequencies will limit the amount
of detail, but usually high frequencies details get lost in the image.
Don't use a texture displacement if you don't need it because it is an expensive operation.
Limit the number of layers in your texture, make sure that they are all useful.

Volumetric Fire Movie

AVI ~800k

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