30 seconds left (Final animation in the animation section)

[Hannes]

Oh thank you! Now that you mentioned it, I remember that thread. I'll take a look at it.

[Hannes]

OK, the good news is: I know how to increase the radius of the trail.
The bad news is: since I seem to be too dumb to understand this blue node stuff, I have no idea how to use this in my asteroid scene.
Well, I know how to use it as a density shader of a cloud layer, but in the clip file the trail is always parallel to the surface, right? What I need is a trail that's perpendicular, so that it's pointing away from the asteroid. (I hope I used the words parallel and perpendicular correctly, but I think you know what I mean, don't you?)

[TheBadger]

[attach=1]

Sweet!!!

Well, I have hope here.  Not really sure Hannes, but I think you have done much more complex things with T2. It seems like it anyway.

The image is from the thread T-U posted. Great thread Martin! Thanks for bringing it up! But just to be clear, your question was rhetorical, right?  JK.

On the image, the wide part coming from the comet would look good, then getting thiner, maybe. But Im just wondering how your going to place the cloud tube thing in space? Based on your last post, Hannes, it now sounds even harder than doing it in 3D inside of after effects where your not even dealing with such a vast amount of empty space. I am guessing you would place the rock object, or other object first, then attach the cloud coordinates to the objects, some how. And then fiddle with it manually?
I wish I could be of more help

Well at least I can give you a little insperation, maybe. When in doubt return to the 90s! 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsOE73pxpys

[Tangled-Universe]

Hi Hannes,

I have never investigated the setup.
5 years ago it was way beyond me on over my head and probably it still is

I can imagine that the function uses some kind of get position and then uses an X or Z to scalar like operation.
What we need to try is to either make it perpendicular, like you suggested, or see if we can generate a vector by defining 2 points in 3D space.
I can imagine the comet is an object and the planet is "the" planet.
All the blue nodes stuff is probably not using the comet as a base for its coordinates.

[Ogre]

If you are interested here is the latest version of that setup.  I believe this one sets the plume in the Y direction.

I made it a little easier to set up by putting all the internal functions in the internal nodes and only inputs in the external.

I also added a density setting as well.

[Markal]

Awesome image...I love it...hey, its heading straight for my house....what the he@#?

[Dune]

Thanks very much, mogn. Very handy and useful for a lot of stuff. What do min and max density do? I found no difference when increasing max from 2 to 5 for instance.

[Hannes]

Thank you guys for your efforts to teach me using blue nodes.
It doesn't work. First of all: it's true, I'm too dumb to understand what these blue nodes are actually doing. "Scalar" sounds like an alien species to me although it seems that they do something with the scale of something.
Second: blue nodes bite. I'm afraid of them.

OK, I found a solution for creating a trail that works pretty good, and is quite simple.
Since the asteroid is another planet, it's quite easy to stack a lot of localised clouds with increasing altitude values and decreasing density settings on top of each other. The colour of each layer is adjustable, so I can create a nice Fire-to-smoke falloff.

Here is a screenshot of my first test.

[TheBadger]

Ha! I was sure you would come up with something nice!
But I see your still destroying the world... Probably for the better I guess.

Really looking forward to your final conclusions of this experiment, Hannes.

[Tangled-Universe]

Thank you guys for your efforts to teach me using blue nodes.
It doesn't work. First of all: it's true, I'm too dumb to understand what these blue nodes are actually doing. "Scalar" sounds like an alien species to me although it seems that they do something with the scale of something.
Second: blue nodes bite. I'm afraid of them.

I'm still learning blue node stuff and I have SO much to learn if I look at stuff from Ogre or Jon (Hetzen).

What I do know so far about scalars:

Vector = point in space with a direction and magnitude
scalar = point in space without direction  and with magnitude

Speed = km/h = scalar
Temperature = scalar
60 km/h west = vector

So nodes like "get altitude" gives you a scalar value at each point.
Since altitude is not a direction, despite that we use the concept of altitude as a direction in our mind, it is just expressed as a value in some kind of unit like metres and thus is a scalar.

[Hannes]

TU, thank you very much for your explanation. It was in vain...
It feels like almost fourty years ago, when my math teacher tried to explain me some formulas. He was really a very good math teacher, but after his fifth try I went home and cried.

Now I'm at home and crying.

Honestly, I almost understood what you were writing. But it will probably take a lot of time until I will be able to use some blue node stuff on my own...

Until that I'll stick to my stacked layers. No blue nodes (as far as I know...)

[TheBadger]

Im in solidarity with you bro!

I am just guessing, but some instructional materials on the subject from planetside could probably help a bit... You never know.

Anyway, the image you posted looks rather promising. Likely a good method for stills at the very least. And probably could be used for a lot of effects.
Hannes, maybe you will collaborate on this with someone? As far as I know, no one has even tried what your doing for this purpose. For that reason alone its rather fun to see this develop. And if on top of breaking new ground you manage to get it to look great too, well, my nerd self says thats pretty cool.

It looks good as it is, but I say push on to the bitter end anyway!

[Hannes]

Thank you, Badger for your encouraging words. At the moment I am testing my method for an animation and I have to say that it looks quite promising. The fact that the asteriod is moving and "move textures with clouds" is unchecked for the trail layers makes a nice effect. I attached a test movie in lousy quality, but it shows how it looks so far.

...still no blue nodes

[TheBadger]

[attachimg=1]


YOU DID IT!!!!!!!!

[TheBadger]

Imagine Hannes, you may also be able to put water on it? Make Ice?
And because you used a planet, you can apply vector displacement maps to get crazy shapes?

[attach=1]

[attach=2]

Now we're making movies baby!