|
 Introduction |
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Using shaders for
modeling a Whirlwind is an easy and effective way in producing
some cool tornados, water spouts, tempests, and hurricanes.
This tutorial
requires:
ShaderMakerPro
Pixels3D
| studio | v3.7
|
| Start
with ShaderMaker Pro |
|
Open ShaderMakerPro,
if you don't own SMP, use these steps for creating the shader
with ShaderMaker in Pixels3D.
First, create a Turbulence
node and plug in x,y, and z Current Point Location nodes into
the indexes as shown here.
|
|
| Finish
the Shader |
|
Plug in an Edge
Blend node into the opacity to make our object transparent
around its edges.
Plug in the Turbulence
node we created earlier into the Attenuation input.
Create a User
Defined node and match all the values as pictured left and
link it to the Diffuse Colour input of our main shader.
Save it as 'tempest', and open Pixels3D.
|
|
| Lighting |
| Select
our main light in Object Info ( CMD-i ) and set the Light Type
to Sun. Also open up the Render Setup ( CMD-u ) and use fog. Also
set the fog and background colours to 0.25, 0.3, 0.3 ( rgb ). |
|
| Modeling
the Funnel |
|
Create a cylinder
( Shapes>Cylinder ) and choose Reshape>Spline.
In the Right View, we should see a red
spline intersecting the centre of the object. By clicking and
dragging on the red "x"'s, we can shape the cylinder
like a slinky into a shape similar to the one on the right.
|
|
| Twist
& Taper |
| Select
the Right View button in the pane to open up View Options.
Select Twist & Taper for the view. There are now two
splines that will allow us to shape the cylinder into a funnel. |
|
| Reshaping |
|
Back to the scene,
lets shape our Whirlwind even more by using the Pinch tool Reshape>Pinch
and shape it to our own specifications. After shaping it with
the Pinch tool, set the object's x rotation to 90.00.
Choose Control > Park .
|
|
| Add
Some Friction |
| The
whirlwind wouldn't be complete without some friction on the surface.
Choose Shapes>Spline using the B-Spline option. Make
two full circles, one on the xz plane and one on the xy plane
as pictured. First, select the xy spline then Shift-CMD-Click
to select the xz spline, and Reshape>Path Extrude. We
should have a livesaver shape to fit around the "touch-down"
area of the whirlwind. |
|
| Apply
the Shader |
| With
our whirlwind model and the lifesave model both selected, open
up ShaderManager ( CMD-w ), and load our 'tempest' shader from
SMP. Importing from SMP may not be exact to what you specified
in SMP, use SM to re-edit the shader back to normal. |
| Finishing
the Scene |
|
Create a mesh and
scale it up. Duplicate the mesh and rotate it to fill the backdrop
of our camera's view. This is so we get a full-view render with
our tempest shader. An empty area in the scene will produce
undesirable rendering problems with the use of the Edge Blend
node in the tempest shader, so this mesh is a must!
Once the scene is
set up, reposition the light, the lighting here is crucial to
rendering a realistic whirlwind.
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| Render |
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Let's render the
scene.
After rendering we
have our near realistic Tempest on the ocean surface. Feel free
to try your own variations of the tempest shader.
Have fun!
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