Many owners of the Nerd3D Fog and Atmosphere Tool have requested a more detailed set of instructions.
Here it is!
This is an advanced tutorial covering animation with the Fog Tool Deluxe.
You'll need the Nerd's Fog Tool Deluxe.
- Poser 4 (Poser 5 is recommended)
- Nerd3D Fog Tool Deluxe
- A desire to wander around in the fog
- Patience ;-)
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The Fog Tool Deluxe was developed out of the original Fog and Atmosphere tool with animation in mind. It adds a lot of controls that bend and shift the fog. These effects would be wasted in a still scene.
If you only do still images with Poser this tutorial will probably not do you any good. If you want to bring life to your Poser atmosphere this tutorial will get you started.
In this tutorial we will create an effect where a figure leaves a wake as they walk through the fog. We will do this by animating several of the Separate fog plane props manually. This tutorial is aimed at Poser 5, but all the techniques apply to Poser 4 as well. |
- Start a blank scene in Poser and load your figure.
- Use the Walk Designer to create a walk path for your figure across the center of the stage. This should be around 200 frames.
- Load a Fog Tool Deluxe from the Figure Library.
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Create a walk animation. |
Fog Properties |
Now it's time to pose and animate the Fog Tool Deluxe.
- Be sure you animation slider is set on frame 1
- Select the fog control element. With it, you can effect the entire fog bank.
- First we need some horizontal randomization in the fog. Set the Randomize X dial to 0.0500.
- Let's also put some noise into the fog. Set the Y Noise dial to 0.500 too.
- Let' also add a bit of depth Set the FogDepth dial to 1.000
- Finally hit [ctrl]+D to set the fog tool on the floor.
Tip: Adding too much randomization can cause some of the fog planes to move completely out of the fog bank. |
Now we need to add the separate fog planes we will use to simulate the figures wake in the fog bank.
- Check the animation slider it needs to be on frame 1.
- From the props library load an Extra Fog Plane. The prop plane will load in cartoon mode so it is easy to see.
- The Fog Plane is a smart prop parented to the Fog Control so it will move with the fog bank, but it's scale and morph controls are independent from the main fog bank.
- Add a bit of Y wave and Y scale to the fog prop so it roughly matches the elements in the fog bank.
- Add a second plane and set it up the same way, except set the Y wave to a negative value. Think random!
Tip: Use the Aux Camera for an overview of your scene.
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OK It's time to animate the fog bank. First we'll setup the fog planes to follow the figure then we'll add just a touch of movement to the rest of the fog bank to make it "breath"
- Be sure your animation slider is at frame 1
- Grab the first fog prop and set it's X scale to about 50% then use the X trans dial to move it behind the figure.
- Now do the same thing for second plane, but don't use the exact same settings.
- Use the Z Trans to move the second plane away from the first one.
Tip: Now would be a good time to save.
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We want the prop planes to loosely follow our figure across the stage. It doesn't need to be perfect. It does need to be smooth. Poser has smooth animation handled! We want the wake in the fog to give the illusion that it is spreading and slowing as the figure moves away.
- Set the animation slider to end of your animation.
- Set the X scale for your prop planes to between 150 and 200 percent.
- Use the X trans to set them on your figure's heels.
- Give each a tiny twist on the Y-Rotate, around 5?.
- Use the Z-Trans to keep the ends on the figure's heels.
Tip: You may need to adjust the placement of the planes in mid animation. Pick one frame and make all the adjustments on that frame. That way Poser can keep things nice and smooth. |
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The rest of the fog will look silly if it just holds still. We need to make it "breathe" It's motion should be barely visible.
- Select the fog control element
- Check that the animation slider is at the last frame
- Use the Interleave-X dial. We want the motion to be very slight. Give it no more than 0.100
- Play the animation in poser in "Full Tracking" mode ( [ctrl]+[shift]+C ) to get an Idea of how it will look
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Now let's texture the fog.
- Apply the Creepy B D2 material to The fog
- Don't forget to apply to both FogA and FogB regions on the Fog Tool Deluxe
- Apply the same material to the Props.
Tip: Materials names end with a letter and a number. The 'D' means double. The trans-map fades in and out. You will use the "D" materials most. The number represents the density. '1' is barely visible. '4' is pea soup. The S materials are single sided the bottom (or top) edge should be out of camera view.
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FireFly is often accused of being too slow. That's not necessarily true, there are some things we can do to really make it, well fly. Especially for test renders. Check out these settings for test renders. These will be handy for getting your lighting and camera set up the way you want. The big trick here is the shading rate. The best way to explain this setting is the render engine gets to skip pixels when this is set higher than 1. When it's lower than 1 it has to do pixels more than once, kind of like anti-aliasing, but different. These setting let it skip 8 pixels.
Tip: Watch out, P4 render! The fly will out run your "draft" renders with these settings.
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OK, time for final renders and animations.
- You probably don't need shadows from all the lights. Turn them off for fill lights.
- If your target is a web animation keep in mind the final size. You don't need 3000 pixel renders if your target size is only 300.
- When creating animations render to image files. You can assemble them as an animation with 3rd party apps like Quicktime Pro. You'll get better quality and compression plus if you need to interrupt the animation at some point you can pick up where you left off.
- Remember the fog tool uses a lot of transparency so it will slow down renders when it is in frame. You can adjust the FireFly to compensate for that speeding up renders while still maintaining quality. Set the shading rate to 0.750 and the Maximum Texture resolution to a little larger than your target render size.
Tip: Be careful with bucket size. Higher settings are faster, until the system has to start swapping to the hard drive to support the bucket size. If your hard drive is thrashing during a render turn down the bucket size. |
| My Fog is all washed out or solid white. |
- Use a thinner transparency map. "Creepy B D1" is the thinnest one included with the tool.
- Too many or too bright infinite lights. Remove some infinite lights or dim them.
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| My Fog doesn't show at all. |
- No transparency map is applied. If no trans map is applied to the fog it will be invisible.
- Most of the fog is below the floor. If just the top edge of the fog is above your "floor" it may seem to be invisible.
- There may be no light shining on the front of the fog tool. The fog may look like a black blob or be totally invisible. Position the lights so they are on the same side of the fog as the camera.
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For my final animation I added some dynamic cloth and hair. The Dress is Frost C You can see the full animation in the gallery. |
