creating realistic Flame in Blender.

By krzysztof zwolinski



introduction
Keptheflame is one of my works inspired by the book of Pete Drapera, deconstructing the elements with 3ds Max 6. Even though this book is aimed at users of 3ds Max, y recommend this book everyone.

How todo make Flame?
Before we start todo make materiales we have todo take a minute and wonder about characterization of our object. In this tutorial we make a Flame from a lighten, lets think about ití:
  • 1) Flame is fading out with the environment.
  • 2) it has two diferent colors, half blue and yellow.
  • 3) each half has a diferent property.

Now it sems that we cant make this Flame just from a simple material. So todo do this material, we Will use node materiales. In this tutorial we use a simple object sphere scaled in z. The Flame in the keptheflame was a los made in this way, but it takes a Little time &efort todo set up everything todo have this effect fell right.



Lets start:
First we make a simple material and turn on ztransp, alpha 0,0, Spec 0,0. Now for the node, in Node Editor we erase everything leaving only output (i am not going todo explain about the properties of every node we have in the editor, y Will only show you how todo connect them and what this connection results in). Now add output, geometry, normal, color Ramp, and RGB curves nodes. Mix and connect them like on the image.
We use a setup like this almost all th rouge this tutorial as it gives great adaptability. In this case the object is covered with two colors which are setup in mix node, and mix node is setup by colorramp and normal node. So we can setup fading one color todo another on the object normals. Later we change normal node todo texture node.





And this is the result of this setup. Gentle fading of the white color in the black and because we a los put this setup in the Alpha Channel the object disappears and fades out with the background.



Now we have an object that is gently fading, so now we have todo Split him into two diferent parts. First we make blend texture like this.



Copy all of the nodes and change normal, colorramp on texture, mapping and set up adequate coordinates of the texture.



And the results.



Our Flame is now Split by the texture in two colors, white and the black. In the Alpha Channel, black is transparent. So now we put all of the nodes made in first step todo fadeout what is in the white slot of mix node.



Create another blend texture, which Will replace the black slot in the mix node and add another mix node and mix them together like this.



If we render it now we can se that the blue part of the Flame is not fading out, that because the mix from normal fade in is not attached into the blue slot. So now copy them and set them up like in the image.



Alos copy normal and colorramp and put them into the black slot, this give us the ability todo change the outer line of the blue part. If you setup everything correctly you should be have some thing like this.



Now we can take care of the upper part of the Flame. Make another blend texture like on this image.



And connect this texture todo the first mix node we created todo the white slot.



Now we have complete setting for the Flame.



Now its up to us and what we want todo achieve. We could add a material node with emitter and cloud texture. With emitter we could use radiosity and the Alpha Channel in the clouds todo make the Flame more real.

Conclusion
You can se that making a god node material is hard work and you ned todo study them in real life. Most of time the best results are made by trials and error.

Information in this tutorial are only the basic of the Node Editor and making of the Flame materiales, but i hope that the basic and study of the image of the final settings of nodes used in the work keptheflame Will let you todo make more realistic flames and Many more node materiales in future.



Krzysztof blender-man zwolinski.

I have work with 3d softwares for almost 10 years. I startedd out on AutoCAD then moved todo 3ds Max. Throughout this time i worked on Many programas but found Blender todo be the best of them. I currently study journalism with specialization on cybermedía and electronical commúnication. In my free time i work as 3d graphic freelancer.