Fire effect: two enhancement requests

[Setarcos]

Hi folks,

I have been struggling with two aspects of the current Fire effect in 4.2.2 and am reaching out with a couple enhancement requests on this effect.

I am attempting to use this effect to control a row of candles as pathway lights (each with a single bullet node simulating a flickering flame), and I have been attempting to leverage the Fire effect for this.

The first issue is that the Fire effect doesn't give you adequate control of the effect on single line or single pixel models unless you create a model that is at least 10 pixels high. If you attempt to apply the effect to a single horizontal line of pixels (that is effectively one pixel high) and set the Location parameter to "Bottom", all the pixels are illuminated, but the Height setting has no effect. If you use a model that is >=10 pixels high, the Height setting works to give you control of the amount of flicker at the top of the model where the active pixel is configured. My enhancement ask is that the Height parameter be adjustable into the negative range so that it could be used for the standard single line models (one pixel high) w/o needing to create custom models.

My next ask is that the Fire effect color pallet be made to be adjustable from the Red/Orange/Yellow that currently seems to be the effect default.

I am happy to put these both in as enhancement requests on Github, but wanted to solicit some feedback first.

[JerryPlak]

also like to add this a slower Fire effect or a flickering flame 

[flyinverted]

The fire effect ignores the colors on the color palette.  Use the Hue shift slider to get different colors.  20 will appear GREEN and 60 will appear blue. 

Highly unlikely there will be a fire update for single strand models. You can make a larger model than actual in NC and apply the effect to your single strand to get the flicker as you've suggested.

You can find a fire video and use FFMPEG to capture the frames and play the frames back via the picture effect.
You can use Glediator and Jinx! to capture and playback fire on single strand models and use the Glediator effect in Nutcracker.

You have options!

-Steve

[Setarcos]

Thanks guys,

The Hue Shift slider does give me a little control over the color range. I hadn't tried that one before. It isn't exactly what I am after, but I might be able to make due with it.

I would agree with Jerry that some ability to control the speed or aggressiveness of the flickering would also be handy. Many of of the other effects have a speed slider and this would seem to be a place where we could use one as well.

I'll have to give Glediator/Jinx a try. There are a couple other effects that only these tools seem to be able to support and I need to get comfortable exporting their effects into NC sooner or later.

[JerryPlak]

Setarcos,
to let you know I tried a little test tonight and set up a one pixel flame as a model and use the shimmer effect
and it was able to create a candle type flame with the Flickr.

You might try playing with the shimmer effect see if this works for you, also I tried it with two flames and slightly adjusted the settings for each.

This looks like it will work for me..

[Setarcos]

Thanks Jerry,

Yes Shimmer (with Use All Colors checked) does give a similar effect and lets you pick the blend of colors, but it doesn't seem to actually mix any of the colors, so you need to pick your palette carefully. I still prefer the Fire effect over Shimmer as far as a realistic candle flame goes. Thus far I am liking the following combination the best:

layer 1: Fire with Layer Blending 1 reveals 2
layer 2: On, pallet blue, start/end intensity 15%

This somewhat looks like the wind is almost blowing the candle fire out instead of going black entirely. My wife thinks the fire is still too red most of the time, but I haven't found a good way to deal with that yet.