Subject: Re: fire trails a-la back to the future: any ideas?
From: David Warner <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 04:50:58 -0800

On Sun, 25 Feb 1996, Mike Harlock wrote:

> I should have been more specific.     the fire texture itself...is there
> something about there that resembles this or should I go set something
> on fire and videotape it and use it as an imagemap?
> 
> I've been playing with fractal noise and not having much luck...it's great
> for making a single flame (Leo Martin's surface pro has great examples of this)
> but not long strips of burning flames.

Hmmm...at the risk of tooting my own horn, I think the Procedural Fire 
tutorial I did for Lightspeed issue #4 (Oct 1995) delivered some decent 
fire effects without any digitized footage whatsoever.

The basics of this effect are to draw a flame-shaped polygon, triple and 
subdivide it a good bit, and then just apply a whole mess of Fractal Noise
and Fractal Bump textures...apply Displacement Mapping, Color Mapping, 
Luminosity, Diffusity, and some Transparency textures that all use 
falloff and velocity.

The Displacement Map will make the flames jump around in non-repeating
patterns and the surface settings will also provide some very randomized 
results...there's way too much to explain here and my brain is screaming 
for some sleep so all I can say is check out issue #4 of Lightspeed if you 
want see a whole tutorial on it with the fully animated results next to 
a digitized fire example.

                                     -David Warner
                                      [email-masked]
                                      http://www.albany.net/~dwarner