Plane Fire

Dynamics in Maya is similar to a filter in Photoshop; they can often improve a scene but also be very generic and obvious. This was an issue regarding my aeroplane fire as i needed it to be almost constant but still fit in with the world that i have created. Dynamics in my scene, probably would have made as much sense as a red letterbox in the middle of the dessert, so i decided to try out other methods.

Eventually i decided to use simple Nurbs to create the 'shape' of the fire and texture them with a ramp shader to give the effect of simple red, orange, yellow fire (simplicity is not the same as being generic, especial if it fits within my world.) I also gave them a glow and upped the transparency so that they no longer looked like shapes, animating them to become visible and extend, then back to invisible and small. Doing this allowed it to look as if they were firing away from the plane and towards enemy's - it also fits in aesthetically.

Some inspiration for this was the 'lilo and stitch' aesthetic, where they have constant fire however, with the help of Disney, are able to turn what should be something quite threatening into something almost harmless. Obviously i didn't want to go to the full Disney extent for this project as it still needed to be slightly dangerous as we are watching through Burt's imagination but if you look at a short lilo and stitch snapshot (taken from a youtube clip) I'm sure you will understand my thinking...

Lilo & Stitch
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIg_otb9yY8)

Nurbs shapes
(without effects)

Rendered snap shot
(nothing smoothed, ignore dash lights)

Retaliation fire