Making steam

[anon_41040217]

Has any one every made a good use of particles for steam as if it were coming from a cup of tea? I have made particles work nicely with fire, but my steam is always moving too fast and just doesn’t look correct. If any one has a tutorial I could watch, that would be ideal.

[anon_24608679]

I will try! I am making it now, I will reply when I have finished.

[anon_24608679]

Will this do?

I did try my best.

497453–17546–$steam.unitypackage (163 KB)

[anon_41040217]

Hey there thanks for this, I reduced the max energy slightly and shrunk the emmiter and slowed the spawn rate so it suits nicely. cheers

[anon_41564796]

Steam from a cup? No particles needed

1. Draw a few white loose squiggly lines on a tall thin black texture, blur and smudge them, make sure both top and bottom is seamless

2. Create a gradient where the bottom is 25% and the top is 100% transparent

3. Add a single polygon above the cup (make it face the camera always)

4. Scroll the UV of the squiggly lines texture slowly upwards, and using the gradient to have it appear to fade to nothing further up from the cup.

Doesn’t work for moving cups, but you’ll rarely see steam very well from a moving cup of tea.

[anon_24608679]

@anon_41040217

Hey there thanks for this, I reduced the max energy slightly and shrunk the emmiter and slowed the spawn rate so it suits nicely. cheers

Thank you so much! I am not a unity pro so I’m glad it worked out for you.

@Frank Oz

Steam from a cup? No particles needed

1. Draw a few white loose squiggly lines on a tall thin black texture, blur and smudge them, make sure both top and bottom is seamless

2. Create a gradient where the bottom is 25% and the top is 100% transparent

3. Add a single polygon above the cup (make it face the camera always)

4. Scroll the UV of the squiggly lines texture slowly upwards, and using the gradient to have it appear to fade to nothing further up from the cup.

Doesn’t work for moving cups, but you’ll rarely see steam very well from a moving cup of tea.

That could work too, but I think particles are easier for beginners. Some people don’t even know what the UV is.

[Cameron_SM]

particles is going to be a lot slower than an alpha billboard with UV animation.

[anon_41040217]

Any idea what the code would be to translate the UV’s ?

[anon_41040217]

…I just realised you meant animating it before hand in 3Dmax, both ways seem to produce good results actually. Thanks everyone!

[anon_41564796]

@anon_41040217

…I just realised you meant animating it before hand in 3Dmax, both ways seem to produce good results actually. Thanks everyone!

No I didn’t. Use a scrolling UV script (there’s one in the bootcamp demo IIRC), far less bloated than a whole bunch of textures, then use one of the particle shaders and a facing camera script (though have it only face the camera on one axis or it’ll look weird if looking down on top of it). The texture need only be small and blurry and the overall effect should have little to no difference on cpu load. Set the UV to scroll slowly upwards and it’ll resemble steam from a cup.

I just made a coffee to see, and yep it would look fine, lol.