This was a demo project researching and understanding smoke and pyro in Houdini. The premise involved a stylized smoke simulation. It followed a path from an existing point, much like a genie from a lamp.
The path is a simple spiral that starts narrow and widens as it rises. While also the vertical rise exponentially slows. We used a force along paths node to make the smoke adhere along the path. This allowed us to create the original smoke sim. Secondly we added forces within the pyro node itself to move the smoke more dynamically along this path.
The forces were to stay stronger along the bottom and loosen as it gets farther along the path. Density decay was lower significantly for the first sim to allow coverage and a thicker smoke. Along with some turbulence and orbiting along the path to get a move purposeful direction for the sim.
A lot of this project involved messing and breaking the pyro simulation. This was mainly to understand the properties and workings of the pyro system. Being able to direct the smoke specifically would allow interesting effects.
The second simulation was added after to more so distract from the extremely thicker smoke. It mainly was to cover the base from the source, while also being more wispy like actual smoke would look. The decay on the second simulation was set to normal with added turbulence and temperature. The second simulation used a weaker form of the force along the path node. This was to prevent it from getting sucked in with the first sim.
Austin Gochenauer 