Week 5: Lighting - Environment Fog and Fluid Fog

Beware the Fog! (shot above from the movie by John Carpenter by the same name)

Today we learned about fog effects in Maya. Despite the fact I've been playing with 3d fog, it's been sunny every day here in LA. It's nice and I'm not complaining about sunny, non-humid weather, but it gets like the movie Groundhog Day after a while. Well, if you have to be trapped in some endless loop of weather, I guess there are worse scenarios. Anyway, I'm digressing...

So we learned 2 ways of creating fog. I'm sure there are more than 2 ways as it seems in Maya (and 3d in general) there are countless ways to do the same thing. The first way is environment fog and is more of a camera 'effect' as the fog doesn't really 'exist' in the scene in a 3d way, i.e. you cant fly through it. Good for a still image or maybe trying for an illustrative look. Lots of controls for density, decay, color...etc. Too many controls..haha. My shot at it below...

There is also the same effect you can put in a light, as seen in the image above. Like when light rays come in through a window and you can see small particles of dust ('God rays' they call 'em) or a spotlight shining in a smoky room, etc. You know what I mean. I threw one of those in too for good measure.

In this image, I went for a night scene, creepy graveyard, moonlit kind-of-thing. This used the other type of fog they taught us, fluid-based fog. This is part of the dyanmics section of Maya where you can create water, oceans, all kinds of neat stuff. With the right settings, can do fog as well. This type is truly 3d, meaning it exists as 3d particles in the scene so you can fly though it. Much more rendering time though, but the effect is more realistic than the 'environment' one. There are lots of presets which makes creating stuff really fast. I used it to do the moon too. Can do clouds, sun, water, explosions..anything.

I doubt I'll ever see any fog here in L.A. for reference, but that's why God made an internet full of images I guess...