This page provides a tutorial for compositing Chaos Phoenix Fire and Smoke inside of NUKE.

Overview


This is an Entry Level tutorial which requires no previous knowledge of Phoenix. A basic understanding of 3ds Max would be helpful but is not a prerequisite for being able to follow along.

In this tutorial we will go over splitting the Phoenix Fire and Smoke elements in order to use them in compositing.

As Phoenix has no dedicated Render Elements for Fire and Smoke, we will generate these with some composting magic in NUKE.

 

Download Project Files

 

 

Render Elements Setup


We will need to use V-Ray's Atmosphere and Self-Illumination Render Elements so we will add these in the Render Elements tab.

Note that you need to set the Simulator's Render Mode to Volumetric in order to get the VRayAtmosphere render element.

For more information about the supported Render Elements visit the V-Ray Render Elements Support page.

After rendering the image we will save it as a multichannel EXR so it will be easier to manage.

The Atmosphere Render Element will give you the Smoke + the illumination produced by the Fire.

The Self-Illumination Render Element returns the Fire only.

 

Compositing in Nuke


We import the image in NUKE. Each element is shuffled out and we get the following result.

 


 

Atmosphere Pass

Self-Illumination Pass

 


 

You can directly modify the Fire using the Self-Illumination pass.

To isolate the Smoke, create a Merge node and connect input A to the Atmosphere pass and input B to the Self-Illumination pass.

Set the operation to Minus and the Self-Illumination pass will be subtracted thus leaving us with the illuminated Smoke only.

 


 

You can now Color Correct both the Fire and the Smoke separately for more creative control.

Add a Hue Shift node to both passes and change the Hue rotation to 180 which will give a blue tint to the pass.

 


 

To lower the Fire Intensity, you can add a Grade node in the Self-Illumination chain and reduce the Gain by 0.5.

You can then Merge the Fire back over the Smoke using a Plus operation to get the final result.

 


 

Here is the final image:

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