heat waves?

DarkElegance

hello

Hopefully someone can give me a few pointers. Its something I have struggled with before and find I am again.

Heat waves. The type that distort the air around hot items or coming off hot ground. How to achieve it in photoshop? or maybe even with in DS it self?

 

Any suggestions?

FirstBastion

There is a filter called "Ripples"  that can be useful for what you need.

DarkElegance

FirstBastion said:

There is a filter called "Ripples"  that can be useful for what you need.

Aye, I did play with that and with an older plug in from eyecandy. But it didnt quite give that heat radiant ripple that just ever so slightly wavers the view around an heat source.

I am wondering if I did a plane with a water ripple displacement and them made it almost completely transparent if it would distort the area....

NorthOf45

DarkElegance said:

FirstBastion said:

There is a filter called "Ripples"  that can be useful for what you need.

Aye, I did play with that and with an older plug in from eyecandy. But it didnt quite give that heat radiant ripple that just ever so slightly wavers the view around an heat source.

I am wondering if I did a plane with a water ripple displacement and them made it almost completely transparent if it would distort the area....

That will do it, but a few things to consider: You need a higher index of refraction to get the distortion, and Thin Walled must be Off. You need thickness to actually bend the light, but anything in view behind the plane will also be distorted, and fore-shortened. The edges of the plane will be visible due to the prism effect, so some careful plannng might be needed. If you could make a thin box (flattened cube) with the displacement in a strategic area, you can cover the field of view without distorting the rest of the scene too much, kind of like a window with a ripple in it. 

DarkElegance

NorthOf45 said:

DarkElegance said:

FirstBastion said:

There is a filter called "Ripples"  that can be useful for what you need.

Aye, I did play with that and with an older plug in from eyecandy. But it didnt quite give that heat radiant ripple that just ever so slightly wavers the view around an heat source.

I am wondering if I did a plane with a water ripple displacement and them made it almost completely transparent if it would distort the area....

That will do it, but a few things to consider: You need a higher index of refraction to get the distortion, and Thin Walled must be Off. You need thickness to actually bend the light, but anything in view behind the plane will also be distorted, and fore-shortened. The edges of the plane will be visible due to the prism effect, so some careful plannng might be needed. If you could make a thin box (flattened cube) with the displacement in a strategic area, you can cover the field of view without distorting the rest of the scene too much, kind of like a window with a ripple in it. 

Oh this sounds like it may work. I am going to try it today as I have the weekend clear! Thank you!!

NorthOf45

Good luck! Hope it works out. I tried a displacement map on a (small) flat cube, and it has the effect, but just making it bigger would also scale the displacement to the entire field of view. You would need to place one tile of the displacement map surrounded by a large black (no displacement) bitmap, so that you could move the "lens" to cover the intended area without reaching the edge. Also note that on a cube primitive, the uv map is a little odd (a 2x3 grid on a square plane). You can see it in UV View if you make a cube with one division, so placement will need to be ...strategic. Your real cube should have more divisions, since displacement in Iray is rather disappointing. You can bump up Displacement SubD to get more resolution after adding a Displacement map and dialing up the level (otherwise it is hidden).