| TIPS |
| 1. How To Use HeatHaze The best way to use HeatHaze is to create a HeatHaze object (plain colour, no transparency, no displacement, and HeatHaze as the reflectance shader), which then surrounds a flame object, for example. |
| 2. What Sort Of Objects To Use HeatHaze On HeatHaze is primarily designed to be used on a simple primitive such as a cube, cylinder or sphere (the default settings are such that the effect will fade with the Z axis of the object, and will animate in that direction). |
| 3. Using Planes HeatHaze will work on a plane, but you will need to adjust the settings from their default values (the plane has no Z axis, which is what the defaults use!). |
| 4. Render Options Any HeatHaze object will need to be rendered in Single Sided mode. |
| 5. Begin and End Fade Settings If you are using the Object Co-ordinates (recommended, to avoid a “seam” in the effect which can happen when you use UV values), you may need to adjust the Begin Fade and End Fade values, particularly if you stretch the HeatHaze object in any particular direction. For example, if you stretch a cylinder along its Z axis, then you may need to increase the Begin and End Fade values (as the object space may then cover a different range of values; a default primitive has co-ordinates that range from -1 to 1, but these could range from -2 to 2 if the object was stretched, for example). |
| 6. Stretching The Noise In The Direction Of Motion It can be effective to stretch the noise in the direction of motion. This can help convey the impression of movement, with the effect of the noise being stretched along that direction as if “smeared out” by movement in that particular direction. |
| 7. Adding Bump Maps Because it uses refraction, HeatHaze will in fact respond to bump maps (the same as any material with transmission and refraction would). You could add a bump map to add further distortion to the effect if desired. |
| 8. Causing Ripples As The Effect Moves As well as using Frame Change to cause movement in the main direction, adding small values to the other directions can make the effect more realistic. With just one direction of motion, the same pattern of distortion will travel along the object. However, with some movement in the other directions, the pattern will ripple and change as it travels along the object. |
| 9. Finding The Right Settings The HeatHaze Colour shader is provided so that you can quickly test options, in particular noise scale, edge fade, and motion, without the time consuming process of rendering a scene with refraction. The Colour version uses the same processing (the only difference being that the colours always vary from black to white, regardless of distortion strength, in order to keep the effect visible!), so it should allow you to find the settings you need for your scene more quickly. Once you have found settings that are correct, you’ll need to copy these into the HeatHaze reflectance shader (and set the colour shader back to Plain Colour - the results of the colour shader are ignored by HeatHaze, so there’s no point spending any processor time in calculating them!). You’ll probably need to do some fine tuning of the settings still, so a few test renders are recommended before trying a final render. |
| 10. The Strength Of The Effect Bear in mind that HeatHaze uses refraction to achieve its effects. This means that the distance between the HeatHaze object and the background it is distorting will play a part in the strength of the effect (the more distant the background, then the greater it will be distorted; the nearer the background, then the less it will be distorted). |
| 11. Orthagonal Views The effect tends not to work in an orthagonal view. Use a perspective or camera view to see the effect. |
| 12. Background Images Owing to the way that trueSpace works, reflection and transmisison (with or without refraction) do not work with background views. Because of this, if you use a background image, or use a background type such as Clouds or Gradient, then this background will NOT be distorted by the HeatHaze effect. If you paint a background image on a plane, and place the plane to fill the background of the scene (or use a “sky sphere” or similar), then the distortion will work. So long as the image is on an actual trueSpace object, then the distortions can be calculated. |
| TG HeatHaze Intro |
| TG HeatHaze Parameters |
| TG HeatHaze Tips |
| TG HeatHaze FAQ |
| TG HeatHaze Samples |
| TG Pack Index |