2d extrusion help

[will]

evening all, was wondering if u could help me to realise an idea ive been thinking of 4 a while, i want to take a complex 2d image such as smoke rising[against flat colour] and kinda make it 3d, stretching it both towards and away, id then like 2 put iot into a blender so i can make a little loop from it,

any ideas??

[Meierhans]

Just smoke, and you got it 3D.
I do also wish to have the empire state building in my room :p

Sorry, just fun, I just can`t imagine you can do that with anything that costs below a several million dollars (if its possible at all)

Smoke! SUUCH a complex thing!! :eek: EEK!

[wellREDman]

you could do it for less but youd trade bucks for time,

coreldraw will extrude a 2d image like you described but you'd have to do it frame by frame
actually corelrave might hang on I'll try it

[wellREDman]

nah sorry rave doesn't have draws extrude function

[videotechno]

if money is no object, i bet adobe after effects + digieffects' delerium's SMOKE plugin would do the trick. bryce does okay with some cloudy stuff, but smoke is a bit more complex...

i'll mess around with a plug i've got called "turbulator" and get back to you if i come up with anything smokey enough.

-rick

[videotechno]

looks like i posted too soon...

just stumbled across http://www.electricfx.com/ and found their "eFX Pyro" smoke/fire plug for AE - it's $195
[as opposed to the $600-ish for delerium].

[will]

cheers for the replies people, unfortunately cash is of a shortage being a student n all, the only programs i have at my disposal are premiere, combustion [ been trying 2 do it in that 4 ages], blender and photoshop; should b getting maya and 3ds max in a week or 2. will it b possible 2 do what i want or anything similar [ perhaps not smoke but something equally transparant and swirly ] with these programs; from ur replies it sounds unlikely but its worth asking i guess

thanks a lot

[fluchtpunkt]

if you just want to make it 'kinda' 3d: take your smokey pic/anim and use it as a bump map (in 3ds max for example). it's easy to do & renders fast.
also 3ds max has a custom combustion-atmospheric-apparatus (in 3d)with which you might be able to achieve what you desire. rendering times tend to be rather long though.
...combining the two might work out, too.

[videotechno]

i messed around a bit with an after effects plugin called turbulator. don't think it has the 3D look you're hoping to get though.

if you want to check out a couple rough prototypes, i uploaded 4 variations of AVIs that i made with that plugin:

http://www.videotechno.com/linkage.html

if any of them are close to what you need, let me know & i can tweak it a bit to suit your needs [esp. if you want to trade footage someday].

-rick

[will]

thankyou so much man, ive only got 2 of them so far [the joys of 56k] but they're kinda what im after, im trying 2 use them as textures in blender; putting them on 2 a 3d object which might with a lot of time might look like sm
oke, then ill just have to animate the 3d smoke so it moves like smoke does, make it a bit see thru and bobs ur uncle, then the camera can spin round it e.t.c. as far as trading clips goes that sounds cool though the stuff im producing is at a rather prehistoric level compared to the crazy stuff going on on ur site [ i took the liberty mate] but one can only improve
anyway thanks lots for the clips and ill post again when i have anything done [probably when 3ds max arrives]

cheers
will

[BagheeraRC]

allright, it's a bit cheap, but it works...put an eyehook in a ceiling, run your favorite tether (i used clothesline- cheap, supports a lot of weight, doesn't really get kinks) from the eyehook to the camera. directly under the eye hook, put a piece of incense. aim a light so it's shining up through the smoke. kill the lights, get the smoke going , and the tether from the ceiling should let you move the camera in a perfect circle around the smoke.

takes a bit of practice to get it right, but once you do, it looks pretty snazzy. only problem for me was finding a camera...

hope this helps
: : ray

[will]

nice one, thanks for the idea, seems a lot less time consuming than all this 3d lark and sounds like it could be fun- my only problem is the same as yours gettin a camera, ill try it if i can do that though,

thanks again
will