Trying to make a 2D smoke element have 3D volume.

[Stephen.Pickering]

Hi there, 

I have a 2D smoke element (it's a smoke cloud MOV with alpha) that I would like to have panes of glass intersecting vertically and horizontally.  Normally I would just create the smoke/cloud with something like Nebulosity to have a real volumetric cloud, but the client has a specific smoke clip they want.

Is there a trick to adding voume to a 2D layer?  I thought about layering it each with 20% transparency and off-set just a bit in Z space. Then the glass panes would be more visible in front and slowly fade further back.  But, then I'm getting sharp edges when the pane intersects the smoke layers.  If I could round the layer or bend it that could work, but wonder if there are better ideas out there.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!
-Stephen

[Stephen.Pickering]

I went back to my plan of layering with masks and it ended up working out just fine.

[ShiveringCactus]

If you end up needing to do this for a lot of layers, it might be worth exploring CC Particle World.  This tutorial I made a while back shows how you can fly down a tunnel of particles.  There will be steps you're not interested in, but the same principle applies.

https://youtu.be/0oz62W7LuK8?si=6Zaue16SfysGJyQq

[Stephen.Pickering]

Thank you!

[Mylenium]

You could probably have converted it to some sort of point cloud using e.g. Trapcode Form using the image as the texture for color and opacity.

Mylenium

[Stephen.Pickering]

I knew there was a plugin that could do it.  Unfortunately I don't have Trapcode but I'll think about that the next time this comes up.  Thanks for the suggestion!