Northern Lights

How-To
1

Hello,

I understand this has been done a few times before with people creating northern lights effects however I am trying to link two effects together and getting stuck.
It may be my misunderstanding of how these different elements works.

I have one block that is creating a nice particle coloured effect from a sphere, and then another creating the type of light trace I am looking for from cells and Shape 3d.

Is there a way to connect the particle generation I have to emit from the shape 3d texture?

I can uploaded the projects if that may assist.

two notch
two notch1776×520 231 KB

2

Hey There,

You can could use the alpha (or luminance) of the texture to occlude certain areas of the texture from emitting particles, but If you could upload your dfx it would make this much easier to figure out.

I’m not sure how great you’ll do at getting a northern lights look with this technique though, most other Northern Light looks I have seen used a field system.

Thanks,

Ryan

3

Hi Ryan

Thanks for the reply, I will have a look into field systems. it is not something I have looked into to much before.
I have uploaded both notch blocks Notch_NorthernLights.dfx (100.3 KB) NorthernLights_2.dfx (61.8 KB)

4

Hey There,

So we’re kind of looking at two questions here now, so here’s my stab at both :slight_smile:

Emitting Particles From Texture:
EmitParticlesFromTexture.dfx (146.4 KB)
I wasn’t exactly sure about the second layer and how you were imagining they should go together, so I have kinda simplified them so you can see how they work.

Northern Lights From Fields:
NorthernLightsFromFields.dfx (128.0 KB)
Here’s a quick stab I’ve taken at it - it’s not perfect, I’ve seen much better ones versions, but its a start :slight_smile:

Thanks,

Ryan

5

Hi Ryan

Thankyou for you time on this much appreciated!

I was not quite sure on fields but that is a great help.

Thanks

Steve