Hi,

I've encountered some issues concerning the otherwise great smoke-fluid-tools. Maybe somebody can help?

First off I'm using a “smoke container” and “source from volume” from the shelves.

One thing is that in general I like using physically based lighting, so also using area lights with inverse-squared attenuation (physically correct). The problem is that the (otherwise incredibly good) viewport preview doesn't take the attenuation into account, so everything is completly blown out. Is there a way to fix this? (of course I can decrease the light intensity for preview and then set it up again for rendering, but that's lots of work.. ).

The other more important issue happens when writing out the voxels: I'm using the “export file” and “background render” option in the Dop I/O in the smoke import node for this. What happens is that from some frame on the .bgos get saved but don't update anymore correctly. So the smoke just stops moving. Maybe this is a RAM issue, as it happens with quite hires sims? But it's kind of strange that the files get written without complaint, but don't get updated anymore. (At first I thought this was happening only with OpenCL enabled, but it also happened with pure CPU computing..)

Well, that's it for now, thanks!

Sounds like a ram issue. Always put your specs up and if you upload the file it can be tested by users with more ram.

You can also simple test with a lower res smoke, then iterate up the detail until it stops working.

BTW the easiest way to check ram usage is the system monitor