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How can I make a heat distortion effect, like you might see around the exhaust of a jet engine?

gandalf3
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1 Answers1

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Simulation

Unfortunately since it's not yet possible to vary the IOR inside an object, it can't be simulated completely.

However, you can at least use a smoke simulation to distort things based on simulated airflow.

  1. Create a fire simulation where the hot air should be. It doesn't have to be very high resolution:

    enter image description here

  2. Move the domain to an empty layer (e.g. layer 2), then setup a material for it with some random noise:

    enter image description here

    This will result in something like this, which we can use to distort the rest of the scene:

  3. Create a new renderlayer and set it to mask the layer the main scene. Also set the main scene renderlayer to exclude the smoke:

    enter image description here enter image description here

    Note that I set the number of samples taken for the smoke render layer to 1, and disabled the main passes (using only the emission pass).

  4. Then setup the composite nodes:

    enter image description here

Result:

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gandalf3
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    Old tutorial fromblender guru. http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/how-to-create-heat-distortion/#.VFRCLhnD_qA – Vader Nov 01 '14 at 02:16
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    There is also one over at blendercookie. https://cgcookie.com/blender/2014/04/03/creating-heat-distortion-effects-blender/ – iKlsR Nov 01 '14 at 20:37
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    Whoop whoop! Hooray, 100k – p2or Jul 19 '17 at 16:41