The last of the Noise parameters; Position Scale!

Noise parameters, part 2:  Noise Strength!

Now, for the Noise Series.  Upres Factor creates a higher resolution grid for the noise, essentially multiplying the domain resolution by the Upres Factor.  Just like cranking up resolution, going crazy with the resolution/upres factor combo platter can quickly swamp your computer!

Dissolve is fairly straightforward--you tell blender what age (in frames) you want the smoke to start dissipating.

For the last of the Gas Parameters--Vorticity!  This one will get out of control if you aren't careful!

Next up in the Gas Parameters section; Heat!  Not the most exciting of parameters, but that just keeps the excitement building that much more, right??

Now, on to the Gas Parameters section!  Buoyancy Density seems simple enough; the less dense something is, it should rise faster through a container of constant density.  How hard could that be?

Resolution always leads me down the Primrose Path.  I find myself thinking that if I just had a little better resolution, I could see what I needed to change.  That quickly leads to running the simulation overnight, waking up to find it didn't do what I wanted, and wasting another day waiting for an overnight run.  The question is always how much resolution is enough?

This is the first in a series of short posts where I examine various parameters of Blender's smoke simulator one at a time, while holding the rest constant.  I started this because I was tired of the amount of time I spent going around the tweaking-simulating-tweaking loop.  I hope this will provide me the background understanding to quickly get close to the look I want before I spend a lot of time on high-resolution simulations that take time to process.