How to replicate the Emissive Masking parameter in Cycles?

It’s not exactly about Embergen, but I would like to ask and request suggestions on how to replicate “Emissive Masking” in Blender Cycles. From what I understand in the documentation, this parameter is a mask on the fire based on the simulation density, right?

I tried to perform similar combinations with some nodes, but without success.

I achieved some interesting results in tests, but I think this “emissive masking” aspect generates a very good realism for the explosions.

Here is the reference from Embergen and my tests:

Test with the last setup shader with composition:

Can you post a vdb file of a single frame? at the heights of the effect so to speak, so we can test.
I think this is foremost a question for blender users, so could be better to ask on some of those forum, though I am not sure how many are active in the discord channel, I don´t go there.

but I could give it a try.
I think it should be possible, and in the last image you are not that far off.

You can also mix pbr material so you use also the density attribte for shading.
The Map range node can often help with things like thi, and light path nodes.

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Hey Wender, you’ve got some GOREGOUS looking shading there. Unfortunately the emissive masking effect is an in-engine shading application that we do and it does not get transferred to the VDB, so there is no data to call upon in Blender. You’ll have to get creative by using Blenders node shading options in combination with the various VDB passes that are exported from EmberGen.

I’m no Blender Guru but I got some masking success using a Musgrave texture to drive the factor of a Mix Shader node. I am only using 2 colors to show the capability, but this is something that you can experiment with to get a similar emissive masking technique. It’s not as easy as being able to export it directly, but it seems to be the best option. I would love to see your results if you’re willing to share in the future, what you’ve shown here looks really great and I think you could create some really high detail setups. Let me know if you have any other questions!

I don´t think using fractal textures is the proper way, it looks fake, and like it was a render artifact mostly… and will not give a stable effect following the actual fluid motion.
Not even the internal Embergen engine uses any fractal textures to mask of the emission.

using various clamping, map range, gradients, light paths, for the density, or absorbtion, or color or mission and you should get a decent result.
Even curves…can be used.

but it takes a bit of a time to set up per actual fluid VDB file, and they are not all the same sort of :smile:

If we can get the powder effect almost in blender cycles for clouds, so should we be able to adapt to a look of emissive masking…which channels to best work on can be disputed though.

Blender Cycles test rendering of the Free VDB cloud pack - Software Support & Suggestions / EmberGen - JangaFX Software Forum

I would suggest look at how to shading clouds from Samuel Krug, it could give you some ideas on how to work with volumes in general, that should be adaptable to explosion fire emissive masking.

The main VDB file, is it any of the free vdb packages, something own generated or something, just to make sure one would work on the same density channel attributes, flame and so on.

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