Improve Thruster Rendering (Refraction, Distortion, Arbitrary Shapes)

[mike-f1]

Observed behaviour

Thruster exhausts are (...at least IMHO)

• static
• only circular
• based on transparency of materials

Expected behaviour

Thruster could be more cool :)

• dynamic: Here I refer to two things I wish to see be added, a "wobbly" effect on the thruster exhaust geometry to add something could feel like instability of the flame and to a shader like this (https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?319092-A-static-heat-distortion-(spaceship-engine)-in-cycles)

• An extruded volumetric exhaust able to reproduce simple (but cool) shape like an ellipse, a triangle or a rectangle or a trapezoid, like these:

• It could be a step ahead to change the MatrixTransform governing the scale of thruster instead to rely on colors and this could allow "black exhaust"

[bszlrd]

Good idea! That heat ripple effect seems to be not really happening even on afterburner jet engines: Turbine tests F35 I guess the exhaust is so fast, you won't get much of that kind of distortion. And our engines have like 17940 km/s exhaust velocity, so I suspect they won't make much of a heat distortion. Especially in vacuum, where you don't really heat the medium around the exhaust plume. But it could maybe happen inside the atmosphere?

But those engines develop quite nice shock diamonds though.

How would a thing like this work? The modeler would put in the exhaust as a mesh? Would it need a specific kind of UV unwrapping to work or to control it's look? (Like top of the image is the base of the exhaust for exmaple)

[fluffyfreak]

If we're going to discuss thrusters then this dissection of the engines in Homeworld is required reading.

[alugarius]

oolite did a good job with the Thrusters http://www.oolite.org/images/gallery/large/Station.png