Why is it so hard to make digital fire look good?

It drives me nuts as well.

I can sympathize with the writer: they're often paid by the word, and finding/producing good illustrative images and securing the rights to them can easily double or triple their work, with no additional pay.

On the other hand, I have zero sympathy for the editor: it's their job to realize the article needs pictures, and pay the writer extra, or pay someone else, to source them!

I instinctively scanned the article for pictures, but didn‘t find any. I closed the tab after 6 seconds.

> If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the October 23, 2023, issue of New York Magazine

I'm not sure, but maybe the reason is related to the source of this article (and again, a missing license agreement)?

I scrolled over and thought something must be wrong with my browser or the ad-blocker is being too aggressive. Came here to see if people have been discussing any screenshots.

Came here to ask this very question!

Usually, these articles about movies, clothing, art, or geography don’t have a single picture, even though what they are discussing is inherently graphical. I suspect that it’s because people who read these articles don’t care, because they don’t read them to become actually informed, they read them simply to feel smarter.

(Repost of <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349455>)

A related phenomenon is the same kind of article, but full of irrelevant stock images. (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37167492>)

A lot of times you will not do the fire in 3D, but you just in compositing by adding fire from one of your thousand movie libraries. The problem of course is that you can do that and it might even look good if you match the angle, but you will have a hard time lighting the scene probably, and faking all reflections in.

As someone who worked as a camera person I want to emphasize another aspect: Shooting the real thing (fire) is itself not without its challenges. You really need to match light levels well or else you won't even notice fire in the picture. Fire doesn't always burn in visually pleasing ways, and especially outside wind can make or break how it will look.

You’re right the VFX is often rushed and under budgeted. However realistic fire IS really hard and frankly I’m sceptical you can do it yourself on your desktop. On its own on a plain background, maybe. The moment you comp it in to a live plate our uncanny valley spidey senses kick in — to take it beyond “looks good” to “oh, I didn’t notice that was a VFX element” is still REALLY tough in many situations.

> Making a realistic CG fire isn't hard. I can (and do) do it by myself on my home desktop.

Can you really? On the clothing of a human body that's in motion in a strong wind? That accurately illuminates that human and the environment around them? And the fire and illuminated objects are all properly reflected on adjacent shiny surfaces like car window and car hood?

Because that's the scenario presented at the very top of the article. And it does indeed sound dastardly difficult. Or while it's maybe possible with enough painstaking work, it's difficult enough that no movie would ever have a large enough budget for it. (Although I really do wonder if we have accurate enough physics models of the igniting gases to truly realistically show the way licks of flames ignite in a strong wind -- as opposed to a more bog-standard campfire type.)

What do these two lines of assembly from a 30 year old pixel art video game have to do with realistic fire in modern visual effects?

Cool, I didn't know it had been open sourced.

My Fire burn reel - https://youtu.be/3JpNBj3-Xjw

Look at the different movements and interactions I have with the fire and the fire has with itself as I move and spin. Not impossible to replicate digitally, but would require so much painstakingly detailed work that the cost of it outweighs the cost of doing it practical. Budget wise, you have 2 options. Pay for a vfx version that is good but not perfect, or pay for a practical fire burn.

Practical burns come with an added benefit of getting a better performance from your actors - https://www.instagram.com/p/Cy31ycnv300/?img_index=2

The second slide of this series is a very small burn. It would have been easy to do with a light effect and vfx. What you would likely lose is the performer reacting in an authentic way. The head tilt from feeling the warmth. The delicateness of removing the jacket swiftly without touching the fire. All these things get lost when there is not a real fire element to influence it.

Every video these guys make is all about how the people actually doing the cutting edge work don't know what they're doing and these youtube guys know everything. To anyone with actual experience they sound like juniors who have almost no idea what they are talking about when it comes to high end cg.

Pixar/Disney used AI to enhance their latest Elemental characters. They did a technical presentation 2 months ago month at Siggraph: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3587421.3595467

There are videos showing the results with/without the AI detail pass.

You probably need training data of the “superficially looks like realistic fire but the details are wrong” kind, or otherwise you’ll get the “but the fingers are all weird” equivalent of image generation.

If you are talking about W. Friedkin’s Sorcerer I suggest also to watch the original movie it’s a remake of: « Le Salaire de la Peur » by H.G. Clouzot

Excellent movie. Roy Scheider not the best choice of leading man, but still solid.

Quake 2's polygonal fire stands the test of time, I think. Unfortunately they have low animation frame count, but the solidity is satisfying.

https://youtu.be/6vigqSrhjfI

Have you seen Avatar 2? The water is the star.

This was new when I was still in uni, it's at least 10 years old so I sure hope we got better

Or for a more stylized option, Sea of Thieves (video game by Rare)

Why would you want a virtual fireplace?

You are absolutely right, the entire premise is nonsense, but good luck convincing anyone. A blog title assumes it's true, it must be written in stone.