Rendering inside Fog, dust and clouds using Corona Volume Mtl

[Remi.V]

Hi!
We're working on a scene where we want to add fog, dust and other atmospheric effects using the corona volume mtl as it looks absolutely awesome and gives really nice volumetric effects.

But here is the kind of scenario:
Our scene contains of a sandy landscape made up of dust haze and sand blowing in the wind.
I have found some creative ways to use meshes to function as dust clouds and so on and the all render very nicely when the camera is outside the mesh.
Please see attached example file for illustration.

But what if there was a dust cloud moving towards the camera, making the camera pass through the volume? This is where I'm struggling as once the camera is inside the volume it renders not as I would expect it to look. Please see attached picture for illustration

It's ofc possible to do dust and all the "old fashioned" way with PFlow and camera facing planes but I don't think this renders as nicely and does not give the beautiful volumetric scattering of the light (how could it? as it's all fake).

Maybe someone has encountered a similar issue and knows a work around?

Thanks in advance :)

[romullus]

Boolean? Place a sphere at camera's location and boolean it from dust mesh. You can even animate boolean as long as you won't colapse it to editable mesh.

[Remi.V]

Boolean? Place a sphere at camera's location and boolean it from dust mesh. You can even animate boolean as long as you won't colapse it to editable mesh.

That's actually a great tip and it seems to be working well :) However........ it works great with a static camera but my scene contains a moving camera and linking or Pos. Constraining the mesh to the camera will also move the volume object as they become one with a boolean.... or am I overlooking or doing something wrong maybe?

I tend to avoid using boolean operations as it messes up the meshes wireframes so I don't have too much experience using boolean..

[romullus]

Unfortunatelly, can't help you here - me too have very little experience with animated booleans.

[Remi.V]

Unfortunatelly, can't help you here - me too have very little experience with animated booleans.

Thanks for the tip anyway :)

[maru]

There should be no problem with linking the subtracting boolean to the camera and animating it, at least if it inside the fog object. It should not mess the geometry, especially if ProBoolean is used.

[fosski]

This free script from clovis gay is pretty neat.
Let's you animate objects and do non-destructive boolean with ease.