Tornadoes are amazing forces of nature. The sheer power and scale of these weather phenomena is staggering. Tornadoes can rotate at speeds of up to 300 mi./hr and measure more than two miles across. They can take a variety of different shapes, ranging from thin, writhing, snake-like vortexes to massive wedge-shaped monsters like the Oklahoma tornado shown above.
For some time I've been trying to figure out how to simulate and render a tornado in Blender. I want to use Blender's integrated smoke simulator to simulate it, because it uses a fluid algorithm, maybe the Navier-Stokes equation, to solve a fluid within a domain. This seems like a more realistic approach than using, say, a particle system with billboard rendering, because you have diffusion within the fluid and realistic vorticity, etc. Another nice thing about the smoke sim is that it can be rendered using Blender's relatively new volume rendering. This means that light can be cast around realistically inside the medium, providing a more authentic effect. One of my first attempts is shown below.
For some time I've been trying to figure out how to simulate and render a tornado in Blender. I want to use Blender's integrated smoke simulator to simulate it, because it uses a fluid algorithm, maybe the Navier-Stokes equation, to solve a fluid within a domain. This seems like a more realistic approach than using, say, a particle system with billboard rendering, because you have diffusion within the fluid and realistic vorticity, etc. Another nice thing about the smoke sim is that it can be rendered using Blender's relatively new volume rendering. This means that light can be cast around realistically inside the medium, providing a more authentic effect. One of my first attempts is shown below.
It's kind of quirky, but it's a start.