Incense Stick

I was suppose to go on a solo ride on Saturday early morning. All things were planned. But When the alarm rang, I felt like not going. And in the morning when I opened YouTube, there was a tutorial video of Arvid Schneider in which he rendered an image sequence of incense stick burning and smoke coming out. Boom!!! I wanted to create a scene with an incense stick. Not only it is related to my culture but also I wanted to try the FX simulation of smoke. I have never tried any kind of FX simulations before. Also I planned it to finish in one day. First thing was to try the smoke FX by looking at tutorials on YouTube. I tried first with Maya fluids but was not coming good. Then I tried with Bifrost and it felt easy. So I continued doing some tests in the Bifrost. At the end there was a problem with Arnold and Bifrost. I was using Maya 2018 and Arnold was not supporting Bifrost, I was facing some error. So then I updated to Maya 2020 and it was coming smooth. Half of my day went in all that process. After that I started checking for reference, collected a references for incense sticks and its stand. Downloaded a free budha model from CGTrader. Rest of the props were modelled by me. As usual I did the texturing and shading procedurally. Lighting is an HDRI and an area light. I wanted the light to becoming from top because I thought it will give the smoke a better feel. Did the compositing in nuke. Overall the process took less than 16 hours apart from the rendering time.

Also I am giving away my maya scene for free. You can download the scene here :- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A-yov5ORGe6UTX28jGqny0frleFmuAfI/view?usp=sharing

I haven't included the Buddha model in the maya scene, but I have put a cube with all of its transform values and materials. Download the model from CgTrader and assign the values on it after importing.

Get the Buddha model here:- https://www.cgtrader.com/free-3d-models/architectural/decoration/buddha-e1a2eb8c-3723-4dbd-937a-dff5b8d3c5ce

HDRI:- https://hdrihaven.com/hdri/?c=indoor&h=lapa

All the links are also included in a text file with the maya scene!! Enjoy!!