Ideas on how to make Northern Lights?

[Lunar Unit]

I'm trying to make pretty multi-colored northern lights for a backdrop behind a logo. I'm playing around with hypervoxels and particles. Any suggestions?

[DMarkwick]

Volumetric spotlights projecting images

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v15/DMarkwick/NorthernLights.jpg

[Silkrooster]

Check out the preset panel for volumetric lights.
Silk

[pdrake]

i just did this. i ended up using painter and photoshop. i didn't need it animated, though.

[Lunar Unit]

Ofcourse! Volumetric lights! I've been on vacation for a bit, gotten a bit rusty. It's all coming back now. I will check on the preset panel! Thanks!

[ingo]

Model them and use gradients for texturing and luminosity.

[objuan]

Volume lights are nice, but S L O W. A couple different planes with extra tall fractal noise and a greyscale mask to soften the edges could give a nice streaky color flow, and render faster.

After Effects might be faster yet and a little more interactive.

[problemchild]

I've done a fair amount with the northern lights. I like to create a poly curtain with sub-ds and morph targets (several actually) and use gradients for the color bands purp-green-red in that order and other gradients for transparancy and luminosity, and then to cap it all off, I use of the morph targets to oscillate the curtain at the sub-frame level and then motion blur and 17-33 passes to turn the razor edged curtain into something more "volumious." Then I hand it to DFX+ and add enough blur to make-up for the passes and animate the gain to fade it in and out as needed. Since the renders are tiem intensive, pays to move the aurora faster than needed and then stretch the time in Fusion. It interpolates very nicely up to at least 1 in 32 frames.

I'll add a pic if I can remember how without spending too much time

if not...

see http://www.gsv3d.com

and nav to gallery/space and space weather

cheers

[problemchild]

Oh yeah, there's an animation there too, under:

http://www.gsv3d.com
anim and video / museums and aquaria.

the attached isn't the best image. The site is better.
The trail in the image is a Tri-methyl-aluminum research rocket release.
fun fun.

hope it all helps.

cheers

[problemchild]

These about sum it up.
took me a sec to find them.

[Mr. Black]

Check out the tut on energy waves
http://www.niklasindustries.com/tutorials/index.php