Scouting

Do you remember sitting around a campfire, poking marshmallows on the end of sticks into the fire, watching some of them come out totally burnt and charcoal, and the others perfectly brown on the outside and wonderfully gooey on the inside. Singing songs together and wondering if the birds in the trees are saying "Keep it down will you! We are trying to sleep up here!" Listening to scary stories, then going to bed and hearing strange noises outside the tent, imagining all sorts of creatures walking within fang distance. Waking up wondering where that stone came from that is digging into your back.

Blender has a particle system, and I am just starting to learn how to use it. The three logs in the following 8 second video are covered with a surface that emits random particles, colored red and yellow, that start off as nothing, flare into existence, then fade away. Its a very basic scene, with 5 rocky shapes surrounding the fire that you can imagine sitting on, a ground with bit of randomness to it, and a night sky with stars and comets drifting past. It took me a while to get even this far, and the whole effect looks very amateur, but its a start. Hopefully the next one will be better.

S'mores - they are about the same. One is never enough, and you usually think that each one will taste even better than the last. Until your stomach tells you that you had one s'more too many.

Click to see video