Animated Lava Lake with Terranim8or

This tutorial explains how to make, in seven easy steps, an animated lava lake, like that shown in the image.  The lava surface will be a terrain, that can be created with Terranim8or: 1. In Terranim8or, click Terrain -> Build..., and make a fractal terrain with a lot of small and medium bumps. I've used the settings from the image below (left). Notice the "-3" for "Levels", which means to have the lowest three bump levels. On the "File Output" tab, check "Front Mapping". Export the terrain as "lava0.an8" (see the image below -right) 2. The key for the lava appearance is Bob_I_Ts' "landscape shader" technique, which we are going to use.

Make a file material like mine (image below - left):  Notice that I've used only the emissive component, with a texture. This texture is a gradient image with the lava colors (see how tiny it is? ).

Apply the material. On most graphics cards the emissive texture won't show up in the work space and the color seems to be black. Make a render preview: voila, there is the lava! (image below). Save the file (very important)!

3. Now, let's animate it! We suppose that the lava has only very slight movements, there's no danger of eruption. We are going to make a new terrain, slightly different from the initial one:
In Terranim8or click Object -> Import and select "lava0.an8" to be imported. Then click Object -> Add Noise Modifier..., set for Max. noise X and Max. noise Z a value around 3.5, for Max. noise Y only 0.5 (we don't want too much height variation). Hit OK, then Object -> Export and export the distorted terrain as "lava1.an8". Optionally, repeat the last steps importing "lava1.an8" this time, apply noise and export as "lava2.an8".

4. We animate the lava, morphing between "lava0" and "lava1" (... "lava2"):
In Terranim8or click Object -> Import and select "lava0.an8" to be imported. Click Object -> Morph Object... and specify 0 and 23 as starting and ending frames. Hit Import Target button and select the file "lava1.an8". Specify a file name for the morphing animation (ex. "lavalake.an8"). 

5. In Anim8or open "lavalake.an8" and save the file! Optionally, repeat the morphing between "lava1" and "lava2", setting 24 and 47 as starting / ending frames, adding the animation to the same file ("lavalake.an8") which contains the first morphing sequence. 6. Now, that we have the lava animated, let's add some flames!  In terranim8or click Add To Project... -> Fire... and create a fire effect like in the image on the left.  Hit OK and select the file "lavalake.an8" to receive the fire.  7. In Anim8or open "lavalake.an8" and in scene mode (other than Camera View) locate "TAN8target". Do a simple time-track animation moving "TAN8target" under the lava lake to a desired position, do key frame, move forward on the time line, show the fire (move "TAN8target" above the lava plane), key frame again, move on the time line, immerse the fire under the lava, key frame, move the fire to other position under the lava, etc.

That's all to learn from this tutorial. You know how to create a "container" for the lava (a volcano crater, for example), add a background and render an animation like this lava.avi. 

Have fun!
Leslie  www.biederman.net/leslie