Dust Devil in Houdini

Beauty shot

Breakdown

Rendering settings:

Renderer: Mantra (Physically Based Rendering)

Resolution: 1280 x 720

Pixel Samples: 5 5

Min Ray samples: 3

Max Ray samples: 9

Noise level: 0.01

Global quality: 1

Diffuse Quality: 1

SSS Quality: 1

The image one the side is the setup of pyro source using grid, and using scatter to get points of the grid.

Further using attribute noise changing the attribute type only on 1D in this it was x axis and adjusting the Noise Value based on the preference which cold give output close to the reference.

In Attribute Wrangle:

@density = @Cd.r;

To adjust the color of the pyro, pyro shader material is required to make the adjustment to the to match the background for look development.

In DOP Net:
For simulating the pyro to add the circular force, gasaxisforce node is used in the pyro solver.

This node gives various parameters to fine tune the motion. Such as suction force, Axis force and Orbit force which simulate the forces that are generally occurring during vortex shaped phenomenon in Air medium.

Merging with staticsolver adding the collision of the pyro with the landscape below.

In Volume Rasterize Attributes:

ch("/obj/PyroSource/create_density/particlesep") * ch("/obj/PyroSource/create_density/particlescale") / 4

Which roughly give value of 0.06 in this case.

Image below is a DOP import and caching of the simulation.