Massive explosion - how to?
TangoAlpha
Posts: 4,584
Initially I'm thinking about this as a still promo image for a book, but it might be fun to animate it too (although I've never done any animation)
The premise is that we have a small microlight with 2 POB (our hero and heroine) flying away from a massive explosion. The kind of thing we've seen 1000 times on hollywood blockbusters - lots of smoke, lots of flame kind of thing.
I've got assets for the microlight & people. Backdrop could be something like Dartan's Badlands, liberally sprinkled with bits of broken city, but I have no idea how to go about the explosion. So I'd be grateful for any suggestions.
If it gets as far as being animated, it'd be something like a 5 second clip of the aircraft flying out of frame with the actors screaming and the world ending behind. Actually, with DOF, the background might not be too important, particularly if the plane is "whites of their eyes" close.
Here's a mockup, which mostly shows why I'm not a professional artist... ;)
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Hi, Tim !
I know that Steve K uses “Particle Illusion” while me, I use “Combustion” and generally with a base of particles rendered in Carrara.
But you needs a software of compositing (AE, HitFilms…).
If you are interested by animation with Carrara, make a small visit in “Carrarators” !
This kind of effect is best done in post editing such Adobe After Effects, or any other well featured video editor. You could easily do it for stills in Photo editing program such as Photoshop or Gimp. Basically you just find a graphic or video of an explosion that suits and blend it into your Image or video.
If you want to do it in Carrara, then you can use a prop primitive such a flat square or cubes and rotscope the video, or texture it with the image and place it in the scene.
Right, I like Particle Illusion a lot. Its a 2D effects program that overlays any still image or animation, and typically renders close to real time (really). It has a "blockers" feature that allows masking out any part of the image, so it can give a pretty good 3D look, i.e. the effect can be "behind" something in the image. Or you can just layer it in your video editor. There is an After Effects version of PI, but I have not tried it, the standalone version works fine for me.
I used it in this animation, with an explosion at the 0:05 point and another at 5:05:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK39GLUGwWg&list=UUlMEK10oWdfqx6NaNAGJtFA
The latter explosion is probably closer to what you're looking for, although it is set up as though you're looking straight down. All the effects (called "emitters") can be adjusted many ways, including angle, so you can probably get a side view. Or just find another emitter (there are hundreds of free ones) that is closer to what you want. The first one in the video above might work, you could make it much larger, slow it down, double it, etc.
Lots of info on PI here, including a 30 day fully functional free trial:
http://www.wondertouch.com/index_2.asp
carrara's explode modifier is not too bad though it uses only the broken shell of the mesh
I have done an explosion though, exported the mesh as an obj and reimported it into vertex modeler and added thickness to the bits ran a bullet physics sim on the bits.
then toggled the visibility of the two.
together with the fire primitive and some transmapped image series smoke planes could get quite a cool explosion.
(carrara smoke particle way too slow to render but Cripeman did cool stuff using volumetric clouds)
Hi Tim
I found on Mark Bremmer's web page an atom bomb explosion. Its a scene made in carrara7 ....its free and it's here http://www.markbremmer.com/3Bpages/darkarts.html
Pheraps you can start from this...
Render time-wise and PITA factor for setting it up as an animation makes me agree with you nearly 100% for using post production. I will have to disagree with you for a still image though. Using volumetric clouds in conjunction with lights can create very nice fireballs.
Thanks for the comments. The still is the primary result I'm after. An animation would be icing on the cake, but it's not worth investing in expensive video tools just for that.
Pimpy, I'll check out Mark Bremner's site - that mushroom cloud looks impressive.
EP, that's the kid of thing I'm after (although minus the machine gun leg - how does she manage to stay upright?!)
Steve, nice video, especially the tailslide at the end!
Thanks, Carrara's "Camera: Set Position to ..." helped make it fairly seamless, switching from a camera parented to the plane to a fixed camera.
something like this ? Carrar -no post process - volumetric cloud
I ADDED ANOTHER PICTURE -THIS ONE HAS A FIRE PRIMITIVE WITH THE VOLUMETRIC CLOUD AND LARGER RENDER SO YOU CAN SEE IT A LITTLE BETTER.
Ooh! Really cool! Really tiny! Is that from an animation?
This is not from animation and was made many moons ago - I almost forget how but I think it could be animated with patience [ lots of it ] because I animated something similar for a water spray in the ocean -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCtKad_Y2IQ
Yes!!! between your volumetric cloud, and EP's volumetric cloud... It would not have occurred to me to use "clouds" for anything other than, well... clouds!
In my image I had lights placed within the cloud. I'll see if I can find the scene and post the settings for it.
Lights are good for helping the effect you want - in my above renders ( new one just added) I used the cloud colour controls - brightness and contrast make big differences.
Lights are good for helping the effect you want - in my above renders ( new one just added) I used the cloud colour controls - brightness and contrast make big differences.
Absolutely! I changed my cloud colors as well as the other parameters you mentioned. I believe I also adjusted the silver lining.
Although the conversion to a tiny GIF took away most of its splender (like, nearly all of its splendor!), I did this one with volumetric clouds and lights. Afterwards I added a lens flare effect to make the explosion, itself, more bright and somewhat damaging to the view, which worked out MUCH better in the full-size animation.
Ya' know, you do have a youtube channel, right? I've seen it! ;-P
Impressive even in 256 web safe colors!
Impressive, and very much the kind of thing I hope to achieve :)
...and here's a raw render using particles.
After watching a lot of Star Wars and then also their animated series; The Clone Wars, I've been seeing a lot of explosions being made using particles. The developer of Howler (Project Dogwaffle Pro) is currently working on a Cloud Creator, which I believe uses particles.
Again, yucky GIF resolution, but the gist is there:
Aside from the obvious Carrara Fire primitives, all other smoke and explosion effects in this image were done using particles, just to show how particle use is not just for animations, as this one was made as a still image:
classic work Dart, you done good :)
OMG Dart that is just AWESOME!!!!!
Thanks!
I've been experimenting, since action adventures always have the need for things to blow up or catch fire! ;)
Oh... right,
the particles idea uses very much the same thing that Phil Wilkes gives as an assignment in the later chapters of Advanced Training course, which also has a lot more tips and tricks to learn from. Before purchasing the thing, $99 seems a bit costly. After buying it, it becomes obvious more and more what an outstanding great deal it is! Not only does he teach us how to do it from scratch, but each exercise also comes with the work that he's completed as we watch, so you end up with a lot of content. The lesson I'm referring to teaches how to ue particles to create the fire which turns to smoke coming out of a rocket engine. But the emitter that comes as content can then be used for all manner of projects - then just simply change a few parameters around. He goes through the whole particles system, so it's pretty easy to understand. And that lesson is one of the shorter ones in the course. But it's fun to watch it here and there for inspiration and advice on the parameters and such.
Yes, very nice, the camera bounce adds a lot. For some reason, it reminds me of a favorite series, "Firefly", which has some nice space ship CGI scenes, including at VERY low altitudes.
P.S. That's Kibaretto's "Vanguard" ship, right? For those who may not be familiar, its a great model, with lots of flexibility and very nice interior features. And its on sale currently for $14.
...and if you notice, the front end of the ship breaks loose upon impact with the ground, and then rocks back with gravity as it lifts again, etc.,
Kibarreto did a great job of designing the ship allowing such action.
Thanks, Steve!
It's an honor for me that this reminds you of one of my favorite TV Shows ever!
I had a bit of a tutorial around here, somewhere, regarding making explosions with V-Clouds in Carrara. Not sure if it was in "Post your Renders: Yet More Hope" or one of the Carrara Challenges, or both.
Basically, I adjust the Density to break up the cloud along with Sharpness and scale modifier to get the right shape. Silver Lining, Opacity and the Color Chit then get animated or adjusted for a still to get the right effect using a light or lights to further create the right contrast, color and brightness. It's really neat how the adjustment between light and cloud color can create many, many various effects for many situations.
I don't really want to repeat Phil's great tutorial... but for those whom may have it, I use vastly less particles per second to assist in render speed, then make each particle larger - using my own painting for the shader's alpha. I also can never resist playing around with the color gradient in his shader. For those whom might not have the Advanced Carrara Techniques, but want to learn some really cool tricks about modeling, UV Mapping, making shaders from scratch, making clothes for characters, 3d painting, several ways of displacement, and a lot of great, useful advice to increase your workflow in Carrara, I strongly recommend the course. I'm serious when I say that it contains vastly more value than it's full retail cost. I still watch the chapters for inspiration and entertainment. I also added the Working Files folder to my "My Objects" browser so that I can load his work either as examples, for portions, or assistance with starting something entirely unique. I buy Ringo's, GKDantas, Magaremoto, Mmoir, 3DLust, Dimension Theory, and Howie Farkes (among others) sets for the same reasons. I learn a lot from these Masters of Carrara. Tim Payne's entire Skies series is invaluable for learning as well as acquiring all of those great presets.
EvilProducer has an amazing freebie product: "Fantasy Village" which also has some excellent presets to both use and to learn from.