Totally badass explosion :D

[JordanD]

Something i've been working on for a good 20 minutes now!

Badass explosion

Thoughts, comments, critiques, reviews, criticisms, harsh words of wisdom or tips?

[RedHarvest]

that is very very smooth mate! nice work! - the word "poof" comes to mind haha

[HizuPlague]

Damn, that is one badass explosion.

[ZuluCS]

That is pretty bad-ass. I'm interested as to how it's put together. I can never get explosion/smoke animations to look like that.

[Magical-Arts]

Hello manpatch, very rad explosion you have got there :D
If I were to give you some cc I think you might wanna do 2 things:
first I think you need alittle more diversity in the diffrent motion of the flames, I'm mostly thinking about the ones at the top, they are great but I think the distance wich they disapear at might be too even (in my opinion :))
Also I think you might wanna add some smoke 'spikes' flying out of the explosion from the debri (Hit me up on MSN if you want an example if you dunno what I mean)
Otherwise very good job, great balance in the colors etc :)

[JordanD]

At 5/12/10 10:47 AM, Magical-Arts wrote: Hello manpatch, very rad explosion you have got there :D
If I were to give you some cc I think you might wanna do 2 things:
first I think you need alittle more diversity in the diffrent motion of the flames, I'm mostly thinking about the ones at the top, they are great but I think the distance wich they disapear at might be too even (in my opinion :))
Also I think you might wanna add some smoke 'spikes' flying out of the explosion from the debri (Hit me up on MSN if you want an example if you dunno what I mean)
Otherwise very good job, great balance in the colors etc :)

Oh i know exactly what you mean mr. arts, I'll be doing at least 10 unique explosions for this game i'm working on so i will have to diversify with more smoke spikes and more awesome :D

[Sam]

I don't think there's enough of an initial force. It sees like its just smoke and heat at the moment, no actual "explosion", so to speak.

[Starogre]

It's very smooth and well animated technically, however there a couple things that need work on it that I can see right off the bat.

Everything seems to disappear at the same exact time so it looks very static and not dynamic enough.

Everything is in layers. This is fine in some cases but the fire is on the top layer and the smokes are behind it. Everything should be merged as one explosion so either animate everything on the same layer or have multiple layers of fire and multiple layers of smoke overlapping. It looks neat but because everything disappears at the same time and pretty much fades out the same way, it looks kinda flat I guess? I donno.

If it's all animated on the same layer you can more easily have smoke look 3d with fire erupting from within it, rather than putting fire ontop, and smoke behind.

I really like the flashing white rings, it gives it a nice touch.
And like I said it's animated very smoothly, it just looks a bit flat. The fire's animation is nice, but I think if there were more layers to it all it would look even better! Keep up the good work!~

[JordanD]

At 5/12/10 12:48 PM, Sam wrote: I don't think there's enough of an initial force. It sees like its just smoke and heat at the moment, no actual "explosion", so to speak.

I think the BOOM you're looking for comes from the SFX and some camera shaking, i'll hit you up with a demo once the SFX are in (currently in the game the camera shakes and it does help a bunch)

At 5/12/10 01:31 PM, Starogre wrote: It's very smooth and well animated technically, however there a couple things that need work on it that I can see right off the bat.

Everything seems to disappear at the same exact time so it looks very static and not dynamic enough.

Everything is in layers. This is fine in some cases but the fire is on the top layer and the smokes are behind it. Everything should be merged as one explosion so either animate everything on the same layer or have multiple layers of fire and multiple layers of smoke overlapping. It looks neat but because everything disappears at the same time and pretty much fades out the same way, it looks kinda flat I guess? I donno.

If it's all animated on the same layer you can more easily have smoke look 3d with fire erupting from within it, rather than putting fire ontop, and smoke behind.

I really like the flashing white rings, it gives it a nice touch.
And like I said it's animated very smoothly, it just looks a bit flat. The fire's animation is nice, but I think if there were more layers to it all it would look even better! Keep up the good work!~

See this is what i was looking for, lovely thoughts! I noticed the whole layers thing alot in the bomb-explosion i showed you earlier on AIM, in that one the fire merges with the smoke. Then i tried to go technical and do this one in layers, which apparently was a bad idea XD

Yeah i'll be continually be making more and more explosions for this game, so i'll keep posting them and make them as awesome as possible :D (this one's staying as-is but future ones will keep improving i mean)

[Starogre]

It's not bad doing things on layers. It all depends on how you structure your movie and animation. I would suggest watching dan's synj vs horrid 2 a few times. There is a rollover bar near the bottom of the swf that you can scroll through the movie with and pause. You can get a good glimpse at his animation ;P

You can notice from the first explosion, blue dude into huge giant's face, the fire goes fast and the smoke lags behind. The fire and smoke could have easily been on separate layers.

But then if you watch the big smoke ball being thrown at the giant, the explosion looks 3d because the smoke and fire are intertwined with each other. Still, the smoke lags behind a bit and doesn't disappear as fast as the fire.

Also don't be afraid to use different colors in the smoke and fire as the explosion goes on. Light can affect the smoke in odd ways. Don't stick yourself to orange fire, gray smoke. Plenty of colors can look correct to anyone if its animated well.

[JordanD]

At 5/12/10 06:03 PM, Starogre wrote: It's not bad doing things on layers. It all depends on how you structure your movie and animation. I would suggest watching dan's synj vs horrid 2 a few times. There is a rollover bar near the bottom of the swf that you can scroll through the movie with and pause. You can get a good glimpse at his animation ;P

You can notice from the first explosion, blue dude into huge giant's face, the fire goes fast and the smoke lags behind. The fire and smoke could have easily been on separate layers.

But then if you watch the big smoke ball being thrown at the giant, the explosion looks 3d because the smoke and fire are intertwined with each other. Still, the smoke lags behind a bit and doesn't disappear as fast as the fire.

Also don't be afraid to use different colors in the smoke and fire as the explosion goes on. Light can affect the smoke in odd ways. Don't stick yourself to orange fire, gray smoke. Plenty of colors can look correct to anyone if its animated well.

Aghh! I was happy with my own work FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE JON! GOD!!!

Jk but yeah, dan paladin's explosions for dad n me were layered and they really helped me get this far, now im gonna have to re-start my learning experience from scratch!

[Marsume]

Like Starogre said, it is very well animated, very smooth...but...the mechanics of it are off.

Redharvest said the word "poof" comes to mind, and thats what I thought too. But a ninja "poofs", people who spontaneously combust go "poof", and thats exactly what this looks like. I't doesn't feel like a "boom", which is what an explosion should feel like, right? Sure the camera shaking would help, but probably not too much. Anyways, my input...

1. Not enough initial force. It starts off pretty slow for a explosion, then just kinda burns for a second, then everything dissapears at once.

2. Too much fire, not enough smoke. Initially, there should be a huge explosion of force, pushing out the smoke (in sharp smoke...trail things, from debris flying out like mentioned above), then once the smoke clears, whatever debris/ground left should be burning or whatever. (or everything gone even)

3. Smoke and fire are two different things, but they should almost be animated as one...beacuse they are very much so connected. From what it looks like, you have the smoke and fire appearing, at the same time, which is true to reality, but then it disappears at pretty much the same time. You cant have smoke without fire, so shouldn't the fire appear first. burn INTO smoke, then after the fire is out, there should still be some smoke fading off.

Hope that helps, but thats just what I see.
Google "Elemental Magic", its a great book on Animated SFX.

[JordanD]

At 5/12/10 09:17 PM, Marsume wrote:

Hope that helps, but thats just what I see.
Google "Elemental Magic", its a great book on Animated SFX.

Hmmm

\oo/

heh, yeah i like what you're saying, again i'm still really just learning this whole FX thing, so i'm pretty rook at it... on my next explosion i'll play with it more of the whole merging thing :D

[stickdeath332]

AWESOME explosion you got there it will be really good in animating good work!

[Starogre]

At 5/13/10 02:48 AM, JordanD wrote:

At 5/12/10 09:17 PM, Marsume wrote:

Hope that helps, but thats just what I see.
Google "Elemental Magic", its a great book on Animated SFX.

Hmmm

\oo/

heh, yeah i like what you're saying, again i'm still really just learning this whole FX thing, so i'm pretty rook at it... on my next explosion i'll play with it more of the whole merging thing :D

Like I said you are on the right track and it's good for not having done it a lot before. Just telling you the improvements I see that could be applied to it to make it even better.