Creating/Animating Explosions

I've combed the web, read every tutorial I could, asked around, and have had very little luck getting any kind of substantial answer to a very simple question:

How do I create and animate an explosion in Strata3DPro 3.x?

I don't want to just recolor and reuse ATMOS's explosions from Nova.

If no-one can come up with a simple, step-by-step guide or tutorial on how I can do this myself, I would greatly appreciate it if anyone stepped up to the plate and offered to make explosions for SFA, because I'll be damned if I can figure out how to do this properly on my own.

UncleTwitchy, on Apr 15 2005, 08:50 PM, said:

I've combed the web, read every tutorial I could, asked around, and have had very little luck getting any kind of substantial answer to a very simple question:

How do I create and animate an explosion in Strata3DPro 3.x?

I don't want to just recolor and reuse ATMOS's explosions from Nova.

If no-one can come up with a simple, step-by-step guide or tutorial on how I can do this myself, I would greatly appreciate it if anyone stepped up to the plate and offered to make explosions for SFA, because I'll be damned if I can figure out how to do this properly on my own.
View Post

Sorry, tried to attach and S3d Pro file and it didn't work.

If it had worked, it would have given you a momentary glow ball followed by an expanding then fading flash and loads of debris rushing out, illuminated from the original explosion which by that point has faded.

I animate the flare effect for the glow and the flash, and use the particle fountain for the debris. The maximum extent of the flash is the central half of the image, to make enough space for the particles.

If you fade the light which illuminates the debris, it avoids the feeling at the end of the animation that the debris has just vanished into space.

Hope that helps.

Email me if you want the file.

I would very much and will be e-mailing you about sending me the file -- at the very least, it should give me an idea of how to go about setting something like this up so I can make my own.

Of course, it might also be helpful to future forum members to give a step by step "how to" process as well -- if you find the idea tedious or too time-consuming, I may do so after checking out what you send me, and then post it here.

UncleTwitchy, on Apr 15 2005, 09:54 PM, said:

I would very much and will be e-mailing you about sending me the file -- at the very least, it should give me an idea of how to go about setting something like this up so I can make my own.

Of course, it might also be helpful to future forum members to give a step by step "how to" process as well -- if you find the idea tedious or too time-consuming, I may do so after checking out what you send me, and then post it here.
View Post

Hopefully should have reached you by now - the S3d file and the movie.

Martin Turner, on Apr 15 2005, 10:51 PM, said:

Hopefully should have reached you by now - the S3d file and the movie.
View Post

Well, folks, I have Martin's files, and unfortunately, because you cannot look at effects settings at various keyframes -- only the overall setting -- I'm basically back to square one and still have no idea how this works.

sigh

But thank you for the files, Martin -- at least they give me something to look at.

Having no Strata experience it´s difficult to give advice.

But what tools(which can be used to create explosion) do Strata have.

Emitters or other particle systems?
Visible light with or without noise?
Volumetric light with or without noise?
Explosion deformer?
Can you have animated textures on objects?

Can you animate all of these?

By the way, these are C4D names, but they should be mostly the same.

I usually use a noisy lightsource which starts out pretty bright, then as it expands gets a little brighter, and then fades out. It gets bigger all the time.

For debris i use the explosion deformer or an emitter.

Therre are many other ways to do this though.

The problem is not in the theory, which I understand (in principal -- that is, I know what I need to do), the problem comes with the execution -- what Strata's specific settings do and my lack of understanding how to change them to get the effect I want. Martin sent me exactly what I need and I can't use it because he's already using it for FH2. My attempts at modifying his file results in unusable sludge.

So. What I need is either a step-by-step, number-by-number-in-the-variable-fields tutorial, or someone who can make me explosions that look like the ones in Star Trek that I can use for SFA. Since I am, in this case, a complete and utter moron.

I appreciate all the help, folks.

This post has been edited by UncleTwitchy : 16 April 2005 - 07:40 AM