Explosions January 14, 2009 cliffski I’m trying to get better explosions today. So far I’ve achieved sod all. The topis the sample explosion from Star Wars:Revenge of the Sith. On the bottom is my current attempt. It’ll get better…
Looks almost like the original. Add some blur and put more random stuff in the center, and its the same.
Nice! I agree with psycho that it could do with a bit more blurring though, especially in the centre. Of course it depends on what style you’re going for, as it is now, it would work really well if you had a chalk drawing or watercolour painting style for everything. That’s what it puts me in mind of for that one screenie anyway ;-) Iain
Using additive blending will get you these very saturated colors and high contrasts whereas the star wars explosion has more toned-down, smoke-y colours and a relatively low contrast. The low contrast is (unintuitively) more realistic. You might want check this stop-motion footage of a REAL explosion: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=d_urLWPrONI Note that flames are bright only at the very beginning of the explosion. They quickly fade away and are being obscured by smoke and debris. It’s a quick flash followed by a cloud of smoke. It makes sense if you thing about what an explosion is: overpressure created by sudden, rapid combustion. (Also, I just love that visible Shockwave traveling through the air – obviously not a concern in space) Another thing is that your explosion looks very flat whereas the star wars explosion looks like it has volume. They achieved it by having a more darker area in the lower right corner of the flame ball.
I’m still pleased with the Star Monkey explosions, 8-year-old tech though they are. The debris trails have bright, additive-blended, short-lived particles at their head, trailing dark smoky longer-lived particles as they go. I assume you’re rendering everything into an offscreen buffer and running a post pass to warp and ripple everything in screen space, hm?
