[Stryke 9]

Let's face it, I like blowing up planets.



I'm gonna be out for about a month or so, but when I get back at least a skeleton of my resource page will be ready for upload. However, I'd like it to have some nice pretty pictures, including one of the Earth getting blown up by a giant fusion bomb. I can't get the effect I originally wanted (the program I was going to use didn't support several... rather important aspects of the render, and it's impossible to fake by compositing, etc.), and I'm stuck between two alternative effects:

The Ring of Fire (and lens flare):


The Big-assed Ball of Fire("):


And the Shockwave (which actually comes with the big-ass ball of fire, but I accidentially made the ball of fire too big to see it)


Sorry about the image size, but with the MAX plugin I'm using for the fire effect, even with something this size it takes about as long to render as it would to use the electromagnetic field of my hard disk to assemble a Ferrari out of passing charged dust particles. I'm gonna have to leave the computer rendering for at least two days straignt to get anything like a full-sized render going, since there's also a lot more detail left out.

Nothing about the lighting, lack of clouds in the atmosphere, size of the fireballs, etc. please- I've taken all of that under consideration for the final, and didn't wanna lose time on a draft.

[wEvil]

Big-ass ball of fire all the way.


Take the steps down on the combustion effect or failing that use afterburn and fake most of the other bits with particles, much faster

[Carl]

shockwave 4 3v4r

[Alikchi]

they're all ugly

[Stryke 9]

Since the shockwave's not too hard on my processor, 'ere's a bigger one.

[Nico]

mmh, I'd say the ring of fire, but with already 1/3 of the way made through the planet, with the map altered behind it to show the burnt planet (seems like it on the big pic anyway). and get rid of the lense flare, it doesn't look natural.

[Ace]

Hrmm... if you could do it like movie-grade CGI, I'd have the impact of the bomb more like how the asteroid in a movie like Deep Impact hit.

A tiny little flash at first, with a large distortion ripple arround it and then clouds begin to accumulate and expand as a ring, lots of lightening and tidal waves can be seen.

A large atmospheric shockwave with thunderstorms in it, the actual impact very shadowy and black from dust storms, the clouds and lightning moving arround, and also seeing subtle steam and smoke where the tectonic plates are.

Then the start of an errie glow at the impact point, and then a bright red glow and the whole area cracks like dry dirt with smoking magma in the cracks (keep in mind the still expanding atmosphere shockwave with lightning slowly covering the planet)

[Stryke 9]

I can't get that much detail in, but as far as I can I base my apocalypses on Inconstant Moon (you've never heard of it, but it's more about the sort of thing I'm doing- in this case the sun goes supernova: the ground vaporized directly under the impact point and expands relatively slowly, the effect decreasing through a certain radius; supersonic shockwaves traveling through the upper atmosphere causing gigantic hurricanes of boiling steam which take out the cities, (if I can) flooding, the Moon lights up like a Roman candle, then the whole thing goes as the effect hits the Earth's core and what's left of the planet blows up, taking the moon with it. You'd be suprised at how much CAN be done relatively simply; the problem is getting things like the vaporization and good spins on storms. Oh, and the shockwave is really a ***** to animate- since I'm using Ring Waves I have to apply all sorts of effects and essentially manually control every little detail as it drags across the planet. I can't do the planet actually vaporizing, o I have the explosion instead. Other than that...

[Fineus]

Can yuo show us one without lens flare? Right now I think the big ball 'o fire has the vote but since that lens flare is in the way it's hard to tell exactly. I mean you might not even need a lens flare depending on the weapon causing that planet to blow up

[delta_7890]

Indeed.  Lens flare hurts me eyes.

[beatspete]

Hmmm, intresting.
It really depends what is doing the blowing up, and how fast the shockwave moves.  For example, the big ass fire ball would be used for something like a supernova explosion, whereas the ring of fire would be better for a weapon like that in the film independence day (except bigger).
Personally i prefer the single shockwave, without any fire, it looks more realistic since there wouldnt be enough fuel to sustain the fire in the first and second picture.
Could improve the cracks in the surface too, it just looks like a texture at the moment (which it is...) but perhaps some lave of fire from the cracks?
pete

[Eishtmo]

Isn't there a way you could do both?

[Stryke 9]

Er... nope, yep, and nope.

I'd post something without the lens flare, but at the moment I happen to be a good 2/3rds of a largish continent away from my computer. Just trust me when I say the lens flare isn't covering anything I want seen (some of the cracking effect is a bit dodgy, as is the fire). In a week or so I'll be able to put up a flare-free one, but by that time the final's gonna be underway and I won't have CPU time for it. Besides, the lens flare is the one thing I could get approximating the original plan, so I'm kinda partial to it, if in a smaller form.

I do have glowing red stuff in the cracks (or in separate cracks...) I played around for about two hours previous to rendering the effects and the current cracks look considerably less crapulous than ones that align with the other cracks (for one thing, because they don't go all over the friggin' place and obscure parts of the planet I don't want to look toasted). Once again, I'm going to go over a lot of the stuff and make it a tad more attractive, but I dunno how else to improve the cracks... And explosions are, ideally, going to end up a lot smaller in the final. At the very least, they won't go outside of the atmosphere.

And do you have any idea how ugly the three effects together are? Forget render time involved, it's just... ugly. As all get-out.

[SlipStream]

The ring and big assed both look good. The bigger picture is missing the fire and stuff that the others have.

But good job.

[Shrike]

The cracking is rather unreaslistic IMO.  Partially because there is supposed to be several kilometers of water in the oceans.

[Ulala]

I, personally, like the "ring"  of destruction look of apocolyptic happenings better than just a big bang. But in this case, the big bang looks cooler... just make sure you get it realistic enough to satisfy those who like to see if theres any impossibilities and such, but also make sure you get enough of the cool factor in. However you do this is up to you since I have absolutely no knowledge of rendering anything.. just a couple landscapes in Terragen.
Great work too!

[Stealth]

Originally posted by Alikchi
they're all ugly

lol


I like all of them Stryke

[SlipStream]

Uh hum....
A   where's the water    :lol

[SlipStream]

I guess you guys don't have that smiley.

[Stryke 9]

You mean all the bluish, flat stuff that covers 2/3rds of the planet? I think it's in there, somewhere- you'll have to look hard, to. Somewhere in the bottom leftr corner, if I remember correctly.