Hi guys!
Since my smoke simulation presentation at the 2009 Blender Conference, I’ve wanted to put the smoke simulator to the ultimate test. So I’ve spent the last 3 months using it in a production pipeline to see how it would perform in a complex scene.
I chose to visualize New York city after a distasterous earthquake.
Sketches:
As a bonus I’ve also included an Introduction to Smoke Simulation tutorial and Making-Of:
Watch the tutorial in HD!
Nice work! Reminds me of the Fallout 3 trailer 
amazing work.
I just tested the smoke simulator in Blender, but everytime I render, I get just something that looks like normal haloparticles. And the Voxel Data thing doesn´t work eather I think, because when I select it, the menue just shows a black background but no Voxel data texture. Could anybody help me?
The tutorial was in depth, clear and concise. All of the smoke in the animation looked very good, I especially liked the camera mapped shot at the end, it was pretty much television quality and very convincing. The modeling and texturing work on the main building was top notch but I am sorry to say that it didn’t convince on the realism side maybe due to the lighting and material constrictions of the internal renderer, but then you probably would have needed a super computer to do it in vray, lux or indigo.
All in all five star work and one of the most sophisticated efforts I’ve seen tried by an individual on this site. With regards to you talking straight to camera on the tutorial, no probs but maybe not with your bed in the background, it’s a slippery slope:)
What build and OS are you running?
Did you follow the tutorial?
Thanks so much! Your comments are very motivational 
Hahaha. I was hoping that no one would notice that 
Nice tutorial. On the rendering part:
you don’t have to turn density to zero, you can instead put the voxel data to multiply instead of mix.
Really? I’ll have to try that. Thanks for the trick
In my small scale test the results are identical.
Looks really cool! I wonder if you could convert that video tutorial to a pdf with images? I can’t stream video with my connection 
Another thing if you didn’t feel like writing it all up would be to put a .tar.gz with both movies in it somewhere. I’d download that!
I watched this in the morning when I got up, then this afternoon, then tonight.
Gotta say I really really like it!
Just the overall concept of the animation is awesome, the way you focus on the alarm clock and wonder why the numbers look so funny, then realize its upside down, then the damaged room starts to come into focus and smoke etc, you start to wonder whats gone wrong, then you see outside the window, the building shakes and grumbles before collapsing and then you get that amazing revel of the city. :no:
There was a couple of nagging issues for me, like the bedsheat- bad texure and it looked like thin plastic. Also some of the objects at the edge of the room were lacking texture work, some extra crumbling sfx could have been added for stuff falling, the main building which falls and is in camera shot for most of the start could have been better modeled with more details in the texturing and modeling.
The city shot was perfect 
But really none of the things Ive mentioned are really that much of an issue, its a great piece of CGI regardless. Really well executed.
I havent seen the tutorial yet, will have to do so soon.
5 Stars easily 
Well well well… Fancy yourself as the next Roland Emmerich? Hehehe.
I liked this. It was very well done! Directorial suggestion though, I would have allowed “Toy Soldiers” to fade out completely at 00:34 (when the smoke and paper is already at its highest level)… You have a lot of nice ambient noise already going and disappearance of the pop song will then pass into the “change of situation” that the audience discovers.
You can then put in the “uptempo” version of “Toy Soldiers” when you switch to the black field for credits.
But still… GREAT work. How long did it take to render? And do you have shot breakdowns? I think a lot of compositor work went into it yes?
Hey, great tutorial!
I only have the problem that in 3D View my smoke is all black? Currently I am on Xubuntu 64bit, so I am not sure if it is a platform thingy.
Carsten
Very good! My only crit (though I find it hard to even think a way of making this using BL smoke) is that when the building collapses it should affect the smoke around it (make it whirl, change speed etc).
Sorry for my English!
Indeed, it took a looooong time to render. Especially because it was done in passes
Check out the tutorial. It has a making-of in the last 6 minutes:
http://www.blenderguru.com/introduction-to-smoke-simulation/
That’s because you have no lights. Add a point lamp. It doesn’t even need to be on a visible layer. I just keep one on the last layer at all times.
Agreed! I originally wanted this affect but collision objects added HEAPS to the bake times, even if the smoke wasn’t touching it. I think the latest builds have fixed this issue though :o
I tried various different audio cuts. I originally had what you suggest, but it was too much of an interruption to have the eminem music suddenly start blasting so I had to make the markita version slowly buildup to it.
I’ve heard a lot of comments about the bed texture actually. Looking at it now, I can see what you mean. But it’s one of those things you don’t notice while making it. It takes an outsider to point it out
I agree about some of the room lacking textures. But after a month of fiddling with all the settings, I finally decided enough was enough. I had to move on, or I’d never finish it.
I was actually satisifed with the main building, but I think I seriously messed up the lighting. In a few older renders I used a sun lamp and it looked a lot better (here and here). Then some reason I changed it 
There is something really bad with the speed of smoke leaving from those buildings. Buildings seem in the distance and smoke shoots out of them so fast.:eek:
The music choice was fantastic and fit very well. The only problem is how unrealistic some of the textures looked. But it’s just my opinion and it probably took a long time to get what you got, but if you ever get the time to fix some things, work on the bedsheets and a bit on spec of the floor. But all in all, awesome introduction. Now to watch the tutorial.
holy shit thats good! also what kind of system do you have to be able to render all that?
cool! You did it! Congratulations!
I really like the choice of song 
Good work on the actual scene. My only crits are some of the textures are a bit flat (ie. the Bed sheets. Both in a visual sense and their actual position: they wouldn’t be perfectly made after an earthquake that severe.) and I’m doubtful that the electricity supply would still be running and hence power the alarm clock. Picky I know but other than that it is a really good scene to watch…
TC