Contest: Most Realistic BLENDER Explosion - April 15th!

[trillian]

I can’t make a new topic in the appropriate forum so I’ll put this here.

Looking at the great advances in the 3d world these days (just watch ReBoot for the 4 seasons, and you can see the progression), and Blender is very advanced, but one thing I believe is lacking is the particle system. Some people will disagree, but if you take a look at Battlestar Galactica, Galaxy Quest, etc. you’ll see that Blender is a bit behind. I see amazing works of modelling, texturing and rendering, but not many people go for explosions and fire effects etc. Lets see what you can come up with.

Explosion
Requirements:
Space setting (no stars though)
Blend file/textures public (released after submissions end, all entries must follow this)
Nothing extraneous (ships, etc… just plain explosion, flying debris is ok though)
Most realistic explosion possible
2 entries maximum

Prize:
Anyone fancy a Palm V? I got one, used but in good condition with serial cradle and charger. Winner will have this shipped to them, free of cost. Please allow up to 2 weeks for shipping of your prize.

Deadline:
Can’t have this go on indefinately, so the deadline will be 12:00PM EST on April 15th. That gives you about two weeks.

Entry Requirements:
Image of your explosion (NO POSTPRO besides adding your name to it…)
Link to Blend file
Notes about it, special settings anything you’d like to add
OPTIONAL: Movie of your video.

Simple Rules:
No stealing of other peoples work. This is just a contest, and when Blends are posted, they are for the community, not to base your entry from. Stealing will be evident when blends are reviewed by judges, so you won’t get away with it anyway. Be creative.

So, have fun and get to work!

Judges:
This will be a community vote I should hope, but I will also butt in to examine the blends and make sure all work is original, and that no postpro has been done.

Tutorial?
Winners and 2nd and 3rd place should be willing to let a tutorial be based on their blends or write a tutorial themselves. I repeat, YOU DON’T HAVE TO WRITE ONE, but you should be willing to let me or someone else write one using your blend and options.

Additional Notes:
This is a learning experience for the entire Blender community. A tutorial will be written about the winners entries and the whole community will learn.

All posted blends for submission must be able, with no modification and using the current Blender release (2.41 and up), to render the result you post. No post production (except for the Sequence editor) can be used.

This contest is going for realism.

Reference Pics:






Images from Galaxy Quest.

Lightwave plugin for amazing effects:
http://www.cantarcan.com/dynamite/index.php
Example mocked up in about 5 minutes. Basic settings, not even at half potential I don’t think:

These rules a subject to change, please take note.

[trillian]

Mods maybe move this or something? I don’t wanna let it drop.

[trillian]

Clock’s Runnin’! Get some placeholders or something c’mon!

[Jace]

That’s some freakin awesome stuff. Does the plugin work for blender? I suppose so… that’s why the link is there.

~JACE~

[trillian]

Plugin is for lightwave only. And for now, Windows only too.

[trillian]

My first play with Dynamite is rendering right now. I’ll put it in the Ref section when it’s done. It took literally 5 minutes to set up the scene in LW and get Dynamite configured right. Rendering is taking quite a bit longer, but it’s amazing!

[NeOmega]

I saw a fanatastic explosion done around here somewhere of a building’s glass window facade being blown out. The fireball looked great, and the shattered glass was awesome too. He said he used softbodies to make the glass shatter.

I can’t remember who it was though.

[Sorth]

i’m a complete n00b, and to be honest, this is like the first fire ive ever made in blender(this is a recent render)… I didnt make this just for this topic… But uhmm. yea. its not bad considering its my first… Im not quite sure how i’d make a trail of smoke yet…

[Genjix]

heres mine
http://www.jyvideo.co.uk/genjix/art/explosion.avi

[Jace]

To be honest, I like the fireball of Sorth’s. It is really good. However, Genjix forgot to put a black background. His explosion really looks out of place on the blue background.

Too bad the plugin doesn’t work for blender! The screenshots on the page are awesome!

~JACE~ [!]

[kirpre]

I’ll give it a shot if I have time this weekend. Interesting idea for a contest.

[Pseudonym]

just found this now, and i whiped somthing up really quick. i hope i don’t win, cuz i looked up the palm V and it dosen’t even have a color screen
where can i upload the blend, pic and movie?

[edit]found imageshack:here

[/edit]

[grimey]

It would be nice if blender had a plug-in like that

[Coalth]

Let’s hope @ndy enters this . I’ve been working on a blend to fake volumetric particles for a while now, I’ll post it when it’s finished.

[Jace]

Yay! Thank you Coalth! No one can really have too much explosions!

~JACE~

[trillian]

Nice that we’re getting some entries in here!

[trillian]

9 more days!

[cekuhnen]

that particle system works together with lightwaves hypervoxels for the textures. those are volumetric particles and they will give you this good effect because they also cast shodows on itself.

but you can get very good results when you use 2d particles with motion blure.

claas

[trillian]

I know, but there needs to be a way to get or to simulate that effect in Blender, and that’s really the challenge of this challenge. Realism is number one though, as long as it animates correctly.

[Pseudonym]

um… if i win, i don’t want the palm.