This is a meteor that I made in blender
Just my opinion, but the smoke trail is much to short. It looks like a burning football. 
I would add
- more smoke
- less fire
- longer smoke trail
Like these
[ATTACH=CONFIG]223424[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]223425[/ATTACH]
Hmm looks interesting
remember that a meteor is traveling very fast, doesn’t have time to burn to much 
The burning is because of the atmosphere but the coldness for the air cools the meteor off at the same time.
Cheers
ah so thats why it has lots of smoke
I think people focus on, does it look real, to much. Even if it is for a movie it is not always required to look real or follow the laws of physics. It just needs to look cool. For Animations it is never required to look real or follow the laws of physics. This could be a good close up with camera following object. Good footage of a real comet may be to boring.
When a meteor enters the atmosphere, the reason it burns up is not friction, but compression. The air in front of the object is compressed by the passage of the meteor pushing a wave of air in front of it. When a gas compresses, its temperature rises. That air hits over 1600 C, which is way past the melting point of iron. It’s hot enough to vaporize the material and ionize both the gas coming off the meteor and the atmosphere pushing past it. It’s not smoke or flame trailing behind a meteor, but ionized gas. There is some smoky particulate matter trailing behind it, but it dissipates fast. The bright streak is ionized gas.
So what the heck does all this mean in Blender? To get the look right you’ll need much, much less turbulence. It’s not a burning log, it’s hot gas traveling at an incredible speed. It should leave a long trail of thin smoke, also with low turbulence, which fades quickly (so a short life on those particles). It should have a bright, non-flamey-looking glow around it that leaves a long streak that persists a little bit more than the smoke before fading as the gas expands and cools. That glow should also precede the meteor like a small leading shock wave; that’s the atmosphere superheating under compression. I think this can all still be done with Blender’s smoke simulator, but don’t treat it exactly like either flame or smoke. It is neither, and so both of those approaches will look wrong.
Bla bla bal …Is it in the atmosphere? Sounds like charlie Browns school teacher.
I agree and disagree. You are right, it doesn’t have to look real. But if the meteor looks more like a burning football, people will identify it as a burning football and not as a meteor.
That’s where realism helps. Looking at photos of real things can help getting the charasteristics right, which help the viewer to identify something as the thing it represents.
Please refrain from being offensive.
- TheAlmightyF
My approach to realism in CG is this: if you’re modeling something that exists in the real world, mimic it properly. You don’t have to create something that’s photorealistic; in fact sometimes it’s best to do something much more stylized than that. In order to do so, you need to understand the real thing. Think of face topology for human characters. It can be an immensely distorted cartoon face, but there are some basic rules of topology that will make it move in a way that properly mimics human musculature. Deviate too far from that basic set of common edge loops and your model will fail under audience scrutiny. It’s the same with this meteor. If your goal is “just make something that looks cool,” then sure, do whatever flaming football thing you like. If your goal is “Meteor falling from the sky,” you should probably apply some understanding of how meteors work, even if your result is ultimately stylized and punched up for excitement value.
And even the most stylized animations follow the rules of physics. I don’t know where you get the idea that they don’t. A walk cycle for anything, even something as fantastic as a squid-unicorn from Planet X, needs to show that the creature has weight. An explosion is a physical phenomenon that needs to be mimicked realistically. I’m trying to think of something that would not benefit from some kind of reference back to rules of physics on some basic level, and I’m coming up blank.
And yeah, “Bla bla bal …Is it in the atmosphere? Sounds like charlie Browns school teacher.” is not a constructive way to have a conversation.
Thank you everyone for your inputs!!! I think if you are going for a realistic looking meteor than thats how you will make your meteor (and especially if you want to try to create something representing a creation of God then you would want to represent it well bu man cant make things perfect like God) but if you want to make a stylized meteor then you will make a original meteor!! any way thanks a bunch!!!
Im just trying to say it takes you a lot words to say so little and I really can’t endure it all. And one more time for the slow ones. Then Ill get out and stay out of the thread. sorry to be so bad. ( I was told I do not play well with other children) Why in the world would you think he wants a meteor so different then the one he posted?
Ok now listen, As I am writing this I am thinking of a tune/music 1/4 c 1/8 b 1/4 c 1/8 b 1 a ( maybe?) bla bla bla bla bla. No first parts a little fast.
I really do not want to hurt any feelings. I just think so many critique come with so little thought (i do it to) I never read things like qualifying questions.
Why in the world would I think that someone who posts their work on this forum would be interested in honest constructive criticism and advice? Gee, I have no idea, maybe because that’s what people do on an art forum. Also, BShep has a lot of good, realistic, non-stylized models and animations in his portfolio, so I presume that even if he’s not taking that approach this time, he might be interested in the information anyway.
I’m sorry if my 250 word post was too long for your attention span, but some people do come here to share ideas and figure out different ways of doing things in Blender. Even if you’re not interested in that, other people obviously are. So far you haven’t actually contributed any commentary at all to the discussion of BShep’s animation itself, just some complaints about other people’s comments. If you don’t have anything to say about the meteor animation, why are you even here?
BShep, I do like your animation as it is, but since several people seemed to have an interest in a more realistic simulation I thought I’d chime in on that. Even if you don’t want to use that info, someone else might. With your current setup, it occurs to me that it would look really cool if you put it in an environment relatively close to the ground (maybe show trees or the tops of buildings for scale) and use the fracture tools to make the meteor break up into pieces as it nears the end of its fall.
Awesome ideas! thanks to both of you! (Wanderdragon and Kazinger) I like criticism it helps me… thanks. in this case I would like to make things a little more realistic than stylized. I like to make things look realistic most of the time but every now and then I will create some stylized
Looking back at some of your other videos, I actually liked test #3 the best, as far as the shape and behavior of the trail. If you tweaked the material of that to more of a smoky glow and maybe sped it up a little you’d have something pretty awesome. And I also like the shock wave at the start of #5 and #6.