Cg Explosion

[Aaron12]

I was watching some behind the scenes stuff on saving private ryan and they said that during the d-day scene there were explosions that would be too dangerous to do in real life so they did it in post production. Then they showed some of the explosions that were cg and they looked extremely real. i was wondering if there was a software that could do something like this and hopefully not too expensive.

[Shaw]

There are a whole lot of factors that go into creating an effect like that not least of which is a fundamental understanding of the physics behind an explosion.

You can try to do this with something as simle as a your editing software or you could go as complex as Shake. I suspect all sorts of tricks were combined to create those effects. Everything from compositing raw explosion footage to using displacement mapping, color work, CG debris and so forth. Heck, the entire explosion might be CG for all I know. To do this well takes professional software with a trained artist. Part of the reason movies cost so much to make. ;)

[GageFX]

http://www.videocopilot.net/action.html

I dont know how easy it is to get good results with this, but Ithink it looks pretty dang good.

-GageFX

[TwistedLincoln]

I've used VisionLab Studio from FXHome (http://www.fxhome.com) with a decent amount of success. It allows for an incredible amount of customization, however it takes forever to tweak things the way you want it if you want very unique effects. There are presets for common things like explosions and muzzle flashes, however.

[maverickstunts]

Try these guys
http://www.detonationfilms.com/missionstatement.htm

[Greggl]

Its all in the details... dont dwel on the shot if you can't sell it... spend that time
on the reaction and get your actors to carry it.

[Matt Grunau]

Its all in the details... dont dwel on the shot if you can't sell it... spend that time
on the reaction and get your actors to carry it.


What he said. Most of the "fake" shots out there aren't fake, their composited.

There are plenty of things you can do with particle systems, dynamics, and othre elements generated, but for the ones that are going to look even decent, let alone good, you are looking at a higher end 3D app in the hands of someone who specializes in the particles and dynamics portions of them. Not something faked easily and something that can be a visual nightmare if not done very well.

And that isn't even taking the compositing aspect into consideration. Pulling off photo realistic explosions is not something the average or even above average persion can do. It takes teams of people.