15 OCT 2022:
- Growing up, one my favorite arcade games was the shmup RAIDEN. I remember it had some really impressive explosions when you dropped bombs or destroyed enemies. So I really wanted to capture that same feeling with Scrapship. Embergen software can really create some fantastic explosion effects once you start learning how to build nodes properly and what sliders need adjusting. For the explosion in the gif above, I used a "burst" emitter and then played around with . . . a TON of different settings until I got something that looked cool. It's a lot of trial and error . . . but totally worth it!
Some of the Embergen settings -- that you're probably not going to see in many other explosion effects programs -- pertain to temperature and extinction. You can actually adjust the temperature at which flames turn to smoke. This is critical when you're trying to ensure smoke generates in a short timeframe. It's the smoke that also gives the nice contrast to the rest of the explosion. Flames just by themselves look a bit boring. Below are some of the sliders I'm talking about.
- As you can also see, I "destroyed" the battleship in Blender, so that now you can see it broken apart.
- I also made some minor changes to how the battleship is rendered. Instead of rendering a base layer and overlaying the guns, the battleship now has a top half and a bottom half, which makes it easier to swap out which variations (like if a gun gets destroyed).
- Battleship 45 (I call it this because it's the one that faces at a 45 degree angle) is pretty much done. Last thing I need to do before moving onto the others is making sure the guns fire at the right angle because they're still off just enough to be noticeable.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow." -- Plato
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!