Explosion Animating!

Today I learnt how to use the bomb explosion effect, along with the fire effect which is outputted alongside the explosion.

Firstly, I selected the space wraps option, and change the option in the drop down menu to Geometric/deformable, this then gave the option so I could draw a bomb, I had to draw the bomb inside my object, which in this case was a meteorite which is going to be blown up in my animation, I placed the bomb exactly inside of my model, this meant that the explosion would be fairly equal, if I placed it partially in the object, only a partial explosion would be output, so positioning was important.

Next I clicked on the ‘Bind to space warp’ which is the second in from the left tool in the top left hand corner, this then allowed me to click on the bomb and drag and attach it to my model.

When I then moved the timeline slider along at the bottom, it made the meteorite explode in to hundreds of pieces, I then went into the modifier tab, and this allowed me to play with the settings, here I could change how big the pieces were, how much they spun in the air, the chaos, which was how ‘crazy’ the explosion is, and so on.

Once I created the desired effect on the explosion, I needed some sort of actual explosion, with fire. To do this, I clicked on create panel, and then selected helpers, I then changed the drop down menu option to atmospheric apparatus, selected SphereGizmo, and then drew the shape slightly bigger than my meteorite model.

From here on I needed to add and create the fire effect, to do this with the SphereGizmo I drew selected, I clicked on the modify option, I then clicked the add button, which then brought up a window where I could select ‘fire effect’ and click ok.

Then back on the right hand side the fire effect should be added to the gizmo, so then I clicked to highlight the fire effect and then clicked on ‘set up’, this brought up a window where the settings for the fire could be generated, in this window the colour of the flame could be changed, along with the colour of the after effect smoke, the size, and the details etc.
At the bottom I selected the radio button which said ‘explosion’  and then click the button ‘setup explosion’ this then allowed me to set the start time of the explosion to correspond with the timing of the meteorite as it blows into pieces.

Once the desired effects and options have been tweaked, the explosion can be rendered, to see the outcome.

I am very pleased with this technique, I found it very straight forward and extremely rewarding, I had previously tried creating the explosion with the previous PAray technique, however did not get the desired effect.
I would have to say that this has probably been my most favourite technique so far in animating, as it is very powerful and looks amazing, I am looking forward to piecing it together with the rest of my animation.