#Fire Ball
38 messages in this thread
Can anyone offer any insight into making a fire ball? I want an object to
"spit" a fire ball at the camera. I have Disk #6, but I'm wondering if anyone
else has done anything like this.
Dave Mennenoh
Hi Dave,
<< Fire ball.. >>
I once saw a very good Fire Wall that came down a corridor at the camera. It
was done by the "-G" man himself. Maybe he'll elaborate..
Thanks Jonas, I'll see what -G has to say.
Dave Mennenoh
On the very first 3DS demo reel (the "Bored Room") I did a fireball just by
mapping an animated flic of fire on a morphing ball-shaped object. Worked
pretty well, but I'd add some particles to it now and glow it a bit if I did it
again.
– G
Thanks much Gary, I'll give it a try. You know, I've still yet to see
"The Bored Room." I guess, I've just never seen the very first reel.
Any chance of getting a copy?
Dave Mennenoh
hmmm…. Not from us, but since we gave about 5,000 away at Siggraph
in Dallas in July/1990, I'm sure that _some_ copies still exist. If
you find someone who's got one, you might be able to get them to make
a dupe for ya. It's a collector's item mostly because of the amount
of pathos that Steve Speer (the lead animator) imbued in the
characters.
I have a copy and it's totally excellent. Very humourous, interesting
characters, and certainly nicely done even though it was release 1. I
don't have a 2nd VCR but, depending on its length I may be able to
capture it to my PAR and then record it. Not sure how the quality
would suffer. Let me know, if you're interested. (sorry, this only
applies to David – I don't have much free time these days).
Martin, Hey, what a generous offer. Thankyou very much. I am
interested in it and would appreciate it immensely if you would take
the time to record it for me. I'm sure the PAR method would be good
enough. I'd just love to finally get to see that thing. I am moving
thie coming weekend and I don't know my new address yet, but if you
can still do it I'll email it to you as soon as I know it. Thanks
again Martin.
David,
>> I am moving thie coming weekend and I don't know my new address
yet, but if you can still do it I'll email it to you as soon as I
know it. <<
Ok, dude. Let me know what your address is when you move.
I never got a copy of the Bored Room either, and should probably take
the next opportunity (shouldn't be too long from now) to dupe one
from Martin. I'd be glad to run one off for you at the same time.
I'll be sure and remind him to bring the tape next time he comes down
here. In the meantime, you might send him a blank tape with a SASE to
send it back in.
Thanks much Alan I'll get Martin a tape right away. Like I told him
I'm moving on Saturday and still don't know the actual address. <g>
Nice having a girl to take care of all that stuff, much better at it
than me.
We'll probably have it by the time you are moved, David.
-Alan
I have a copy of it on a shelf at home. I can make a dupe if you like (VHS or
SVHS)
Hi David
I saw your FireBall message and had to try one for myself.
I made one through the following method:
You'll need some of the earlier IPAS routines to use this though.
1. use Disintegrate.axp on a geodesic sphere with no explode evvelope – so it
just sits there and the particles wobble.
2. make an AXP Box and rotate it so that the emmitter points are pointing
backwards. make your sphere no bigger that the area that the emmitter points
fill.
2a. Position the AXP box so that the emmitter points lie at the front of the
fire ball (that way you don't get any space between the ball and the fire.)
3. Link the AXP Box to the GeoSphere in the KF
4. Flame Materials – I used "Red Hot Flame" from the disk6 library.
5. Sphere materials – I used Smoke.sxp for the Texture map – colors bright
orange and yellow, self illumination=100 %, Transparencey Falloff=100 % OUTSIDE
6. Apply a glow filter through the Video Post and you've got a glowing
fireball.
You might want to add multiple flames on the back of the fireball, and play
with the setting of flame-glow-disintegrate-smoke until you get what you want.
I trust this points you in a good direction!
-Kyle
Whoa! I'd like to see that one, Kyle!
– G
Gary, Ask and you shall receive 🙂 I'll upload it in a few. I do
explosions the same basic way, only I let Desintegrate blow up the
particles. It works pretty good.
Very creative. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
Kyle, Thanks much for the detailed explanation. I appreciate it. I'll give your
method a try, though I don't have disintegrate or glow. 🙁 Oh well, sooner or
later…..
Dave Mennenoh
David,
no problem, glad I could help.
How long did your fireball take to render (and what machine did you render it
on?)
Tim,
sorry about getting back to you this late.
I've made a pretty complex fireball that has 5 AXP Flame boxes with 40
emmitters each on top of the disintegrated ball and it's taking about 5 min a
frame at 320×200 on my P90 with 64 megs.
-Kyle
I figured that was going to be a cpu cruncher, but that is a LOT of
crunching. Jeez…
Tim,
well, fire is expensive, but it looks really good.
I sent Gary Yost a preliminary versoin and he went nuts over it. I'll be
uploading a bunch of other stuff (flics and meshes) maybe next week.
-Kyle
Nuts is right! It's the best fireball I've seen yet done with a 3D
system. I'm looking forward to seeing more…
G,
I've got a better one that I did today, but I already see some room for
improvement. You'll see another version soon.
-Kyle
G-
I just uploaded an image of the NEW Fire Ball – it looks about 10 times better
too.
sorry, no flics yet – I've got to get it moving better.
<<Nuts is right!>>
are those cashews or almonds? or maybe just plain unsalted nuts. 🙂
-Kyle
I'll grab it as soon as it's merged, Kyle. Thanks!
– G
G
I did a flic last night of my Fire Ball – I looks pretty awesome. I upload it
soon . . . 🙂
-Kyle
Cool. I will be looking for them.
Now, howabout simulating the Shoemaker-Levy 9 crash? 🙂
>I've made a pretty complex fireball that has 5 AXP Flame boxes with 40
emmitters >each on top of the disintegrated ball and it's taking about 5 min a
frame at >320×200 on my P90 with 64 megs.
Hi Kyle…
I'd like to see the 'Fire Ball" Animation when you're done.
Maybe it would make an interesting "HowTo" for 3D/XP ???????
Let me know what you think
Bye…
-David
David,
<<Maybe it would make an interesting "HowTo" for 3D/XP >>
sure thing, I'll write it up
-Kyle
David,
I think up in the libraries there's still a flc file named fire2.zip. You
could take that into Animator Pro, clip it down a little bit using animcels and
apply that to a cylinder with lots of blur, and like Gary says, glow if you've
got it. Stick that on the end of a sphere. For the sphere, on the CD there's
a flc file of a fire very much like a blast furnace that might make a real good
animated material for your fireball itself. With the right amount of glow and
mixing your materials right, it might look pretty cool.
Roger D.
Roger, Hey, nice to hear from you. Been awhile. Thanks, I downloaded your fire
a long time ago and it may be just what I need. I got lots of suggestions so
I've got some playing to do. I'll let you know how it goes. How have things
been anyway? I hope good. When's the next UG meeting? I'd really like to come
to one of them sometime. Talk to ya later.
Dave Mennenoh
I ended up with a case of insomnia last night. I woke up at 4:00 AM
and couldn't get back to sleep. I took both fire files I mentioned
earlier, worked on them a little, shrunk them down, applied them to a
mesh. I rendered it to the PAR, and it's a pretty good
representation of a fireball. I uploaded it to the forum along with a
sample .fli file. The 3DS and support files are fireba.zip, and the
animation should be firbal.zip. I don't know how long it'll take to
clear. You aren't long distance. You could grab it off my system if
you are interested. Otherwise someone might just need a meteor one
of these days. They'll make a million dollars, and share their
gratitude with me. Nah… I don't think so. Anyway, it's free. The
tail flare elements could use a little cylindrical mapping
adjustment.
Roger, You have a PAR? Come on, after you said how many times you
didn't like it you broke down and got one? I'm glad. I think you made
a great decision. So, do you like it? I hope it make life a lot
eaiser for ya. I'll take a look at your fireball, and I too ended up
making one last night. I used a sphere with smoke applied and flame
attached to it. Actually, it looks quite nice, but still needs a
little tweaking. It needs some more fire coming off of the outer
surface of the ball. Any info on the UG meeting? Talk to ya later….
David,
Is your fireball more IPAS related? You can get some really cool effects that
way. I usually try to accomplish things as conventionally as possible, but a
rotoscoped fire definitely has a different feel. Yeah, there's always a
million ways to do most of this stuff.
Regarding the PAR, I was hoping to do a slightly higher end solution. The PAR
is definitely a milestone, but also has its limitations. It appears to do a
really good job with bright sharp-edged text and logos and things, but the
minute you try to get into a mood type situation with subtle lighting and
darker colors, the compression definitely starts to dimple the heck out of
everything.
The User Group meeting, oh yeah. To be honest with you, I've had a really bad
week, and really haven't had a chance to think about it. The third Thursday
falls on the 17th this month. Is that good for you?
Roger D.
>> Regarding the PAR, I was hoping to do a slightly higher end solution. The
PAR is definitely a milestone, but also has its limitations. It appears to do
a really good job with bright sharp-edged text and logos and things, but the
minute you try to get into a mood type situation with subtle lighting and
darker colors, the compression definitely starts to dimple the heck out of
everything. <<
Your doing mainly architectural visualizations, correct? This is
going to be my bread and butter, I'm assuming… Can you give me
your opinion on the PAR overall for this type of work? I have my
concerns based on your report above.
My experience with architectural visualization, at least regionally,
is that the PAR is a sufficient, if not superior quality to what
people are expecting or even hoping for. I wouldn't worry for your
type of application. But of course that is a generalization, and I'm
not necessarily familiar with your regional competition. I have been
trying to do more local, regional, and cable type work of late and I
am of course my own worst critic. So I guess I personally wouldn't
be happy with digital video if I thought there was something better
that one of my competitors might be using against me. <g> All in all
you've got to spend a whole lot more money to make the next step up.
And even if you fear you might indeed be making that step shortly it
would appear that the PAR will hold its value at least in the short
term. But bear in mind, the darn board is under $2000, and you can
always use an IDE hard drive. BTW, get the big one, 1.7G, and the
optional TBC might be helpful if you'd like to have moving traffic,
etc. when you plunk your building on that site. What is your output
at present?
If you want to continue this, maybe we should take it over to
hardware. Give a holler.
Roger D.
P.S. What'd you think about the Halloween Bowl game in Chicago?