Here's my take on the planetary removal bomb. This was a really good challenge for me considering I used my first formula! I also found a new bug in Carrara concerning the invisible toggle in animations (it forgets them when you close and re-open the file). I know this is a big file to get and I don't know the rules on the size of things that we can post. I did quite a bit of squinching to get this file as small as it is. Litst, can you post the guidelines on this issue? I tried to post this on my ISP but it was too big. I'm trying to get a better spot to land. Thanks.

Wow ! The effects are effective ! =)I have a question: what did you use the formula for exactly ? Also, it's too bad there's a bug in the gif export that loses the frames per second settings : the anim appears way too slow ... About the image size . I'd say that if you don't block a thread with the image and that you make efforts to keep it as small as you can, then it's okay . But i think more than 500 ko wouldn't be necessary . litst

I used a formula in the glow channel and the transparency in the disk. That seemed to work reasonably well but not what I had originally planned. I also used several animated shaders. The shaders in Carrara are most defintitely different than in RDS and will require a significant learning curve for me. The more I use Carrara though, the better I feel about it. I would really like a patch and I'm dying to know what's in the next version (radiosity?). I also used the explosion tutorial that's on this site but I had to cheat Carrara to do it because Carrara can't employ a deformer when changing from one modeler to another. RDS can't do this either when you can't change modelers but I figured a way to do it but it isn't clean. You export the shape and the import it back in and that seems to work.

WOW! That's really awesome, Kixum. Very cool animation. (And that's one particularly mean rubber-band airplane.) It's really good to hear some of the problems that Carrara has in using my explosion tutorial; if you'd let me know some deatil about it, I can re-write the tutorial to include the tricks you come up with. (I'll be happy to credit you, too....) Using the export function to get a deformer applied is a good workaround. Just export the cloud shape as a DXF or 3ds model and re-import it.... How did you get your sparks to vanish at different times? That added some tremendous realism to the shot, I think. Only nitpick I have is that I'd probably turn the shadows off on the flame clouds; they cast a shadow on the disk and it looks a bit odd to me. I LOVE the interactive light from the torpedo. Is that just a bulb light that you moved through the scene and added a lens flare or some such? It looks great.

You've pretty much nailed down the export shape function to get the explosion flame cloud shape figured. The sparks were done by fussing with the particle fountain in Carrara. I've never used the fountain in RDS but I set the fountain to run for a short time with a wide range of velocities with a wide range of lifetimes. That means you get a very interesting dispersal of sparks and lifetimes. Your comment about the shadows is dead on. The light is just one bulb with the cross screen and glow turned on. I also turned on the falloff to maximum and limited the range so it would actually sort of disappear at the right moment. I'm really impressed with the way the disc turned out. I'll see if I can recreate the explosion stuff and send you some detail. I did it quickly late at night and I don't remember too much more than what I've said already. One weird thing about it is that if you do the trick I employed, you can't make the object completely invisible. I think it gets confused with the fronts and backs of some of the fills of the shapes.

Cool... It looks like Carrara's particle fountain is more advanced than RDS's. I don't think we have lifetime control in RDS, but I'll check that out right away. Thanks for sharing your techniques....