You can animate some shaders too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnnjODnneeY

God Bless You, Mark Bremmer! Thank you very much!

A lot of very usefull tips! Thanks! :)

Astonishing! :)

A very simple trick is put a Spin Modifier at your flame. Rotating the Fire primitive at the right axis could create your desired effect.

I see you're using a Multiply operator at your Glow channel (Texture Map + Value). You can try this: Just keep the Texture Map and maybe decreasing the Brightnes of the Texture (slider button at these channel's tab). Sorry, my English sucks, but I hope you can understand my suggestions... :(

ThrommArcadia, if you post a render of your scene, it makes more easy to help you. :)

Quote - These are pretty neat! It's an effect I've been considering playing with. Any tips or suggestions from your experience in making these?

Thanks, to all of you.

An important tip: explore the power of Carrara shaders. It's one of the best features of this software and could save a lot of work. Many of shaders are animatable and you can use it to create some cool effects.
Mixing Multi Channels (the planet collapse effect), using the Psychedelic on the Alpha Channel, creating some nice textures using the operators too (Overlay, Subtract, Multiply). That's how I create the shockwave effect. Without particles, just animating the shader of a circular vertex objet and incresing the size of the object. ;)

Quote - The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams is a popular instructional book with a lot of the material devoted to walk cycles. You can get it on amazon or any big book store.

Indeed, this book helps me a lot to create this walk cyle. Just 6 keyframes and it's done. ;)

Good tip!

Just annoucing: the scene explosion is allready at the Carrara's Free Stuff section. Enjoy it!

A simple tool is Starbits Starfield Generator, an old shareware program. You can creates stars, galaxys, nebula clouds, etc.. Saving in .bmp format and apply at your scene as backdrop.
One working link for download it still work, because was designed for Windows 95/98 and apparently the developer loose the interest for the software:

Starbits Starfield Generator 7.3

I hope you enjoy it. Chhers!

Thanks, Mark. The scene is allready at the Carrara Lounge for download and pretty soon at the Renderosity's freebies page. The latest animation you can watch here. ;)

Quote - Really cool... I tried something like this several years ago in a different software package, but I couldn't get it to come out looking decent. I agree, the shockwave is particularly well done.

Me too, man! I allways see videos and tutorials around the web for many years and try several times to make a planet explosion with shockwaves and debries, etc... Now I could make something a little decent. :D

Thanks for your comments.  Cheers!

Today I was a little pissed off, and decide to blow a entire planet... ;)

http://s232.photobucket.com/albums/ee104/noviski/Carrara/?action=view&current=aftershock05.flv

The collapse doesn't work how I was expect, but I love the shockwave. :)
There's a group of 5 elementes at this scene:

• 1 sphere primitive (planet in collapse, using an animated shader). It's hided at some frame at the timeline;
• 1 more sphere primitive (planet allready collapsed). This object was destroyed using the Explode and Dissolve modifiers, plus some work at the alpha channel of the shader;
• 1 Bulb light, with the Sun Light Lens Flare effect, animated;
• 1 Particle Emitter, to create the planet pieces dispersion;
• 1 Vertex Object as circle form, to create the shockwave, with a animated shader.

When I fix the planet collapse effect (maybe a little spin at the globe...), I was share this Carrara scene with the community and at the Carrara Lounge's. ;)

Cheers!

Nice hint, CaptainJack1! As you see my explosions doesn't create a nice fireball. With your method maybe I can make this thing works finally! ;)

Thanks for the help! :)

Thanks, Mark. I decrease the emission time range and increase the particle's life.  On simulation it's all fine, I'll try the render now.

Thank you so much!