I've had Carrara for quite a while now and have used it mostly for modeling objects. Lately, I have been playing around with the animation capabilities. I am currently working on a Star Wars type dogfight animation and need to find a way to do Star Wars type space explosions. I can break the models apart but how do I create the rolling gas clouds. Is there a way to do this? Does anyone have a tutorial? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Techyman, You can achieve interresting effects by applying an "atomize" deformer to a sphere and then animate the "wiggle" slider . Will you post the animation ? Also, i suggest to take a look at a space animation made with Carrara by a japanese guy ... I don't remember his name and don't have the URL, though . Do anyone see who i'm talking about ??? litst

Attached Link: http://www.sun-inet.or.jp/~matsuike/eng_index.html

His name is Hiroshi Matsuike. AWESOME stuff. Mark

Here is my hint...dont use the cloud generator built into carrara..it produces weird render errors...it looks good in stills but when you animate it, it leaves little black dots. Its enough to make you spit.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I hope to have a website up and running in a month or so. I'll try and post the results there. If I'm successful, I'll also try to post a tutorial.

Attached Link: http://azchip.homestead.com

Check out my site www.azchip.homestead.com. I have an explosion animation on the site; you can download it and if you like what you see, I'll be happy to tell you what I did.

That's him ! Thanks Mark ! :) litst

I also looked at Hiroshi's stuff; it's incredible. His explosions are from stock explosion footage, though. I think he must map them onto a plane in the scene; pretty common technique in the big, bad world. If you're looking to create your explosions in 3D, my technique works pretty well. (You can view around the explosion, fly around it, whatever, and it'll consume the object exploding as the flame cloud expands.)

Thanks AzChip, I was extremely impressed with your explosion. Hiroshi's are great, but I think your technique will fit in much better with what I'm planning. Any help will put me in your debt.