I've been testing some particle explosions lately, and I'm almost there:

Some previous tests here:
http://i232.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vid232.photobucket.com/albums/ee104/noviski/carrara_explosion.flv

Trying something more "atomic":
http://s232.photobucket.com/albums/ee104/noviski/Carrara/?action=view&current=atomic_explosion.flv

The latest attempt:
http://s232.photobucket.com/albums/ee104/noviski/Carrara/?action=view&current=explode10.flv

My problem is stop the spawning. The latest video shows more explosions after the first one turns into smoke. I don't know how stop it. Any ideas?

Thanks.

Nice stuff! 

The secondary explosion happens when the first explosion uses up all of the available particles provisioned and activates more particles when the first ones start dying off. The solution is to either allow more particles in your simulation or increase the  particle lifespan.

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!

That's comin' along really nicely, noviski.

I've been having some success with putting a spherical fire object into the mix. This is what I've tried, FWIW:

1. Scale the fire object small, about 1 percent, and move it below the ground plane (or somewhere else out of site) at frame zero. Make sure the fire doesn't catch or give shadows.
2. Add a bulb to the scene, at the same location as the fire and parented to the fire. Set the bulb's intensity to zero.
3. At the frame before the explosion starts, set a keyframe for the fire.
4. At the next frame, move the fire to the center of the explosion. Scale the fire a little bigger, and increase the intensity of the bulb.
5. Over the next few frames (depending on the extent of the explosion) scale the fire and intensity of the bulb up, then back down.
6. After the last frame where the fire should appear, move the fire back to where it was (hidden, scaled small, bulb intensity off).

While we're speaking about it, wouldn't it be great if someone made a tut about making good quality explosions in Carrara. It's kind of a "Dark Art" to me, if you will.

You know, if someone had experience with Carrara and made good video tut's, and maybe had a little spare time, and wanted to share or even post 'em someplace like, I don't know, www.vtc.com where a person could get some good ideas--

Oh, hi, Mark. Didn't see you standing there.

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! :)

Sure thing... lookin' forward to the next animation.

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!

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.

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!

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

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

Sometimes when considering how animating this kind of stuff works, it makes me wish Carrara had the volumetric shaders and their associated properties from Bryce. (DAZ does have that code floating around in their inventory somewhere, but I wouldn't have a clue whether they could port it over.) It may seem redundant compared to how Carrara handles and produces clouds, but I think in other ways it's a lot more flexible. Imagine being able to resize a torus or any other shape with its volume rendered as smoke/dust/particles, and you'd get how handy that would be.

That's a feature I really miss from working with POV-Ray (they call it "media"; it's separate from the surface shaders, but it has a lot in common with them). POV uses much the same code for media as it does for scene level fog and other atmospherics, so maybe Carrara could include something like fog constrained to a shape without too much trouble.

Here's hoping.

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. ;)

Just an FYI, I've had an explosion tutorial in the backroom for several years.  I just checked and sure enough, it's still there.

Cool, thanks for the heads up... I'll go check that out.

For some reason the photobucket explosions are not playing correctly, but it looks like you are doing a terrific job.

I know this thread is uber-old, but sice someone else resurrected it:
 
Very nice explosions! =)