(Completed) Real-Time Car Explosion

https://giphy.com/gifs/vfx-UTN0xwMalBZJkbmCQC

Hello there RTVFX,

I finished up this explosion effect a few weeks ago and wanted to hear some feedback!
This was the first time I’ve ever used Houdini to generate spritesheets for my effects, and it really gave me the chance to dig into that workflow and learn more about Houdini’s Pyro tools. Here’s an earlier milestone I shared here: Real-Time Car Explosion

Here’s a Pinterest board with my reference for this project: https://www.pinterest.com/willquinlanfx/car-explosion/

Enjoy!

Hi Will,

It feels to me that the flames are way too saturated and not in the correct range - they don’t look like they’re glowing like flames do:

image
This doesn’t seem too fiery to me, looks more like colored smoke. Don’t be afraid to add a very bright glow to make it pop, with some directional elements, and reduce the saturation a little bit maybe?

The smoke fades out in a rather flat manner, creating these sorts of shapes:
image
Try using some alpha erosion to make it nicer!

Also, the framing you picked is a bit odd, since it’s not that important to keep that flying piece in the frame, let it fly away! It looks like the camera and the car are tilting a little bit towards the end?
The flying piece on the left hand side seems to have a misplaced pivot, it’s not rotating around its center of mass, looks a bit odd!

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