So, first actual explosion I’ve made. Took me quite a while to figure a bit of stuff out, but I’ve made a bit of progress. I plan to get this done by the end of the week, hopefully around Sunday-ish.
So, as per usual to start off, self critique: Needs more ‘fwoof’, fiery explosion sorta feel. I only have the smoke in place at the moment which only really shows momentum. I do have a sprite-sheet for the explosion colored and everything, the only issue is that it lags at larger sizes (around 200-300). Need to find a solution to this, still experimenting. May try to use a different method.
The explosion itself needs more impact, possibly a crater or just some sort of damage left behind after the explosion.
Debris could use some trails probably, would help to be smaller too, need to experiment more.
Possibly some fire on the area of impact? Might be fitting, worth the experiment.
Sidenote: Sorry for the kinda iffy vid. My Mac isn’t exactly a trooper.
Feel free to slam me with your critiques, I can take it! Like I said this is my first explosion so I dont really expect to get it right the first time, but regardless I want it to be the best I can do. I’ll probably get an update up either tomorrow or the day after.
Changes made! Added more detail to some of the smoke, added a bit more to help push the power of the explosion. The spritesheet is still sort of laggy, but I’ve added it in to help give more oomph.
I’m still trying to figure out how to attach animtrails to the debris so that they have smoke trails, but I havnt had much luck.
As always, hit me with them critiques, any advice is always appreciated!
Hi LilSpence! I’m pretty new here and I’m not a professional, so take my critique with a grain of salt.
I think overall you’ve got a great start. I like your textures a lot. I would start your sparks and smoke from a smaller point, though, since they seem to spawn a ways out already from the explosion point. I think you could also have the sparks and smoke move much quicker (maybe 2-3x) at the start of the explosion but get some drag on them, so they don’t feel like they move at just a constant speed. I would also try cutting the lifetime of the sparks a bit since they usually don’t linger after an explosion, but just speeding them up might do the trick. Lastly, I would try adding a bright split-second flash right at the beginning of the explosion and see if that looks good. From my little experience, that can help the punchiness of an explosion.
Those are my thoughts, but definitely try out what you think looks good!
I speed the smoke and sparks up, shortened the lifetime of the sparks by quite a bit. I’ll be tryna figure out how to add in light here soon, I’ve actually never really figured out how to apply light to effects other than with point-lights.
Yeah, I think that’s looking better! I don’t think you necessarily need an actual light to give it a bright flash. You could use a bright sprite to achieve a similar look.
I was unable to find a way to make a sort of light or illusion of, but I was able to increase the intensity of the explosion sheet without making it look worse, so at least I got that going.