Hi everyone,
I have finally managed the time to write the breakdown of this explosion. Hope this will be useful:
The Breakdown
There were 18 layers in this effect. Timing is critical for each component because most layers are short lived. These layers can be categorized in these groups.
- Shockwave
- Smoke
- Instant Flash
- Burst Ring
- Burst Core
- Sparks
All Layers
Here are all the layers used in this effect:
Shockwave
The shockwave group is fired first. It also serves as a background light filler for the flash to come.
Smoke
Smoke appears pretty much right from the beginning and lingers till the end of the effect. Its a dark brown smoke that fills the back of the explosion.
Instant Flash
The instant flash literally lasts about 2-3 frames. It is a quick bright concentrated flash and makes up the initial blast.
Burst Core
The burst core blows hot gas outwards from the center. These are high velocity particles but with the high degree of drag so slow them down almost to a halt. However, these fade away before they come to a complete halt (or atleast they are supposed to) I used fiery textures to give the center a burning gas look.
Burst Ring
The burst ring result from the center explosion and moves outward as it dissolves. I didn’t use texture flipbook. Put together a pixel shader script to mask with soft edge.
Sparks
Sparks are generated as a result of the center explosion as well. These particles are created at the same time as the Burst Core. There are two different types of sparks utilized - one with trails and other used stretched particles. These sparks are timed to die just slightly after the Burst Ring dies.
Critical Timing
As we can see in the window below that how critical is the timing for emitters for the impact of the effect. There is very little difference in the start times for different layers but these had to be set apart literally by 2-3 number of frames to get the right feel in the overall effect. Imagine lots of iterations.
I plan to make video tutorial as well in future.