In my opinion, after the initial explosion, the fire is much too high.  It
actually looks more like orange smoke.  So I would try to reduce the flames
and increase the black/gray smoke.
But I don't have a reference video like you do, it's just an observation.

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There are several minor things I'd adjust.

As someone already mentioned, the fire trails way
too high, ever seen flames about 40 meters high
(with such a little area burning, that is)?
Again, someone mentioned debris. Create some smaller
smoketrails just flying off in several directions and coming
down, and simply make the smoke dissipate.

For a better effect, I'd say you'd have to use
more and smaller particles for the fire, the
initial fireball is really good.

And generally I'd create the camera zoom and
focal-point different. You should have it look somewhere,
suddenly move to the explosion, zoom out quickly, and
then doing the slower movements and zooming like
the camera-man is actually looking and inspecting
the scene.

--
Tim Nikias
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights/index.html

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Superb :)

Everyone is talking about a shockwave or flash but I think all it needs is a
little camera wobble or shake a split second after the initial explosion.
This could be attributed to the shockwave reaching the cameraman and the
reaction of the cameraman to the explosion.

Keep up the great work

Dave

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Hide a few shingles just below the roof surface to make them invisible;
then when the explosion occurs, blow them back!  That would really help a
lot.  Just a handful would do the trick.

Cheers!

Chip Shults
My robotics, space and CGI web page - http://home.cfl.rr.com/aichip

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Rune wrote:

> I've been looking at a little reference videos (real life, not holywood) and
> they didn't have neither flashes nor shock waves, so I haven't added that to
> the animation.

The lack of a flash/shock wave is probably a good thing for realism then.

>
> Apart from experts like people in these groups, who are trained in noticing
> flaws in CG effects, do you think this animation could fool anyone to think
> it's real?

I would say not. This is probably due to a number of small things. Debris is
something others have brought up, but there are other sutble things, like black
staining from the initial explosion on the building. Some sort of orange glow
from the fireball and fire (even if it is not a brilliant flash) might help too.
Also, I think  your "viewers" are crying out for some DAMAGE! After that dust
settles, I expected some sort of gaping hole.

Your efforts are superb but an explosion anim that is convincing to non-CG aware
people is a difficult challenge.

MJL

--
prism{0,.1,30#local I=1;#while(I<30)#local B=asc(substr(// Mark James Lewin
"#K?U_u`V[RG>3<9DGPL.0EObkcPF'",I,1))-33;<div(B,10)-4mod(B,10)+5*div(I,21)-
6>#local I=I+1;#end,-4pigment{rgb 9}rotate-x*90translate 15*z}//POV-Ray 3.5

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> Your efforts are superb but an explosion anim that is convincing to non-CG
aware
> people is a difficult challenge.

I think the opposite. There are lots of people who don't know what a
computer is. And actually most people I know have no idea what a computer is
capable of doing, so they'll think an explosion like this is terribly real.
Even I might believe it's real.


Hugo

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Hugo wrote:

> > Your efforts are superb but an explosion anim that is convincing to non-CG
> aware
> > people is a difficult challenge.
>
> I think the opposite. There are lots of people who don't know what a
> computer is. And actually most people I know have no idea what a computer is
> capable of doing, so they'll think an explosion like this is terribly real.
> Even I might believe it's real.
>
> Hugo

    People may not know what a computer is capable of doing, but most are able to
see if something is "not quite right", even if they cannot tell you exactly what
is causing this feeling (and these things are often subtle and difficult to
include in CG).
    Even the best modelling of a scene can look generated or fake in some way,
but add area_lights, radiosity, and perhaps some focal blur, and the illusion of
reality is increased because the some of the things that are "not quite right"
(eg. sharp shadows, unnatural shading) are being eliminated.

MJL

--
prism{0,.1,30#local I=1;#while(I<30)#local B=asc(substr(// Mark James Lewin
"#K?U_u`V[RG>3<9DGPL.0EObkcPF'",I,1))-33;<div(B,10)-4mod(B,10)+5*div(I,21)-
6>#local I=I+1;#end,-4pigment{rgb 9}rotate-x*90translate 15*z}//POV-Ray 3.5

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> Apart from experts like people in these groups, who are trained in
noticing
> flaws in CG effects, do you think this animation could fool anyone to
think
> it's real?

Originally, I thought you had taken a real video from some newscast or
something and put your explosion animation on top of it. Unfortunately, the
explosion itself still looks sort of fake; it's too easy to see that you're
using separate objects containing smoke and fire and moving them around.

Try also moving the "helicopter" in some direction a little bit, and make
the camera movement smoother (looks linearly interpolated right now).

- Slime
[ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]
[ http://www.slimeland.com/images/ ]

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> And generally I'd create the camera zoom and
> focal-point different. You should have it look somewhere,
> suddenly move to the explosion, zoom out quickly, and
> then doing the slower movements and zooming like
> the camera-man is actually looking and inspecting
> the scene.


Heh heh, yeah, you don't want people to get suspicious and say "so how did
you know you had to film that exact area right at that time?"

- Slime
[ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]
[ http://www.slimeland.com/images/ ]

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On Thu, 14 Mar 2002 17:27:54 +0100, "Rune"
<run### [at] mobilixnetdk> wrote:

>Apart from experts like people in these groups, who are trained in noticing
>flaws in CG effects, do you think this animation could fool anyone to think
>it's real?

Maybe if you make the smoke denser so that it hides the lack of
debris, make the flames lower and brighter and make them illuminate
the smoke as well. It's already really convincing.

Oh... and rip a soundtrack off the news <g>


Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] vipbg
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

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