I have been playing around with the particle effect in Blender. It is a fantastic way to make explosions and fireballs. In fact, I am enjoying it so much, after I finish my super carrier, I am going to relax a bit by building the MOANE project.

I will update this thread again soon.....

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/MOANE-13.gif

Here is how the final animation will look. I just need to figure out a few more things before releasing it as a civ III unit... and find the perfect sound effect.

It looks pretty sweet in game, and the edges aren't really noticeable or bothersome, but you can see them if you look for them.

Final render time: 53 minutes

Render #7

Could you give a better explanation of what the MOANE project is?

Definatly subsrcibing. :thumbsup:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/MOANE.gif

unfortunately, I am running into trouble exporting it to a flc..... keep getting a runtime error 6 in FLICster, which leads me to believe it won't fly in Civ III....

back to the drawing board.....

Awesome! Is runtime 6 pallette or frame number issues? I can never remember...
I think it'd be best if it finished about halfway through, with the mushroomcloud fading out rather than turning into a secondary explosion.

What does it represent in pentangenisis? Is the secondary explosion needed?

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/MOANE.gif

unfortunately, I am running into trouble exporting it to a flc..... keep getting a runtime error 6 in FLICster, which leads me to believe it won't fly in Civ III....

back to the drawing board.....
You shouldn't have a problem so long as the storyboard has 256 colours and is under the maximum number of frames FLICster can handle (64 i think)

btw - You're SO making me drool over Blender :drool:

Awesome! Is runtime 6 pallette or frame number issues? I can never remember...
I think it'd be best if it finished about halfway through, with the mushroomcloud fading out rather than turning into a secondary explosion.

What does it represent in pentangenisis? Is the secondary explosion needed?

The secondary explosion is just supposed to be the leftover mushroom cloud. It is actually the 5th wave. The explosion is made of 5 rings, with the first four starting within the first 32 frames, and the last one starting at frame 32.

Right now the last mushroom cloud is there to detract from the middle explosion, which looks the coolest, but I am afraid, by itself, would reveal the 240x240 frame it is bordered by in-game.... meaning without more attention focused back on the center, the mushroom cloud would look like it was held within a box.

I may re-animate tonight, because the last cloud looks poor, alot of it due to not enough blacks and grays in my palette.... but I think I need to make it more billowy and more mushroomy. Also the trails of smoke falling down look like the cloud is crying, and I wanted the thin smoke pillars (it is very hard to see a complete animation, this one took 28 minutes to render) I see sometimes in footage of nuclear blasts.



The error is: 'runtime 6 error' overflow the animation is about 1.2 Mb.

You could try making the whole explosion a lot smaller, even at 50% it would still be around the same size as the regular Civ III nuke, and still bigger than a city.
I think its always better to keep it fully in the frame than to go supersize...

Neomega, it might help you to know that 240x240 is a limit only in FLICster- Civ can handle larger frame sizes. Somebody (bluemofia? one of the nuke fans anyway) was working on a huge mushroom cloud, much larger than 240x240, and used some other program to make the FLC. Try Civ3FLC, it may not have that size limitation.
Actually, AFAIK FLICster can make larger FLCs, you just can't view them.

Thank weasel op and muffins... I tested to see, and the explosion does actually work in game, so the runtime error is just a FLICster error.

I definitely need to re-render it all... the square border is too noticable.

That happened with me when I tried to put mine in the game (the border thing). Don't know if its a blender thing.

I am talking about the fact that the explosion seems to explode nicely, but then it just disappears along the border of the frame... because max cell size is 240x240.

What border problem are you having?

Do you have passeparte on? That will darken the edges of the lens.

I do have that problem slighlty but not so much. But I was talking about the borders becoming lighter on the edges making a box around the unit in game. I had to manuelly go through and edit all the borders to make it disappear.

Image updated to final animation.


I had an unforseen side effect, But I think it was due to me tweaking a setting for the palette color shot, so it's not exactly how I wished, but I think it looks cool.

Outstanding! :)
I'm planning on having nukes available in the mars mod from near the start, so in later scenarios I will be needing something more "meaty", this fits the bill just perfectly...

EDIT: NEOmega, have you tried editing the bombard effects for conquests? At the moment they are a bit weak, as they have to used for everything from a catapult to a battleship attack, I know they are not a flickster style flic, but if you can make Non-flickster flicks it may be something worth looking in to.

Outstanding! :)
I'm planning on having nukes available in the mars mod from near the start, so in later scenarios I will be needing something more "meaty", this fits the bill just perfectly...

EDIT: NEOmega, have you tried editing the bombard effects for conquests? At the moment they are a bit weak, as they have to used for everything from a catapult to a battleship attack, I know they are not a flickster style flic, but if you can make Non-flickster flicks it may be something worth looking in to.

Well I have 8 other nuclear explosion renders, that for some reason or another looked horrible when taken in as a whole animation.... and I am not sure what I am going to do with them.... but shrunk down significantly and pulling 80% of the frames might hide their ugliness.

But my next project is to build a leaderhead in Blender.... so I plan on being quite busy learning armatures and facial bone animation, as well as modelling a face.

That big blast is just so cool! :)

Ah, leaderheads! So very, very difficult!

It's not easy to make a good model, that then animates well. However It's a whole lot easier if you are doing a non human or cybernetic human, as it's not so important to make it uber realistic...

Ah, leaderheads! So very, very difficult!

It's not easy to make a good model, that then animates well. However It's a whole lot easier if you are doing a non human or cybernetic human, as it's not so important to make it uber realistic...

You might try messing around with Facial Studio from di-o-matic.com (http://www.di-o-matic.com/), it allows you to design a 3d human head then export it .3DS format (I think).

Blender has a flash tutorial that goes from a cube to a fully animated face in about 3 hours. There also is the makehuman project, which AFAIK is trying to be a user friendly full human modeling and animation set-up. I haven't looked into it yet. From watching the tutorial twice.... I think In 2 weeks I'll have a human leaderhead.

Wow. You really want to do a lot with Blender...

This brings back memories, ie: first 'unit' (the nuke animation I made before I got into POV-Ray)

Since I don't know Blender at all, I'm sorry if my suggestions are impossible/difficult I'm just getting ideas out. The smoke itself is flippin awesome, as well as the shockwaves and stuff. Just with the mushroom cloud itself revealed at the end, first off if you want to go for total realism the thing shouldn't fade out for a very long time, simply due to the staggering amount of material that's settling/dissipating.

My main point is really that it looks like the final cloud spreads out into a dish (model wise I'm guessing it actually does), just see if you could maybe make the cloud fade as more of a lump of cloud dissipating gradually rather than a wave of cloud being blown away. I think how you made the first cloud dissipate is what would work best.

I might be getting a little picky, but its because a) I think you can do this from what I see and b) This game deserves the best freakin nuke animation in existence because it's just that awesome.

Moral of the story is NUKES

:nuke: :D :nuke: