Any good explosion generators?

I would like a program that generates realistic explosions. I am willing to pay money for it. Has anyone ever heard of a standalone (i.e, not plugin) program that generates realistic explosions? I have tried particle illusion, which is quite good..

I was wondering if there was anything better than that though.
Something that achieves results similar to this 3ds plugin:
http://www.afterworks.com/index.asp
Thanks in advance!

[EDIT]It's for offline CG simulation. For cutscenes etc..

Here a free explosion bitmap generator:

http://www.positech.co.uk/content/explosion/explosiongenerator.html

Useful, but that's for ingame explosions.

I would like a tool that renders offline, for cutscenes.

Hmm.. I guess not.
I was going to try afterburn.. But its online shop is closed. It was supposed to reopen last year.

I also once did search for something like this but apart from some very bad programs which "simulate" a couple of moving low res sprites and save that into a bitmap for each frame there wasn't anything worth mentioning. So you either look for free explosion animations (very hard to find too but there ARE a few ones worth using) or you look for someone with a decent 3D package (e.g. Lightwave, Maya and so on) with some knowledge & skill who could make something like this there...

There also are some commercial packages for movies you can buy but they are rather expensive...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

Particle effects usually look better than any pre-rendered explosions anyway. I'd just use that. Of course, someone with lots of knowledge of movie special effects could make something better, but that's quite unnecessary if you ask me. I'm pretty good with effects if you need some help.

Try VeT's explosion demo in Newton. They looks great!!

I guess i'll use particle effects. Do you know of any articles on 'computed particle dynamics' or something similar?

True, the physics looks very good. But it's the particle effects i am after. I know there is particle effects in that demo, it's just that their not what i want.

No, I don't know of any off the top of my head. There's lots of tutorials out there though. It's not very difficult. Just gotta play around with parameters until it looks the way you want it.

This is a very simple one I did in like 5 minutes when doing some early testing on our project. No where near good enough for real game, but it's not really bad.



I know lots of little tricks to make explosions look realistic and behave like a real explosion should under certain conditions. I also know of a few ways you can simulate shrapnel realistically in games.

That would be very useful to many people. Could you share?

Well, yes. But first I need to know WHAT is exploding, and under what conditions. I.e., in a room, outdoors, strong wind, no wind, etc.

maybe you could post your tipps for different conditions like an exploding barrel in a room and outdoor.

Yes, I will. Sorry I didn't notice that anyone had replied. I'm almost finished with the model I'm working on, and I will get right to it.

Cool Will be very useful.

hey,
In my upcoming plugin you can render realistic particle effects with millions of independent particles, each with their own physics. I've experimented with explosions and the results are stunning. check it out in the Iridium thread in the gallery =D

-mike-