Container Explosion Animation

Miscellasneous tests

Files

Reflection/Post Mortem

• • What went well? What didn't go well?

Learning EmberGen was great and I'm glad I did it as my specialisation. I already had experience with fluid simulations in Maya so adjusting to EmberGen was fairly smooth. The UI is quite intuitive and the node system is fairly robust, although there are still some features I want them to add such as multi-layer EXRs and multiple mesh imports. The program is also surprisingly stable for something that is still in beta, with it only crashing one or two times since I started using it.

The only thing that didn't go well was trying to complete the animation I had planned out with the jet firing a missile into a container and blowing it up. Due to other commitments outside of SAE I didn't have enough time to finish the whole thing before the deadline so I ended up focusing on the big explosion shot.

• • So what did I do?

The big explosion shot took a lot of tweaking and experimenting. The size of the simulation caused EmberGen to run very slowly so I couldn't iterate as fast as I wanted. That being said it's still much faster than any fluid sim system from any other software. After finally getting the look I wanted, I was able to export the layers I needed for comp in Nuke.

• • So what should I have done and what can I do differently in future?

I really wanted to finish my animation sequence but time was the factor that stopped me. There's not much I could do differently to fix that other than continue to learn EmberGen and gain experience so I can get the look I want, much faster.

• • Now what do I need to learn now?

There's still a lot to learn, especially with bigger and more complicated simulations. EmberGen is still in beta but it will no doubt change over time as it matures as a program. I ended up buying a licence for it since I hope to use it for a project in the future and I've joined the JangaFX Discord to stay up to date on the development.