ATMP Escape. (spaceship destruction video)

The head vision for this one started as soon as I finished the last one where the ATMP lands.

I did a couple little ship designs, more as testing a workflow idea, rather than serious attempts at creating the ship for this.

I was a bit happier with this one in terms of scale, but it still didn't match what was in my head at all.

Still, I was excited for the concept, so I pressed on with it and did a quick animation test, as I had a number of technical challenges ahead of me, that I had never broached before. I've done some smaller ship explosions, and tests in the past, but I wanted to make one more detailed, interesting, realistic, and quicker to render than ever before. I knew this would be atleast 500 frames, and I didn't want to not use my computer for literally(by the original definition, not figuratively) days or weeks while simulating the explosions, and rendering. So I decided I would make a smaller explosion, bake it to openVDB, and paste that around a bit, and of course, render in Eevee.

Still, as I watched the animation test, I knew it made no sense to have a ship of that size, which is clearly basically a fat modern day commercial airline plane,  shooting off a single user medical pod like we saw in the previous animation leading into it. it also just, didn't match what was in my head. Still, it wasn't a failure, I was otherwise happy with it. The destruction effects aren't really complete obviously, as the ship just stays still, but it was a proof of concept.

I then set about properly modelling the ship, focusing more on what was in my head originally for the project.

Looking back on it now, I kind of wish I had gone with another design, or just filled in the middle gap. But, hindsight is 2020 right?

I animated everything out, did one more low res test animation with the new ship.

after picking apart some of what I didn't like from that animation, most notably the way the volumetric explosion smoke zips out of existence like its been sucked into a different dimension, the trail on the other medical pod escaping, the lack of forces applied to the ship from the second reactor explosion. and a couple other smaller details. I fixed/added what was missing, and since it was now late at night, and I was ready to go to bed. I set it to render.

unfortunately, in the morning, it turned out I only mostly fixed the shrinking smoke. In order to keep it from suddenly dissappearing, I had changed my openVDB settings to extend from the last frame, and then set the last frame a few earlier, to where I thought it had been safe. But I needed to go back three frames further to keep it from suddenly abruptly shrinking and then stopping. It still looked better than before, don't get me wrong. And maybe no one else would notice, but I noticed. and I did not like it. I want to make good things. It would take five hours, again, to fix it if I rendered it out from the earliest point with the VDB adjusted again. This was no bueno. I like speed, I like quality, I like always having my computer available to make art. So instead, I made a couple small fake smoke clouds to put ontop of it, they only took 1 second to render per frame, and I was able to quickly move on to sound design.

And well. That's it. It feels like I should put the final result here now, but you already saw that at the top, so I guess scroll up if you want to watch it again. I hope you liked the video. I'm planning to continue this little storyline/universe a bit, but the other parts of the story I've pictured are fraught with technical challenges I've never attempted before, so it may be some time as I model, rig, animate, and render it.
also, creativity is a crazy river so, maybe I'll get distracted. We'll see.