Modelling fire/explosions for BFG

[mangozac]

[Munkey Joe]

in BFG scale??? nope.

NOW you MIGHT look into taking qtips (cotton tip applicators) and pulling them out a bit and give a coat of superglue. I make wolf tail fetishes for my FW space marine (the big guy) out of pipe cleaners and Super glue and they are fairly stiff. Stiff enough to pass as GS on its own.


Word of advice.... use latex gloves, ultra thin Super glue, and be prepared for the "CA glue" nose fry. dip the cotton in superglue poured into a blisterpack and shape how you want it. then allow to dry....

now this Might not be able to cast But it might.. dont know. But you could do it for all the hulk models you wanted and its fast and easy. perfect for you but not so great for production.

[Seb]

I've always considered wreckage in space to be more of a glowing ember affair. Without oxygen to react with, the melted metals and superheated plasmas would merely smoulder like lava.

Whilst incredibly unscientific, it's the sort of suspension of disbelief trick that doesn't instantly irk me and get across something is 'alight'; whilst out right fire in space does.

Babylon 5 did something like this and I enjoyed the visuals. An initial flare as gases burned off, then the remains drifted along, glowing until dimming out as they cooled.

Best grab some photos of molten slag, lava and other exotic materials sparking and paint along damaged edges or deep inside the wreck.

From there, creating drifting areas of wreckage seems the technical hurdle.

- Seb.

[mangozac]

MJ, that's not a bad technique, but probably leaves the flames a bit more "trailing" than they should be in space. Sealed with some PVA it would probably cast up alright too.

Seb, your description brings LackofBetterName's to mind. Although it's exploding the explosion gives a very molten metal feel. But it would be no good modelling the space ship like that because in the next turn it would have to be strewn over the entire battlefield (battle space?).

Your sci-fi science does sound smack on though and the smouldering rather than flames makes sense. I guess you'd only get really flame looking fire when a ship explodes altogether. You've gicen me some good ideas though and it would seem the differences between a hulk and burning hulk model are not as many as I'd initially thought...

[Seb]

I've got a couple of miscast Marine Gladius frigates which I've been intending to do this too ever since I got their replacements years ago.

Glowing ember hulks in space aside, perhaps you could even consider the out of control atmosphere leak fire?

Some very crisp flame burst licking out from a portal or rent battery would look good. My first sugegstion would be flames like these :



Being so well defined there is no loss of understanding as to what is going on.

I guess, this stage of a burning hulk is just prior to the boom and a little while before the glowing metal wreckage

- Seb

[paulson games]

I really like the flame effects Seb posted but not sure how they'd look on spacecraft.

Robotech always had some really interesting visuals with their missles and explosions, they were a fast ring/circle of light as the explosion goes off without any trailing elements or smoke clouds etc. As space has no effective gravity or air they would be fairly uniform in shape or smaller impacts would probably be shaped like a jet where the craft was punctured and the internal air would blast out in a stream or cone like shape.

What I have seen that would work well for simular effect is blobs of low expanding foam, painted correctly in combinations of yellow, whites and red it can looks like like the sphere of an explosion. As BFG is pretty small scale I'd imagine you could even use plastic beads for explosion spheres.

This isn't the best modelling but gives an example, my local bunker has a much better version that I'll try and grab pics of.



Another thought is also that you could take some of the weapons fire effects from Armor Cast and add them at various points around a ship that way it'd look like the hull was ruptured and venting gases without being a standard explosion per say. Or combine the flash effects with some foam bubbles?

http://armorcast.com/store/index.php?cPath=100






This made me LOL, it should be the image for epic game changing critical hits, explosions rock!

[Seb]

Yeah, I hear you on the lack of resistance in space for expanding fireballs. Mostly my suggesting was to ensure at such a small scale there was little confusion as to what was going on about the spaceship.

I do like the bead idea, really comes down to placement and paint work I suspect.

Loving the nuke sfx, nice find

- Seb

[Munkey Joe]

Yea I thought that the trail was too long (that was a WOW smoke and fire) and thats why I mentioned the qtip (CTA) because it would limit your amount of cotton thus limiting your fire.

I do kinda like the wyrd fire though.....

[Vaaish]

for a blazing hulk, I don't think you need a whole new model. The BM following it should be enough to note that it's a blazing hulk. If you REALLY want to do one up though, I would just go with the LED route to make the inside seem like it's ablaze. (the outside of the hull isn't actually on fire, it's the atmosphere inside the ship that's burning up so you'd see more of an effect like the inside of charcoal or an ember than flames all over the hull)

[mangozac]

Good point Vaaish - game wise the primary aim here is to distinguish between a playable ship and a hulk for noting the spread/availability of your forces at a glance. The different types of hulk aren't too hard to work out.

Perhaps I'll do a hulk model, and then cast some flame shapes that can be glued or magnetised on to make a burning hulk. LEDs would be more work than I'm willing to put into it

I knew I'd find something to do with that Zeus CL that I wrecked by stripping!

[Seb]

Why not use a translucent resin? paint over some of it then have an LED inside that illuminates through the hulk. Crevices and unpainted areas would then glow like embers.

Might be getting too wishlisting there, but if you're casting them up, seems a good opportunity to try this?

- Seb

[mangozac]

Possibly. My problem with LEDs obviously isn't the technical side of things - I just don't want the hassle of scalloping out the mini in order to mount a battery and switch.

But if I'm casting up for others I suppose there's no reason not to cast in clear. Other than cost. Also, I don't have any clear resin to try it with. I did contemplate tinting the resin for the hulks black so that minimal painting (if any) would be required.

[Seb]

Fair point, and no, didnt think it was beyond your technical skill to do either

I do like the idea of a black cast hull though. Primer black basecoat is great, but at such a scale it can be rough to cover even the smallest crevices. In a project like this contrast is king.

Out of curiosity, could you have a flat disc battery in the normal 40k round base (or similar), that is pressed against the contact only when you set it down, powers the LED via a wire through the stand pipe? (2mm drill should do nicely)

Seb

[mangozac]

Do you remember my Tau markerlight marker? Possibly not, since I posted it an ATT a few years ago before I was "famous"
I don' know what happened to the pics of it - I can't even find any on my PC. I'll have to pull it out and take some more. Anyway it was a standard round 25mm base into which I embedded a battery, microcontroller and pushbutton switch. I embedded a tiny surface mounting LED on the top and surrounded it with usual basing of gravel and static grass. I programmed the microcontroller so that when the button was pressed it would flash a pattern for 5 minutes and then go back to sleep waiting for another button press.

Anyway the point of telling you that is that I learned a bit about embedding electronics into model bases.

Firstly, the circuit and battery holder required extending the bottom of the base much further in order to get enough height to fit them underneath. Perhaps without having the PCB in there it might be easier.

I like your idea of having it activate when placed down. Would be fiddly to get right, but not impossible.

Using wire wrapping wire you could drill the stand out at 1.5mm and easily fit the two wires through there. I would then mount a microcontroller on the back of the LED programmed to make the LED (or even two of them) randomly flicker like fire.

Out of interest, if I were to sell clear hulks with embedded flickering LEDs what would people be willing to pay for them? What about plain non-flickering hulks in black resin?