I’ll try to explain how to make firey CG explosions using afterburn and the octane shader. This assumes you have a basic knowledge of Afterburn and at least an intermediate knowledge of 3D Studio Max (yes that’s right if you thought this was a Truespace tutorial or a Softimage tutorial you’re in the wrong place, move along now...).

First of all, let me explain the process. There are roughly about three different ways to make explosions with Afterburn, at least the type that I’m going to show. I’m just going to go through one way today, it’s fairly quick to render and very cool. All of the current CG explosions on my web page are using this technique with minor differences.

This tutorial will kind of be rushed since at the time of writing this I basically have only an afternoon to start and finish this since my work life has gotten more and more busy. So bare with me, I’ll try to get the point and technique out as well as I can within the few hours I have to write this. ...