What a Video!!! How?

[Lukemax]

Hi all!, Ok so i've done a few D-Rate CGI space battle type movies, I've always done them myself to get experiance for myself and learn slowly, but recently i came across something that really knocked my socks off and i really just have to ask!!!

Here:
YouTube - Battlestar Galactica vs. Star Wars

Question is, Well many questions actully, really thank anyone helping here, because i want to do my next project just like this, I use 3DS MAX however.

1,
The explosions on there are the best i've ever seen, with all the fragments and so forth, is that done by imposing debris on top of the fireball, or is that just a actual fireball clip, Maybe i should ask the auther about that one!?!

2,
How are those missile effects done?

3,
The zooming in on camera, I've been meaning to ask this for a long time, It come from the new Battlestar galactica mini seris, I've tried doing it myself but cant seem to get the hang of it, Hows it done?

4,
Shaking of the camera IE...When a space fighter go's past and you want to get the sense of power from the engines shaking the camera.

5,
When ships blow up, I assume the author/person behind it, de-contructed bits of the ships as they blew sending different pieces in different directions, to get the image of them breaking apart?
If this is the case i might have to learn a bit more of the 3D modelling side

6,
Most obvious, bit of a schoolboy question really
To get the image of 100's of fighters coming at you, you just re-shoot the same phase over and over right, adding 1 or 2 ships at a time untill you have a whole pack of them, Or at least this is how i do it, But is there any type of trick or anything about doing it?

7,
Engine's of the vipers are very good, Is is better to add the engines effects in 3DS MAX to the actual model?, or do them in Adobe after effects later?

Anything else that you notice maybe you would like to share?

Thank You very much for this help, thanks again
Lukemax

[Guerrilla]

I'm moving this to 3d Q&A. I'd imagine you'll get more responses that way.

1) From what I gathered, there's a few fairly simple particle clouds with either glows or hypervoxels or something (I don't use LW, so I wouldn't know exactly) and some stock footage explosions.

2) A dummy object flying and spawning particles, I'd imagine. Since you're a max user you could give ky_trail a shot. search for Pavel Kuznetsov at MAX Plugins.de - the plugin database for 3ds Max.

3) Try animating the FOV on your camera.

4) You can keyframe it manually, but I'd imagine you would want to learn how to use trackview and a noise controller on the camera position (or just move the keys around a bit). It's a bit too complicated for a brief forum reply, but you can't really live without trackview for a big animation project like this one.

5) Doubt it. You can use a bomb (spacewarp) or a particle array (particle system) set to object fragments for the same effect (whatever the LW equivalents might be). If you're blowing up something big or important, you may want to break up a few 'hero chunks' and animate them manually, but splattering stuff quickly on the camera, particles and/or mesh bomb will do fine.

6) Many ways to go about this one. You could have all the ships in the scene at once, add a few at a time in passes, make them into a particle system, use billboards or anything really. Just make sure you plan it properly, and never use high poly models for background ships.

7) You can edit them afterwards if you add them in post. On the other hand, you can get better interaction (well, usually), if you render them into the scene. Again, up to you. Just plan ahead.

Anything else... start small, plan ahead.

Also, do all the tutorials that ship with max that you can. They should teach you pretty much everything you need to know to set up a space battle. You'll need to do a bit of mixing and matching, but it's all covered.