"Pyromania offers sequences of fires and explosions which are often to costly for a digital artist on a budget to produce themselves. Also, because of the random and organic nature of this material, it is still somewhat difficult to reproduce these images using computer programs and algorithyms", says Peter Kuran, founder of Visual Concept Entertainment.

The two CD's boast 32 explosions in all, 12 of these iclude mattes of the explosions created in Unnimatte, and there are a few other "helpers" on the CD to make your life a little easier. The effects were originally photographed by VCE on 35mm motion picture film, at about 100 frames per second with a 20 or 28mm lens. Then they were scanned at 2K reselution (2048x1536) at either VCE or Cinesite. Most of the explosions on the CD's have been cropped to 720x540 in order to fit them all on the CD. Although you can order the original 2K versions from VCE, we found that the 720x540 versions are big enough for our needs (we did a bit of compositing in AE- nothing flash!).

BOOM!
Pyromania contains 4 main sets of explosions- Mushroom explosions, Zero-G Explosions, Fires and a section of missellaneous fires. The mushroom explosions are my personal favourite's. They contain 6 explosions, 4 scanned at VCE, and 2 at Cinesite. 4 of these explosions have matte's included on the CD and they run for an average of about 100-150 frames each. The explosions are often named ground explosions or "gravity challenged" explosions. They are set off from the ground and upon rising, they form a sort of rising plume, hence, the mushroom appearnace of the explosions.

Here we have a fantastic rolling fireball. A flame which rolls through a tunnel, Independence Day style, which would be great for use when doing something just like Independence Day. Create your CG buildings which are going to be destroyed, and make them do their exploding thing without creating CG fire. Then, in Adobe After Effects, composite the rolling fire explosion onto the animation. Of course it's not as simple as that, and will probably require touch up's, but the matte's are there to make life a little easier!

There's also a fantastic explosion set off outdoors. Whereas most of the explosions are shot against black backgrounds- making them only useful to dark shots- this one would work great in any shot. It truly is beautiful, they all are.

Zero-G Explosions are shot at a 90 degree angle straight up, this gives them the appearance that they are not affected by gravity, i.e, exploding in space. There are 7 explosions here, and they were all shot with a 20mm lens. Some of the explosions here give out debris or sparks, making them great for exploding space ships etc. These explosions that do give out sparks can be used to enhance the firey Zero-G explosions, and you can create a digital collage of fire and explosion... interesting! There's also a really nice, "Windy" explosion in here too. The explosion was shot with the wind blowing over the camera giving the appearance that it is actually the camera moving. This would be so cool in an action scene where the camera flies past as a space ship explodes.

Fires are a little less exciting, but interesting all the same. There are 5 explosions here all scanned at VCE. Thes type of shots wouldn't probably used in action movies, apart from one of them. The "Fire Trail" is a back to the future sort of image, and it could be composited onto a road with a little effort. Unfotunately matte's aren't included with this image. The other explosions here are trailing fires. They move in squares and circles; which is great for a logo or something. You could do your logo animation thing and then composite the fire around the edges.

Miscellaneous explosions are some of the most useful explosions. Although most do not contain mattes, the important ones do. There are 12 of these explosions, and they range from the wild to the wonderful, there really are a lot of very different explosions here. We have a car explosion, sarks, fire "banners", a match, and more. Although I didn't like the fire banners, which are basically fire trails but they are squares and rectangles, I suppose they could come in handy for logos.

My favourite of this category were the laser Hit Hoop and car explosion. The laser hit hoop looks very much like a digitally created image, and would make a fantastic... well... er... laser hit! The car explosion on the CD is breath-taking. The car is towered over by the huge explosion, and I think that anyone could think up 5 shots it would look good in. Unfortunately, setting up a shot in the exact same perspective as the shot filmed here would be costly- so I think that it would be best stick to a CG environment. You also get mattes and even a guide to show you where the car is underneath all those flames! This is one of the most beautiful explosions on the whole CD (see opposite).

TO BUY, OR NOT TO BUY... THAT, IS THE QUESTION.
If you're the kind of person who does a lot of Compositing, then this is something that you will both enjoy, and use often. Peter Kuran says that, "The audience for Pyromania are digital artists who produce work for television, commercials, games etc. The variety is such that any one sequence should easily pay for the disk when used for a job", and he's probably right.

The explosions included on the Pyromamia CD are of a huge variety, and explosions are very difficult to create using a 3D package like 3D Studio MAX or LightWave. It is extremely expensive to have explosions detonated especially for a specific sequence, so in that field this CD is ideal. However, in order for something like this to used to it's full potential the shot must be set up to cater for the explosion, not the other way round. It would be very difficult to be given a shot and then asked to compsite an explosion from the CD on top of that. After Effects would help, but the perspectives and lighting produced by the fires would never be perfect.

I think that overall the standard and quality of the explosions we see is very good, however, almost all of the explosions have been shot against black backgrounds, which isn't good for daylight shot's. VCE's answer ot this, "

Visual Concept Entertanment have done a great job with Pyromania Pro, and this along with the other CD's would make an invalubale addition to any digital artists collection. They're bound to come in handy some day, and for $300 you can't go wrong. Pyromainia Pro has a dominant thumbs up from me, I look forward to VCE's next release.

Paul Younghusband is the Editor of Visual Magic