Uploaded June 2019 | Updated September 2026, 13 hours ago
Making a tornado is one of the biggest challenges in VFX, so I made two. ;) Just kidding, but it's actually more difficult than I thought. If you don't believe me, download Blender and try to make one. Now I have whole lot more respect for the VFX teams that made "Twister" and "Mission to Mars".
I first tried to use particles to get a more granular look like in the mars movie, but I soon realized that this many particles wasn't something Blender could handle, also the render times became ugly slow. So I switched to a smoke simulation which also helped to achieve more natural dynamics. Instead of using high-res smoke I simulated only with low resolution and added the details as shader, that saved a lot of memory.
The landscape is entirely shader generated and completely procedural as well. It is mapped onto a sphere, so that you can actually move the camera far away from the planet to see its shape.
Visuals by Kai Kostack
Music:
Valiant by PeriTune (CC-BY)
Unknown World 2 by PeriTune (CC-BY)
Animated and rendered in Blender
kostackstudio.de
Making a tornado is one of the biggest challenges in VFX, so I made two. ;) Just kidding, but it's actually more difficult than I thought. If you don't believe me, download Blender and try to make one. Now I have whole lot more respect for the VFX teams that made "Twister" and "Mission to Mars".
I first tried to use particles to get a more granular look like in the mars movie, but I soon realized that this many particles wasn't something Blender could handle, also the render times became ugly slow. So I switched to a smoke simulation which also helped to achieve more natural dynamics. Instead of using high-res smoke I simulated only with low resolution and added the details as shader, that saved a lot of memory.
The landscape is entirely shader generated and completely procedural as well. It is mapped onto a sphere, so that you can actually move the camera far away from the planet to see its shape.
Visuals by Kai Kostack
Music:
Valiant by PeriTune (CC-BY)
Unknown World 2 by PeriTune (CC-BY)
Animated and rendered in Blender
kostackstudio.de
