Ring Explosion Planar Shockwave in After Effects

Create cinematic 2D and / or 3D shockwaves to match your favourite space movies.

In this video, I talk you through how to create a planar shockwave (as first seen in Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country when the Klingon moon of Praxis explodes). The opening of that movie starts with a cataclysmic event which results in two shockwaves traveling through space. It’s an awesome opening scene and the VFX was reused in the Stargate movie and the Star Wars Special Editions. While exploding rings may not be scientifically likely, they do look pretty cool, but every tutorial I’ve seen on the topic has stuck to the 2D method. It turns out it is possible and quite simple to produce a 3D expanding ring using CC Particle World.

I cover both the 2D version, which uses a combination of Fractal Noise, Linear Wipes and Polar Coordinates to get the right look. Then I go on to use the included CC Particle World to generate a shockwave in an entirely different way.

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