Similar scenes from other movies that served as useful resources were: the final fight scene at the end of Dream Work’s How to Train Your Dragon which takes place within a huge cloud in the sky, and Paramount’s Stardust. In the movie stardust, there is a pirate ship that flies through the sky (for almost half the film), and the pirates on deck are lightning thieves, so there are some really good references of storm scenes that take place right inside the cloud!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EHP5eVkH6Y&p=B7A7226D23FE2FF1&playnext=1&index=39
This is part 3 (of 3) on the making of Dream Works The Prince of Egypt. They talk about all sorts of effects that they had to composite into the film, and the difficulties they faced. The movie was made in 1998 (approximately), so most of the effects were ground breaking at the time.
In one scene from the film, there are Hundreds of Hopping frogs, pestilent insects, Thousands of interactive locusts, clouds, lighting, and meteors on fire with small explosions as they hit the ground. This is that scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oX-Kcx2BAc
When breaking stuff in Maya, I tried to think outside the box as far as references go. I observed paper ripping. I ripped a page of a magazine, a blank white piece of printer paper, and a piece of construction paper. The magazine had the cleanest rip, and the page appeared thin in comparison to the other two pages. The construction paper had a very jagged rip, and different layers within the paper were revealed after the paper was ripped.
Over the summer there was a wall of shale near my friend’s beach house on Lake Erie. I was unable to visit it recently; however, over the summer I use to like throwing the shale at a concrete wall. Without leaving a mark on the concrete, the shale rock would explode into thousands of pieces (depending on the force that I threw it at.) This memory is a useful reference for observing how force and momentum influences how an object will shatter.
Other memories that serve as good references (for shattering objects) are when customers at Vidler’s accidently drop something fragile that breaks upon contact with the floor. (ALL SORTS OF OBJECTS HAVE BEEN BROKEN THIS WAY!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lpoeXpc7dQ&feature=related
Don’t mind the first 13 seconds which is a clip from shrek, but the rest is a clip from the movie Forrest Gump. 2 minutes and 36 seconds into this link Forrest says, “One day it started raining and it didn’t quit for four months.” This is a great scene from the movie, that shows all sorts of rain. The clip includes heavy rain, light rain, and even rain from ALL directions. For the last 5 seconds of the scene, the rain stops suddenly and the sun comes out. The lighting and effect of the scene completely changes.
This clip is really useful as a reference because of its many variances of rain. There are different times of day and different amounts of rain that are useful to study.
