Declan Murphy

I’ve been developing my audio-visual skills outside of my coursework, creating visuals to play behind live DJs, and I wanted to incorporate this skill into this project.

This project is a mix of a 3D modelled environment of the Warehouse Project in Manchester, chosen for its instantly recognisable visuals and impressive scale. Having the freedom to create the club visuals over 12 weeks allowed me more control than any visuals I’ve worked on in the past. Here, I was able to sync everything to the exact beat I wanted, resulting in some cool effects. As for the venue, it was trickier, working from the floor plans and promotional pictures available online, even turning to TikTok videos to better understand the stage layout, to create an accurate model. Final touches of lighting and ambient smoke completed the scene, resulting in the final project you see today.

My dissertation project, Exploring Digital Techniques for Creating Engaging Visuals in CGI Explosions, is centred on creating a series of explosion simulations to be placed in a character-customiser-like interface, allowing research participants to ‘build their own’ explosions based on a series of prompts.

The main focus of this research paper is to identify the details viewers expect to see in media featuring explosions and use this as a guide in creating explosion visuals. The full paper goes into detail on the types and characteristics of explosions, as well as the techniques developed to create a sensationalised experience for audiences. The project involved creating a series of explosion visuals through using Chaos Phoenix. The full experience was created using Unity to compile the individual renders and provide the research participants with an interactive experience.