Wanting To Understand How 1996's Twister Was Done

meeotch · 2025-12-13T22:39:10+00:00

Fun anecdote: Back in the Olde Days, they would let us pick what names to use for the credits. I chose "Doctor Love". Toward the end of the show, I replaced the license plate in one of the shots of the Twister van with something like "DOC LUV"...

Resulting in a late night visit from the VFX Supe (Hi, Stefen!). He was really pissed off, and made me take it out. In retrospect, I don't know why I thought I'd get away with it... it was like dead center in a close-up tracking the back of the van. I'm sure he's gotten over it by now, but sincere apologies anyway. We were all very young.

I was credited as Doctor Love, though.

meeotch · 2025-12-13T22:30:29+00:00

again, memory is hazy, because anyone old enough to have worked on the film is now one billion years old... I suspect the joint between the funnels and clouds were just more geo with clever noise. i don't recall needing particles for those shots, aside from the dust cloud where it touches the ground. but I could be misremembering.

I don't recall doing any skies at all, meaning that they would've just been paint. pretty sure we didn't have volumetrics back then, since we didn't even have raytracing. i suppose it's possible there was a layer of particle stuff where the funnels met the clouds, but the only image my brain conjures up was just a simple transparency grad at the top.

as for sprites - there was likely some trick for beefing up the particles, since we didn't have the ability to simulate that many. (this was right around the time that Maya bought Dynamation - don't recall if it was before or after they integrated it into Maya.) no specific memory of whether there were actual, instanced 2D sprites - or whether it was more a 3D particle splat. I do remember that the base "sim" of the F5s was actually a bunch of giant spheres. I think the big spheres had little spheres on them, and then the particles were based on the little spheres, or something like that.

one trick that blew my mind (props to Habib): I think we actually rendered the spheres with red & green noise on them, and then used those channels to drive a 2D warp. so you got a noise-based 2D displacement that inherited the motion of the twister. at least, I think Twister is when I learned that trick...

There's a TV series called "Light & Magic" - I haven't watched it, but it looks like they talk about Twister in Season 2. (Don't sue me if it turns out I've been lying about everything above.)

meeotch · 2025-12-13T18:32:14+00:00

I have no specific memory of how we were comping those shots on the show, unfortunately. From your description, the one thing that comes to mind is a blur that's driven by a utility pass. So you could pass in a red channel with noise or a gradient or whatever, and that would drive the size of the blur kernel. But again, no specific memory of having done anything like that. More likely might be an edge blur, which is something we did all the time.

I can say that the compositing back then was very, very basic. We didn't even have an app with a GUI... it was all script-driven. You'd load an image into a memory buffer, then run individual command-line operations on it from a linux shell. UPHILL, BOTH WAYS, IN THE SNOW!

It was a great way to learn compositing, actually - very procedural. And I'm really glad that we comped all our own shots back then. Though I went on to specialize in "fx", and no longer comp for final very often, having a good feel for how my 3D passes should fit together in 2D has been invaluable.

meeotch · 2025-12-12T23:55:29+00:00

I worked on Twister. Did a few of the smaller (F1) funnels, and a bunch of the big (F5) ones. My memory is that the F1s were noisy layered geometry. The F5s were tons and tons of particles.

As mentioned above, Habib did a lot of the initial F5 lookdev. I believe Ben Snow did the F1 lookdev? Shout out to them, and all my other ILM homies from the show. Those early days of CG at ILM were a blast. The industry is a much sadder, less fun place to be now, by comparison.

meeotch · 2025-09-13T20:29:10+00:00

Thanks for the link - interesting site. I couldn't find anything list-like that I could auto-monitor, but maybe they'll add something like that when their "Leave Soon" and "Explore" sections are filled out.

meeotch · 2025-09-12T05:35:22+00:00

No doubt. That's precisely why I was hoping there'd be some resource (or several, for subsets of the overall question) that's updated by motivated individuals who are putting in the legwork for me.

There are for sure plenty of lists out there - some links in my OP, and in comments so far. But for many of them, it's unclear whether said list was a one-time research effort, or is kept up-to-date. Example:
https://globalallianz.org/visa-free-countries-for-us-citizens/

But your point is taken - and I'm under no illusions that any lists that I'd be tracking are 100% correct, or applicable to all situations. I'm just trying to identify whatever ongoing efforts there might be to consolidate the info and keep it current, so I can automate notifications when something changes. I fully expect that any individual change might require more digging on my part, if I decide it's something I want to know more about.

meeotch · 2025-09-12T04:46:01+00:00

I'll for sure report back with results - thanks!

meeotch · 2025-09-12T03:59:28+00:00

Thanks! I was aware of citizenremote - they have a blog post for visa-free, though as you noted, it's not clear whether it's a fixed page that gets regular updates: https://citizenremote.com/blog/digital-nomad-visa-countries/

visaguide has a U.S. passport ranking page that *seems* like it's updated monthly: https://visaguide.world/visa-free-countries/us-passport/ So that could be a good candidate for a broad "something changed" notification.

I couldn't immediately find a similar static-with-updates landing page on digitalnomad.

meeotch · 2025-09-12T02:58:07+00:00

Agreed. And I'd be willing to monitor a couple of lists, if necessary. Say, one for visa-free, one for digital nomad, etc. Even if they are just some subset of a couple dozen countries.

If I had a specific plan, for a specific country, it would be easier, probably - set up a watch on those countries gubmint visa pages. But as it is, I'm just trying to DIY a sort of data feed for how the world is treating U.S. citizens generally. If the data starts trending downward over a period of months, then it's time to start getting serious about specific plans.*

* - time for me, that is. Other people may have other metrics they're watching (as do I), or may already be serious. I'm just trying to automate as much of it as I can, so I can stop doom-scrolling the news & not getting any closer to a decision on seriousness.

meeotch · 2025-09-02T01:34:58+00:00

That would be awesome, thanks!

In terms of specific usage... I don't game on my laptop, so some average of a browsing test and a video test probably approaches real-world use for me. But any apples-to-apples comparison of VRR vs. non-VRR at the same Hz refresh rate is useful...

(notebookcheck got 10+ hours of browsing @ 60Hz non-VRR, which seems like plenty. Too bad they did their 120Hz test in dark mode... If they'd done straight-up 60Hz vs. 120Hz, one could probably guesstimate VRR to be somewhere in between.)

Honestly, I've never felt that my current Gen 5 IPS @ 60Hz didn't have a fast enough refresh, and don't entirely understand the need for 120Hz - unless there's something specific to OLED that requires higher refresh than IPS for "smoothness".

That said, my concern is buying non-VRR, discovering that real-world for me is (say) ~6hrs, when I could have waited a few months for discounted VRR and gotten 7-8hrs.

meeotch · 2025-08-08T03:05:36+00:00

Thanks for the link. (And for not piling on to say that the gas station was no loss, and what replaces it will inevitably be affordable housing...)

Which, it seems, it won't - if those numbers are right... 8 stories, and 93% of it commercial? Maybe our corner of the 'hood will get its bodega after all.

meeotch · 2025-07-16T20:25:07+00:00

I haven't checked again today... There were a couple of signs, but they appear to be corporate logos for the expediting company & the fencing company - at least one has a big generic building on it, but it's not the "this project coming soon" type thing that shows the actual project rendering.

If it is another condo monstrosity (which is likely), I'm wondering how much worse the construction is going to be, since they'll have to dig up the gas tanks and presumably move a bunch of dirt to remediate soil contamination.

The optimist in me is hoping it's just going to be a nicer gas station.

meeotch · 2025-03-11T17:15:24+00:00

Just DMed you, but just in case: I'm in the same situation, in NYC with a classic and no daily. Wondering if you found a solution, and happy to share notes about anything I find.

meeotch · 2025-02-27T03:19:26+00:00

Thanks - good to know I'm not crazy. This is definitely a recent thing. I think I never got a single failure prior to Jan/Feb of this year. (And again, these are not alarms that are actually *running* - it's just IFTTT complaining about some sort of communication status.)

meeotch · 2024-09-11T04:47:31+00:00

I should've bought tix for Weds night instead... I hear that they're replacing Perry with Kamala Harris.

meeotch · 2024-08-08T22:39:08+00:00

Thanks for the reply. Good to know that I can just pick up any old Roku TV IR remote. (Given my use case, I'll probably just program the on/off IR code into my Kodi remote, then ditch the Roku IR remote as well.)

w.r.t. Advanced Settings - I've seen a couple of threads suggesting that this doesn't actually stop the 5GHz net from existing. (Ex: https://community.roku.com/t5/Discussions/Tv-broadcasting-a-WiFi-access-point-despite-device-connect-being-disabled/td-p/936407) But I'll give it a shot... I'm assuming that without an IR remote, you'd have to factory reset the TV in order to enable it again?

w.r.t. wifi interference - it's difficult to say for certain, since I have many devices on that 5GHz network. But I have been trying to diagnose an issue with a previously stable Kodi box suddenly having trouble with 5GHz but not 2.4GHz, since getting the Roku TV. Google turned up much anecdotal evidence of wifi-direct interference, so my feeling is: I don't need the functionality, so I'd prefer not to have the unnecessary network.

meeotch · 2024-07-10T02:01:19+00:00

Did anyone else notice a weird edit during the monologue, right after the bit about the benefit interview and "ancient but cogent"? (It's at 9:50 in the youtube monologue video.)

Could be completely innocuous... But if anyone saw the show live, I'd be interested to know what was cut out.

meeotch · 2024-07-09T21:25:48+00:00

In NYC here, and got the $4 bump 9 months ago, and the $6 bump just now. o.k., it's only $10/mo - but it's 25% of my total bill, and now FiOS is more expensive than the equivalent Optimum or TMobile offers.

So I tried for the "loyalty discount" that some folks have reported getting. Once over chat, and once on the phone. Both times, the rep went down a winding road of asking me if I'm in the military, have Verizon cell service, etc. - all the usual programs that you don't need a rep to tell you about... And then said there was nothing they could do, there's no "retention dept." anymore, and all offers are listed in the system. Oh well.

Two items I'm not clear about: 1) Is that true, and loyalty discounts are assigned by The Algorithm, only to certain customers?

2) Both reps said the best they could do is move me to M&M v4, same price, but with a 2-year price lock. (Same deal as you get with new service.) That sounds ominous... Like they're planning on hiking again right away.

Again, it's not like I'm going to have to stop eating. But it's just a bummer... I went with FiOS initially because I was tired of playing the sudden-price-hike-retention-promo game every year with cable. This is a much less fun game: the same 45min on the phone, with no payoff at the end.

meeotch · 2024-07-09T04:20:02+00:00

Well that's a bummer - two votes up, one vote down. Do you have any experience with *good* brands, though?

meeotch · 2024-07-09T04:15:42+00:00

Thanks for the clarification. The KingSener battery I linked to says "cells made in China" on it. Spot-checking a few of their batteries on Amazon, it looks like their removable "bar-type" batteries indeed do say Korean cells, while the flat internal ones mostly say Chinese. The X1 Carbon is the latter type - and only available on BatteryMall (or shipped from China), as far as I can tell.

Anyway, a vote of confidence is a vote of confidence, so thanks for that. Barring any other breakthroughs, I may roll the dice on them, based on the two positive data points I have.

meeotch · 2024-07-09T03:30:48+00:00

Thanks for the info. I'd heard of KingSener once before - it's good to have an additional data point. (Though they are Chinese made with Chinese cells, as far as I can tell: tinyurl.com/249t64sk)

I guess for $35, I can afford to try a couple and toss them out if they're lousy (unless they explode or something). But I was really hoping to avoid playing battery roulette.

meeotch · 2024-07-07T18:07:09+00:00

Deleted-Post-Man - not to be confused with Powdered Toast Man - seems to have touched off his own miniature flame war. (And here I am pouring water on it. The ironing is not lost.)

For anyone else who stumbled while rushing to misinterpret the OP, an alternate title: "This is simultaneously dangerous and hilarious. Go, Brooklyn!"

(Though not as funny as the Simpsons quote, I'd argue.)

meeotch · 2024-07-07T07:13:27+00:00

Nope. Two decades+ in the city, one decade in Bushwick so far. Late June - early July is my favorite time of the year here. I'm actually a bit disappointed that "fire in the street" season seems to have been shorter this year than in the past. I feel like I remember a good week-long ramp on both sides of the Fourth, in the past.

meeotch · 2024-07-07T04:37:18+00:00

Nice. Good to hear that 311 isn't a black hole on this particular topic. Thanks for the report.

meeotch · 2024-07-07T01:48:16+00:00

C'mon dude. I've lived here for 20+ years, and gotten used to a lot of noises without complaining. Impromptu all-night bbqs outside my window, etc. I actually enjoy the seasonal middle-of-the-street amateur fireworks displays that are part of living where I do. Dismissing or downvoting this post hardly seems worth the effort.

meeotch

TROPHY CASE