Launch and land a rocket in one continuous shot, with Blender smoke simulations
A heavy-lift rocket's whole mission in 26 seconds and one unbroken camera move. It opens low beside the frosted rocket at a coastal pad at golden hour; the engines light, a simulated wall of steam and fire boils out of the flame trench, and the camera cranes up and back to show the pad engulfed. It rides up alongside the rocket on a long lens into a darkening sky where the exhaust opens into a glowing bell, holds on the booster through staging and the flip, follows it back down through the entry burn as the coast comes up, and swings round to watch the landing burn, the legs and touchdown in a second smoke simulation, ending on the smoking booster at dusk. Everything is Python that Claude Code wrote for Blender: the site, the vehicle, the flight, a clock that compresses eight minutes into 26 seconds, the camera, two Mantaflow bakes and the Cycles render. You get four exact prompts with a check for each and the complete source.
Before you start
Uses your AI plan
You’ll need
Claude Code
BlBlender
CyCycles
MaMantaflow
PyPython
FFFFmpeg
GPGPU
What it uses
4 prompts to your coding assistantCounts toward your assistant’s usual allowance. Nothing extra to buy.
The tutorial
Free with an account · 4 steps
Free with an account. Your assistant runs on the plan you already have.
The recipe
4 steps, from nothing to yours.
Every step gives you the action, the exact input (a prompt, settings or a file) and a check to compare your result against the original.
Step 01
Build the launch site, the vehicle and the sky
Step 02
Fly the mission and bake the two smoke simulations
Step 03
Fly the one-take camera and drive every effect from the clock
YoursStep 04
Light, render and encode
Exactly what the creator used
Claude Code
Any recent version
Blender
Any recent version
Cycles
Any recent version
Mantaflow
Any recent version
Python
Any recent version
FFmpeg
Any recent version
GPU
Any recent version
Claude Code — Claude Opus 5.5 (claude-opus-5-5) — wrote and ran every script — your Claude plan
Blender — 5.2.2 LTS (Linux x64 tarball, run headless with --factory-startup) — modelling, Mantaflow gas simulation, Cycles rendering, compositor bloom — free, GPL
Cycles — built into Blender 5.2.2, CUDA backend — path tracing on the GPU (OptiX failed to initialise under WSL2, CUDA works) — free
Mantaflow — built into Blender 5.2.2 — the two smoke-and-fire simulations, baked on the CPU to OpenVDB — free
Python — Blender's bundled 3.13 for the scene; system python3 with numpy + Pillow for the checks and the encode — numbers, contact sheets — free
FFmpeg — 4.4.2 — master and Reels encodes, grain and vignette, contact sheet — free
GPU — NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti, 12 GB, in WSL2 on Windows — Cycles — your hardware
Any CUDA or OptiX card with 8 GB or more should work; the render used about 4 GB of GPU memory. On a CPU alone the render would take days.
Provenance: Recorded September 28, 2026: Claude Code with Claude Opus 5.5 (claude-opus-5-5); Blender 5.2.2 LTS (Linux x64, headless, --factory-startup), Mantaflow gas simulations baked on the CPU (pad: 256 cells, 235 frames, 69 min; landing: 200 cells, 196 frames, 33 min), Cycles on an RTX 3080 Ti with CUDA under WSL2 at 1080×1920, 30 fps, 26.0 s (780 frames), 36 max samples adaptive (threshold 0.04; the first 55 frames at 40 samples and step rate 4) with OpenImageDenoise, biased volume ray marching at step rate 5, 180° shutter in mission time; render 81 min. FFmpeg 4.4.2: master 72.2 MB (CRF 15), Reels copy 30.8 MB (CRF 18, aq-mode 3, maxrate 30M, faststart), no audio. No external images, footage, textures, HDRIs, models or generative-media models were used.
Launch and land a rocket in one continuous shot, with Blender smoke simulationsUses your AI plan
Claude Code