Rocket engine thermal cutaway
A 15-second vertical rocket engine cutaway where thermal windows reveal a white-hot core. Copy the prompt into Claude and edit the numbers and colours.
A glossy black-and-copper liquid rocket engine fires in portrait, its plume almost invisible. Flat thermal-camera windows slide across the frame and recolour what lies behind, turning the skin cryogenic blue and the core white-hot. The film follows the propellant through pumps, injector, ignition and the cooled wall, then lands on a brand lock-up.
Change the hook headline, thrust line and brand, plus the flame temperature, turbopump speed and chamber pressure readouts. Recolour the warm block, cool steel, amber block, studio backdrop, methane and liquid oxygen. At 15 seconds and 9:16, it suits Reels, Shorts and TikTok launches for engine makers or space startups.
Use it for
- Rocket startup launch teaser
- Aerospace engineering explainer short
- Engine maker brand intro
Specs
- Length: 15 seconds
- Format: vertical 9:16 (1080x1920), 30 fps
- Built with: Three.js in HyperFrames
- Category: 3D
What happens, beat by beat
- 0.0-1.0 Hook. Whole engine firing, low three-quarter, low-key. A narrow window slides in from the left across the pale violet plume and lands its reticle on the first shock disc; at 0.46 s the headline [3,500°C]…
- 1.0-2.0 Profile macro. Black bell silhouette, copper lip, a strip highlight travelling round; a window over the skin reads cryogenic blue (about -165°C).
- 2.0-3.0 Reveal. A glowing orange section edge slices the front half away top to bottom in 0.6 s. Pumps start; a dark HUD panel wipes open top-left with an RPM counter.
- 3.0-4.5 Oxidiser pump. Looking down into the cut pump; inducer and impeller smear with blur that grows with RPM; pale cyan streaks pour down the inlet. A tall window rides down the shaft, cold at the…
- 4.5-6.0 Fuel line. Follow blue methane down to the nozzle manifold. At 5.5 s the counter stops dead on [36,000] RPM with a one-frame flash and a scale punch.
- 6.0-7.0 Injector. Grazing under the copper face inside the chamber: hundreds of thin cyan spray cones hang from the ceiling. HUD switches to CHAMBER PRESSURE.
- 7.0-8.0 Ignition. The centre torch fires at 7.05; a flame ring sweeps across the face in about 8 frames, shown white on navy in a window.
- 8.0-9.0 Chamber. Flame column into the throat; counter lands on [300] BAR at 8.6. A wall-to-wall window plus a "≈3 mm" dimension from hot core to cold liner.
- 9.0-10.5 Wall macro. Throat wall in section: jacket, fuel channel with streaming flow, copper liner, hot gas. Split windows (cold half, hot half) share one legend. Caption [COOLED BY ITS OWN FUEL].
- 10.5-12.0 Bell. Looking down on the ring of 180 milled channels in the cut; the window tracks along it, then the camera pulls back.
Materials and light
- Black oxide: satin MeshPhysical (metalness 0.72, roughness about 0.3, light clearcoat) with noise-driven roughness and tone breakup. Copper liner straw-tinted near the throat, bronze down the bell. Steel at roughness…
- Two procedural PMREM studios: a near-black room with hard vertical strips and a hot top card for the black parts, and a brighter one with soft gradients for steel and…
- Charcoal seamless with a soft pool behind the subject; bookends low-key with a plume halo, floor glow, rim light and point lights in the bell and under the exit so…
- Flame and plume are raymarched against scene depth: faint violet-blue, shock diamonds every exit diameter (cone shells plus mach discs), heat haze masked by the plume's heat.
What you can change
- Expose as variables: [headline], [thrust line], [brand], [peak temperature], [RPM], [pressure], and colours [warm], [cool], [amber], [backdrop], [fuel], [oxidiser]. Counters, chips and legends all read…
How the prompt opens
Make a 15-second, 9:16 (1080x1920), 30 fps explainer of a liquid rocket engine in Three.js, driven by one paused GSAP timeline. A glossy black-and-copper engine fires with a near-invisible plume; flat "thermal camera" windows slide over the frame and re-colour what is behind them, revealing a white-hot core. The engine is sliced open like a museum section and the film follows the propellant: pumps, injector, ignition, the cooled wall, full fire, brand lock-up. The brand is an invented example, [your brand, e.g. an engine maker called VEKTA]; every number is a placeholder.
The full prompt runs 1,104 words. Copy it free (2 a day) from this page.
Copy the prompt into Claude, or pull the scene into Claude Code and render the MP4 on your machine: how it works.