Basically, being into CGI myself (studying it at school), that was the main difference which stood out for me in the SFX difference between Foundation Imaging and Netter Digital. FI mostly used lens flare effects combined with inferno and particle effects (at least that's what they are called in 3d Studio Max. In lightwave the term should be hypervoxels) to simulate effects. They occasionally used filmed footage of live pyrotechnics, that they themselves shot (according to several of JMS' posts), most notably for example, the shot of the Narn cruiser being hit in S2 intro, or all around Severed Dreams.
Netter Digital however, went the better looking way of acquiring royalty-free stock footage of explosions (at least that would be my guess, based mostly on the fact, that I've seen the exact same explosions used on other shows and video games, which have nothing to do with Netter Digital) in the CGI. This is the most commonly used way of doing CGI explosions, unless you are doing movie grade CGI, because these kind of things are extremely hard to achieve on a program such as lightwave.
Netter Digital however, went the better looking way of acquiring royalty-free stock footage of explosions (at least that would be my guess, based mostly on the fact, that I've seen the exact same explosions used on other shows and video games, which have nothing to do with Netter Digital) in the CGI. This is the most commonly used way of doing CGI explosions, unless you are doing movie grade CGI, because these kind of things are extremely hard to achieve on a program such as lightwave.
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