[ZylonBane]

Okay, someone on the VBB asked about creating local nebulas in-game. I know this has been brought up many times before, but it got me thinking...

Suppose you created an .ani of a nebula poof doing a complete rotation. What would be the best way to continuously spawn a field of them? AFAIK, the only .ani's you can invoke in-game are:

ship explosions
ship explosion particles
impact explosions
shockwaves
beam charge particles
jump portals
thrusters
flak detonation
shield hit

[Sushi mk. 2]

Flak could be promising... make it silent, undamaging, and give it no model, so you only see the explosions. You could leave some of the buffeting in, to make it more interesting.  

[Fineus]

Indeed, you'd have to make the firing ship very far out and you'd have to make the target incredibly small but it could work, hard to say what it'd look like though...

[aldo_14]

There is sort of a way... create a many layered model (i.e. a sphere)...with a sutiable background placed to make it look a bit deeper from the outside.

Then - and this is the trick - don't UV map it atall, and set it to a navbouy.

If an object isn't UVMapped, FS shows it as partly transparent (at least with mine), so you'd have a semi translucent - albeit one coloured - nebula, with the background used to add variation and depth.

It's an idea....

[ZylonBane]

What if you created a model that consisted of nothing but a square, tagged as a thruster? That would give you a continuous, free-floating, fly-throughable .ani, wouldn't it?

Wait, are you allowed to specify thruster ani's on a per-model basis?

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ZylonBane's opinions do not represent those of the management.

[Bobboau]

no

I would use ether a weapon detenation ani or a beam charge ani.

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Bobboau, bringing you products that work.............. in theory

[Galemp]

Ooh! OOOOHH! Atmospheric combat! Get rid of the stars, make the background sky blue with a giant background bitmap, add a few 'localized nebula' white puffy clouds, and a planetary surface model. Bingo!

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"An evil mind is a constant comfort."
Revisit the Great War at http://www.angelfire.com/games4/freespace/

[Mad Bomber]

And of course, that was already done ages ago.  

[KARMA]

i've seen the sshots from robotech mod...how did they created the clouds?

[Nico]

I's just an edited nebula.

[ZylonBane]

By the way, has anyone ever managed to decipher the .neb files in sparky_fs2.vp?

[vadar_1]

just wondering... why would you want to create a localized nebula? usually they are hundreds of lightyears big... would it just be a small puff of hydrogen?

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Visions of Power - The Dark Planet Project Campaign