[heretic]

anyone got any pointers?

[This message has been edited by heretic (edited 06-09-2001).]

[Pez]

It depends if gonna do animations or just 1 still frame renders . You could do the easy way with just a long textured cone with some glow on it (I made it this way in this pic: http://www.3dap.com/hlp/freespace/art/misc/rakshasa.jpg  )

Or if you wanna animate it you should probably use the particle system. Styxx would know more about this.

Pez

[heretic]

Thanks  

let me give it a shot

[Fattony]

Although this method won't make FS looking beams, I thought you might wanna know.

Make a free-spot light and knock both the radius's down as far as they will go. Add a volume fog effect (I think thats in the Atmosphere part of the lights modifying pallet). Add some noise and change the colours to whatever you want. Tada, a laser made from actual light instead of some cylinder trick.

[DragonClaw]

   Awesome pic dude!!!

How'd you get those bright spots on the engines and how did you get that awesome flash on the beam and how did you do the explosion?

Hehe... I ask too many questions

------------------
    -Director of the staff of Hidden Terror.
   -Fleet Admiral of The Ancients Armada

         

The fear always controls our attitude, let us fear no more!

[wEvil]

use a cylinder with lens FX glow.

at the beam origin add in an omnilight with lens FX added in.

Particle systems dont work well for beams, cause you need a very high density.

Volume lights are OK but dont give the look and are also hard to control

hope this helped  


------------------
 http://www.wevil.co.uk  - how NOT to do a website

[heretic]

k I got the beams, and the glows, but now for the affected ship- any ideas on how to do the explosions?

[Starwing]

FS2 explosion ani.

[DragonClaw]

   And how might you go about including the ani into the render?
As in:
I know how to get the pcx file from the ani and convert it to whatever, but how to you get the file into the render?

------------------
    -Director of the staff of Hidden Terror.
   -Fleet Admiral of The Ancients Armada

         

The fear always controls our attitude, let us fear no more!

[Starwing]

That's how I do it in TS4: I convert a frame of the ani to a bmp, create a transparent texture map from it, apply this to a simple single face object, and place this object wherever I want.

[wEvil]

i'd use about 6 sprays with 2 glow effects (yellow inner and red outer)

then a particle array to frag the object in question.

------------------
 http://www.wevil.co.uk  - how NOT to do a website

[heretic]

I need to find me an image editor then, I have nothing to even view a bitmap other than paint  


I'll see what I can do- you will all see the results tonight  

[Setekh]