TUTORIAL ¹ 1 / TUTORIAL ¹ 2 / TUTORIAL ¹ 3 / TUTORIAL ¹ 4

TUTORIAL ¹ 3: part 1. part 2

#2 - quick and easy method create a pulse plasma shoot

Ok, so you're doing a scene with weapons fire. you've got the straight beams down, but you're stuck on the quick pulse weapons. you've tried squashed spheres, capsules, etc., but it looks like your ship is firing glowing pills.

i had the same problem for a long time, until i saw a star wars image someone did that used mapped planes for the laser blasts. i then realized that i was going about everything all wrong.

1. You'll need an opacity/mask map.

I had made it in Photoshop, using blurred ellipses in varying shades of gray, hand-retouched with the airbrush, then with a bit of noise added.

Now in looked like this:

 

2. then, you'll need to open max and make some planes that roughly correspond in dimension to your map, and arrange them in a cross shape when seen from the end:



3. when mapped, they should look like this:



4. go into the material editor, and make a mix map. use the bitmap you made into the mask slot, and put some colors in the color swatch boxes. color 2 should be close to white, and color one should be darker, like this:



5. then make another mix map, and put the first in the color 2 slot, with a darker color in the color 1 swatch. the bitmap should go in the mask slot again:

6. create a standard material, 2-sided (important), with self-illumination at 100, and all specularity and gloss at 0. place the second mix map in the diffuse slot at 100, and the bitmap you made in the opacity slot at 100. apply it to the planes, and do a test render. it should look something like this:



7. then, place an omni light along with the planes, and line it up with the brightest part of the map in the viewport. go into video post and add a lens flare, set it to the omni, and tweak the settings to your liking. i used only glow, rays, and star to get this effect:



8. when you place it in a scene, don't forget to adjust the settings for the omni light so that it casts appropriately colored light on objects near it:



you can use this technique for a variety of weapon effects, such as disruptor bolts, photon or quantum torps, etc., just by tweaking the size of the planes, the colors of the mix maps, and the lens flare or glow settings. users of other apps should easily be able to adapt this to their progams as well.