Star Wars starship blasters

Anyone know a good way of making these? I am using a cylinder object with color and using glow and corona. It just doesn't seem realistic. Can anyone help? This is in Lightwave 8

[evil_genius_180]

Moved to discussions. Have a nice day.

[startrekfan001]

actually, i alway model such things. starship blasters, ey? I learned a way to make a blast weapon from a single plane object.

Step 1:
Create a plane cube from about 40 pixels height and 400 pixels width (you can change the width if you want your blast longer or shorter)

Step 2:
Get a transparency texture. i must be a circular object, fading out to the edges. the white must be non-transparent when you apply it, and the black should be transparent. here is an example:


Step 3:
Apply the transparency texture. it should be stretched along the long side of your plane cube. Now, go to a texture option that you can define in your program as "emmissive". Turn it to 1 or 2. (2 makes it more brighter). It comes to the point that you should make the plane cube emit light. like a lamp or so, you know what i mean? Now give a color to the emmissive option. i'd say green, but you may choose any color for such a blast.

Step 4:
into a scene, if you want to make an image, just put it somewhere and turn on the option to make the plane cube face the camera, so that you always see the side. (its a 2 dimensional object so you must make sure its not visible for the camera.)

if you want to make an animation, simply keep the option for facing the camera with its side turned on, then put it at the blast source, and make it follow a path to its hit object. you're done. This ALSO saves you TONS of rendering time.

I hope this little tutorial was helpful.

[gmd3d]

first class lession .. I will give it a go sometime once I have finished my model

You can also use a volume light. I'm not too familar with lightwave, but assuming it's similar to max, you can create a parallel projected light that has begining and ending attenuation (sized accordingly) and then apply a volume light environment effect to the light.

The only real advantage this has over the previously mentioned method is that the result will be volumemetric; particularly noticable if you add noise to the volume light. The disadvantage is that the render times will be much longer then the adove method, but the result might be worth it depending on what you're looking for.

I hope that helps. I apologize in advance if that doesn't translate into lightwave.

Ta,
N. Wilde.

[jf3000]

Thanks for the tutorial, always up for an easier way of making things. How come there are no tutorials to download?

[evil_genius_180]

Because people haven't uploaded any tutorials.

[startrekfan001]

long time no see :p i've got some other tutorials if you like... they were posted previously on the www.trekmeshes.ch forum, i'll repost them here. i hope its of good use to anyone.

No 1:

Warp Stars
check my latest pic to see what this effect will look like.
1. first of all, you create a pipe. make sure it faces the camera, so that the camera is looking straight into it.
2. next, get a simple starfield texture from the internet or create one yourself.
3. now apply the texture to the pipe, and make sure its UV'ed in such a way that its applied to the SIDE of the pipe, and then elongated to fit the side of the pipe. this is what creates the elongated stars.
4. now choose a colored noise texture as diffuse, take the starfield texture as transparency texture, so the pipe will be invisible except for the stars, and use it also as emmisive texture, so that the stars give light. the diffuse texture makes the stars have a bit green or red or blue or yellow tone, randomly to each star, to give it a better look, not just white.
5. position your ships inside the pipe, take a starfield texture as background,(you can use the same starfield texture as mentioned earlier) and render up. Anim8or does also not support hardware rendering, so everything goes by software. and thats a lot slower then hardware rendering. even with software rendering this took 8 seconds to render at a resolution of 800×600.

No 2:

phaser effect
1. first, create a picture of say, 20×800. edit it in an imaging program to look as a faser, and save it.
2. next, make a plane cube from 20 by 800 or 1200. (larger can be done too)
3. now apply the faser texture as diffuse and emmisive, and make emmisive a little more intens then youre used to.
4. create a new texture, from also 20×800. this is your transparency texture. make the middle white, and fade to the edges to black. in your 3d program, make sure it recognizes that it must make the black transparent.
5. apply it to the plane cube too, and then copy/paste the cube, and turn it 90 degrees in top view. in top view it now should look like a small cross, and in front view it should look like nothing's changed.
6. put one end in the place where it should be coming from, and the other end to the place it must hit. (elongate it to fit perfectly)
note: when using fasers in animations, its easier to use particles. however, it is possible to make videos using this method. for images, this should save you quite some render time.

No 3:

a way to make low-poly warp flashes

step 1:
make a plane cube, from 100 height and 25 width. ofcourse, you may adjust this later on.

step 2:
apply this texture as transparency AND diffuse AND emmissive texture. ofcourse, the black in it must be transparent.


step 3:
in scene mode, to make it appear as a real flash in an animation, simply make its size go from 0 to 1 to 0 in like 3-4 seconds. for an image, you may randomly place it and size it. make sure the flat side faces the camera.

well, this is what i've got guys. lemme know what ya think!

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks for the tuts. And the good thing is that these should work in about any 3D program.

[harada357]

I just got Lightwave - I am making my way through the tutorials. I don't even have the modeler working yet. I can't even think about Effects. I am new to the forums. The gallery is AWESOME! Thank for sharing. GC

[jf3000]

Welcome aboard harada357, I am sure you will get alot out of this forum, and strive forwards in making something spectacular for all of us to see down the track, good luck.