Pulse Weaponry

[Deleted User]

Hey, I was trying to create a nice pulse weapon effect, i would prefer an animated material for the pulse but if unanimated could look good im open to all ideas.

If Anyone could help it would be really appreciated
Thanks for your time guys,
Armorhead

Guerrilla

Could you post a screenshot or something? 'Pulse' weapon doesn't really narrow it down.

[Deleted User]

indeed. are you wanting a laer/phaser deal or a wave weapon?

fluxfire

I think he is refering to the style of pule you get from DS9's Defiant. or a disruptor type blast. But then again i could be wrong.

Guerrilla

Which is why we need something to work with.

[Deleted User]

Ahhh sorry for not posting examples, but yes fluxfire is along the right lines




Another example would be the banshee or ghost from halo 2.

Sorry again, and thanks for your time,
Armorhead

PiperTheGreat

aha, this sounds interesting, i too, would like to know how to make a convincing pulse effect, i've done one, but i'm not sure how realistic it is

fluxfire

Piperthegreat

aha, this sounds interesting, i too, would like to know how to make a convincing pulse effect, i've done one, but i'm not sure how realistic it is

Keep in mind he was askin how to do this in MAX, I am not sure if you can adapt it to truespace or not?

[Deleted User]

almost everything can transfer in some way... I made a phaser that could be shortened to look like that, I'll see if i can dig it up

lennier1

Didn´t Skye Dodds once write a short tutorial on the trick used for energy projectiles in most games? Basically you just map a teardrop-shaped blurred outline onto a plane in the diffuse (to control a color gradient) and alpha channels, rotate a copy of it by 90° along the main axis, slap an omni light in the center and tweak the whole thing with glow and star streaks in post-processing. The complicated part seemed to be finding out which settings gave satisfying results for a specific situation.

PiperTheGreat

fluxfire wrote: »

Piperthegreat


Keep in mind he was askin how to do this in MAX, I am not sure if you can adapt it to truespace or not?

you got a point there, although some things shouldn't be too hard to translate, although i may have to be creative

the basic ideas should be the same though, e.g, put a plane here, a light there etc.

fluxfire

Yeah i supose that is true of most 3D programs they all use the same basics, of sorts.

Still would be nice to find a particle weapon tut

efritsch

fluxfire wrote: »

Still would be nice to find a particle weapon tut

Like a particle beam weapon?

Using this tutorial/thread I made this scene.

fluxfire

efritsch

Using this tutorial/thread I made this scene.

That is a .max file. Not exactly a tut on how to do that.....but usefull none the less

Fabio

original pulse fire in B5 was basically 1 -> 3 animated light flares - try that

[Deleted User]

This looks like that ^ With some glow (either that or a painting )

efritsch

fluxfire wrote: »

That is a .max file. Not exactly a tut on how to do that.....but usefull none the less

True, but the basics, as he ran them down, should be the same.

Particles, gravity, textures and some glow effects. I would even think that it might apply to pulse weaponry.

fluxfire

True but i am still learning LW so most of what yall say makes sense but i still have more of a hard time figuring out how to do it then yall do

Aceman

There was a tutorial on how to do this, which I think I still have on my home computer, if I can find it I'll post it for you.

But the gist of the tutoral used two planes perpendicular to one another with a texture applied to create the burst effect.

I'll post an example shortly if I can.

Aceman

Aceman

http://www.scifi-meshes.com/tutorials/

This folder contains all of the old SPECIAL EFFECTS tutorials related to phasers and photons.

I'll post a very brief and EFFECTIVE tutorial on pulse phasers in just a few moments.

Aceman

Aceman

OK.. here is my quick tutorial that I did in about 20 minutes. I'll show you how, but I'm not going to provide the files, because I feel that 80% of learning is doing.. and you'll only learn by DOING this.

Pulse Phasers with just planes and maps. (should work with most 3D applications)

1. In you painting progam you will need to create two maps. For this example I made one 200x800 and another 200x200. The longer map is for the tail of the pulse and the smaller one is for the ball or photon is self.



To make the LONGER map I simple make a gradient ball and using PHOTOSHOPS smudge tool I clicked and shift-dragged (straight line) to create the long tail.

The smaller map was the same gradient, just in a ball.

SAVE BOTH AS PNG files with TRANSPARENCY.

2. In make make a new material for the LONG TAIL.
Use the settings below by placing the maps in the proper slots for opacity, diffuse and self-illumination. Make SURE the map is 2-sided!!! Call this map Tail.
3. Make another map but with just the 200x200 map just like before but call it photon.

4. In make create a plane that is 800x200 (you can scale it later). Apply the TAIL map to this object. Render, you should get a tail. But it only looks good from certain perspectives.. which is why we need more planes.

5. With the TAIL object selected and the snap to angle turned ON.. rotate the TAIL OBJECT 30 degrees and repest this 5 times.

6. Now make a 200x200 plane and apply the photon map. DO the same rotation/replicate of the object like you did before. The added DIFFERENCE to this grouping is you will ALSO rotate the orginal plane object again along the perpendicular axis to create a box like grouping. This will give your PHOTON volume when viewed from the TOP, FRONT, and SIDE.



I moved the group that now looks like a box, and that serves as your pulse body down into tail group so it's aligned with the thicker part of the map and then grouped the entire thing..

That is your photon object, simple copy the group, animate it along a path or whatever.. good luck!

Aceman

[Deleted User]

Thank you very much everyone, especially Aceman, ill go ahead and try this out

fluxfire

WoW duder thats frigin sweet.

At least now i have an idea of what to do in LW to make them.

Thanks Aceman

Tovette

There's a reason they call him Aceman. :thumb:

Aceman

btw - if you play with the scale of the ball and or the tail objects you can adjust the shape to get something more to you liking.

The Observer

Well, I break my silence (I am one of those that doesn't post much) just to thank Aceman's for the tutorial! :thumb: I was trying to do this effect without much success (still not too experienced with MAX) but this certainly cleared up a lot of things. Thanks!

stegoman05

Ok i tried the tutorial but i having troubles with photoshop. Not that experience in it. all i can do is the lightsaber effect but thats about it.

Here is a image of photoshop




What i did in photoshop i tried it in 3d max and this is how it turned out



So can someone help i dont know what im doing wrong.

Hobbes

You're getting very close!

It's hard for me to tell, possibly depending on how you lit the scene, but I think you'll need to put any shininess to zero for your materials. That white part might just be the light reflecting.

If you show a screenshot of your materials settings, we could probably tell for sure what's happening.

DeadlyDarkness

How I do it is deform a sphere into a teardrop shape and texture it white, then add some videopost glow effects. You can pulsate the glow by altering its size or even deform the base model. Not as fiddly imo.

stegoman05

Ok heres is the material editor. And the scene above i had no light.

Zardoz

Put here the texture file.

And i recommend to check what happen if you active or desactive "Premultiply Alpha" These setting can doing weird effects how of apply the alpha channel.


Aceman, :thumb: cool tut !!!! I was doing Defiant Pulse phasers, making a deformed tetrahedron and adding glow, but your method is much more cool !