* Subject: Laser effect * Date: Fri, 29 Jul 94 10:20:38 EDT [52] * From: sauvp@citi.doc.ca (Patrick Sauvageau [SIA])For that, I have created a very thin cone object, about 400 units long and 10 wide at the base. The axis of the object is located at the base. The color of the object is blue-white and the object is bright. The next step is to add the "linear" texture in a way that will made the object transparent at the thin end. Finally, add an axis at the top of the cone. Make the Y axis pointing in the direction of the base and make this axis the parent of the cone.
To use thi "laser" in an animation, I used a "feature" of Imagine: In the stage editor, if you resize an object on only one axis, the textures are not resized.
So, in the firing frame, load the laser object, position it's parent axis in the laser "gun",and track it to it's target. Then, scale it down LOCALY ON IT'S Y AXIS until it become very short. Go to the frame where the laser hit it's target, select the laser and resize it localy on it's Y axis untils it touch the target (or get out of camera sight if it miss).
In that way, since all the scaling have been made locally, the lenght of the texture stay constant. In the last frame, even if it seem that the laser is continuous from the "gun" to the target, ONLY THE 400 UNITS AT THE FRONT ARE VISIBLE, since the rest is fully transparent.
* Subject: Full power to foward phaser banks. * Date: Fri, 29 Jul 1994 11:27:04 -0400 (EDT) [52] * From: "T.W. Albee" <UC245_444755@emuvax.emich.edu>Start off with a tube or teardrom or whatever shape you want, save it as something1. Elongate it as you imagine a phaser blast to travel, save that as something2. Finaly, reshape it as you think a phaser blast would look after comming in contact with something; something3. You can even reduce it to a small, dying point if you wish; something4. Color them all how you wish and use the marble texture as a filter map. Morph between objects in the Action Editor to get the desired animation look, and Render HO! Add another shape around the beam if you wish, setting its filter high, and its fog length relative to its size, and you can have an ionization glow too. Play around with using brushmaps you create for different filter-mappings to get different effects. Try animating the filters for a really neat effect.
I forgot to mention that the phaser-beam shapes should be set to 'bright'
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