I've resolved to finish an EV Nova enhancement plug-in before I play the last remaining story line, and one of the things on my agenda is making blaster weapons really worth buying. Part of what this entails is making the weapons seem like they're doing damage, and for this I want to give them some explosion graphics. I remember an EVN glow movie (from a long long time ago) featuring a manticore being attacked by what looked like an early version of a Vell-os ship. The little thing would shoot this beam weapon that sent up gouts of flame where ever it hit the manticore.

My first thought was to attempt to duplicate this effect for the blasters, but then I noticed that those flames were nowhere to be found in the Nova data files, which is rather too bad because they really added something to the beam weapon, though I imagine there is a reason for this.

So I had to come up with something entirely new. My vision was to create a small, but violent-looking wash of energy, possibly in expanding ring format, that bore something of a resemblance to the flames in the glow movie. Of course I didn't have the faintest idea how to create this graphic, but I fired up Bryce anyway to see what I could do with torii, spheres, and volumetric textures. The result was this cheesy little three-frame movie that looks nothing like what I want it to.

So, how should I go about doing this?

(Sorry to take so long in getting to my point.)

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Non cognosco quo modo dicere linguam latinam bene.

I have seen a bššm which is a gout of flame in the Nova Data files, it's called "Ground Explosion"... as for a good way to make explosion graphics, well, let's just say I'm hoping someone answers your question.

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"A taco is merely a rigid, deformed tortilla."
- Thomas Castiglione
"There will be MUCH CRUSHING!"
- Pink

The ground explosion is practically nuclear... The one I am thinking of is a lot like the ones in the original EV, but smoother and nicer looking. It had kind of a whitish center with red edges. I was going to tone down the contrast and tweak the colors and stuff to put it in line with the blasters.

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Non cognosco quo modo dicere linguam latinam bene.

(This message has been edited by LoneIgadzra (edited 04-15-2002).)

The FPC explosion is your best bet, and it seems to fit what you want quite well.

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The only sovereign we can allow to rule us is reason — Wizard's Sixth Rule, Faith of the Fallen.
— Cafall

Quote

Originally posted by Cafall:
**The FPC explosion is your best bet, and it seems to fit what you want quite well.

**

Well the thing is, I can't get away with just recycling something. I'm going to need to make some changes to anything I use to

a) be authentic, and
match the "character" of the blaster bolts

While the FPC is an interesting possibility for a base, I'd need to accelerate the animation a bit and, well, make it look different. I don't really have the slightest idea how to do the former, and the latter would be quite tedious, as I'd have to uniformly change all the frames. Actually, I just had an idea on how I might get away with this...

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Non cognosco quo modo dicere linguam latinam bene.

I don't know how to do this sort of thing in Bryce, but, in POV-Ray, it's a fairly simple matter to make a glowing media and add some turbulence - though this technique gives quick results, it usually takes a lot of tweaking to come up with something actually worth using.

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(Insert Signature Here)

Well, I don' t know if bryce supports it but volumetric lights along with some glow/radiosity/transparency on a sphere, torus, or circle can produce some nice explosions.

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