Lightning, beam, electric current....
by Alex Goryuk · in General Discussion · 04/02/2004 (10:15 pm) · 3 replies
Hi everyone,
I was wondering how to make an effect of an electric current running between 2 objects. For example I made two simple electric towers now I want to use a picture gif or multiple pictures to make an illusion of electricity current being between the tops of the towers. If you play Unreal Tournament you know what I'm talking about, they use tons of pictures to simulate explosions(volcanos), fire, electricity... basically using sprites to make FX, but NOT making this into a particle effects type thing. I haven't really found much on using sprites for fires and the torque comes only with a smoke and fire emmiter and they are both particle emmiters.
What would the issues be with transparancy because (I think) usually the pictures would contain black which in-game would become transparent. I found an article talking about downloading a separate patch in order to get transparancy is that true?
How would you guys go about this?
Thanks in advance any help appreciated.
~Alex~
I was wondering how to make an effect of an electric current running between 2 objects. For example I made two simple electric towers now I want to use a picture gif or multiple pictures to make an illusion of electricity current being between the tops of the towers. If you play Unreal Tournament you know what I'm talking about, they use tons of pictures to simulate explosions(volcanos), fire, electricity... basically using sprites to make FX, but NOT making this into a particle effects type thing. I haven't really found much on using sprites for fires and the torque comes only with a smoke and fire emmiter and they are both particle emmiters.
What would the issues be with transparancy because (I think) usually the pictures would contain black which in-game would become transparent. I found an article talking about downloading a separate patch in order to get transparancy is that true?
How would you guys go about this?
Thanks in advance any help appreciated.
~Alex~
#2
I used the technique you mentioned for muzzle flashes.
04/03/2004 (12:40 am)
The transp. problem is not regarding billboards in general, but interiors, AFAIC.I used the technique you mentioned for muzzle flashes.
#3
I have something like this in Void War - I can't send you the code yet because my new home (and my development system) STILL doesn't have an Internet connection. Basically, though, you are doing a modified billboard around two endpoints - it's a billboard around an arbitrary axis. With a little bit of searching, you can find plenty of info about how to do this on the Internet.
The texturing effects in Unreal are done with dynamic textures. I have no idea how you'd hook this into Torque, but the idea is you "paint" into a buffer, and copy this buffer into your texture in-between rendering passes on your card. I set the rendering flag to additive before rendering the polygons with that texture, so anything purely black is invisible.
Another possibility is to use an 'inside - out' tube as your model between your two points. Create a cylinder with your textures, but reverse the back-face of your polygons so that you'll always see the inside of the tube. You can hook several of these together, with joints between each tube, so you could do some funky animation tricks with them.
04/05/2004 (7:46 am)
Well, I'm STILL not a torque owner, so I can't answer your torque-specific questions. Are you looking to do this strictly with the Torque engine, or are you planning on modifying the Torque code to make it work?I have something like this in Void War - I can't send you the code yet because my new home (and my development system) STILL doesn't have an Internet connection. Basically, though, you are doing a modified billboard around two endpoints - it's a billboard around an arbitrary axis. With a little bit of searching, you can find plenty of info about how to do this on the Internet.
The texturing effects in Unreal are done with dynamic textures. I have no idea how you'd hook this into Torque, but the idea is you "paint" into a buffer, and copy this buffer into your texture in-between rendering passes on your card. I set the rendering flag to additive before rendering the polygons with that texture, so anything purely black is invisible.
Another possibility is to use an 'inside - out' tube as your model between your two points. Create a cylinder with your textures, but reverse the back-face of your polygons so that you'll always see the inside of the tube. You can hook several of these together, with joints between each tube, so you could do some funky animation tricks with them.
Alan Kantz