Muzzleflash anim using MS

#1 Sorry to bump this up but i'm trying to do an animated muzzle flash with milkshape. I need a basic overview on how to go about it using MS.

Thanks Coz

#2 I'm going to be attempting this as well. Haven't heard of anyone doing it yet.

Might want to look into creating a group for the FX (tranparency) and keep it hidden until the firing animation is used. I was going to test it later.

#3 1 question. By "hidden" do you mean hide it in the models barrel then during the fire sequence have it animate out to its position? If this is what you mean then I thought of this but I didn't know if this was "acceptable".

#4 Creating a fire animation on the weapon should do the trick. When the weapon is in the on_fire sequence (state 3) it tries calling the "fire" animation of the weapon. The muzzleflash can be made within the animation sequence. This works in MilkShape so that's what we're doing.

#5 So, under "root" we would put "fire", which has the muzzleflash--and it should automatically work, from there?

Thanks. :)

Eric Forhan
Trajectory Zone

#6 I figured that out already I'm just having a hell of a time making it look ok. Right now it looks like crap :)

#7 Yep, that should work. I can't help with not making it look like crap tho ;) Maybe someone knows a better way?

#8 I think it may be that I don't know how to model a muzzle flash. Working on it though ;)

#9 Hi,

My thought would be not to model the flash itself. Just model the mechanics of the gun, and use the particle system for the flash. What you're trying to model looks a little different every time in the real world, and is basicly a short-lived flash of light at the tip of the muzzle, and a small amount of smoke, maybe a case dropping to the ground.

I would think you could convince the particle system to do this without a lot of difficulty, and I would expect that it would look better than modelling it would.

Not tried it, but if you look at the problem, modelling it so it looks right from every angle may be difficult.

It also might work to use a long rectangle box with all the faces facing the inside of the box, and an alpha blended flash texture. This is used for energy weapons (lightsabers and the ilk) a lot in modelling circles.

#10 AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!! I'm done trying to model this!
:)

I can't get it to look right. I think i'm going to go with the particle system atleast for now. Too much time wasted.

#11 I tried again. Just needed to rant :)

I found a tutorial which is pretty good, now my animation doesn't look butt ugly anymore. I still have to tweak it but it's acceptable now.

Here is the link to the tutorial : www.hockeyhaircut.com/Tutorial/MuzzleFlash1.htm