Muzzle Flash (2)

[jhp3d]

Does anyone have an ideas on creating a realistic looking muzzle flash from a pistol? I've considered using particles, but I'm more familiar with them in Max than Maya.

[brandon-1]

I don't think particles are necessary for realistic muzzle flash. I'd just parent a sphere to the end of the muzzle and scale it up randomly (Noise Controller?) and fade away in 5 frame increments. Sometimes there are tiny orange sparks that accompany the flash, especially with shotguns.

[loky]

Draw a poly plane in the form of the flash (like in comics), and orient constrain it to the camera so its always looking towards the camera. Give it a bright material, with maybe a bit of transparency on the edges (in that case make a bitmap texture), and make it appear for 1-2 frames when the gun fires. For the sparks I don't know, try with hardware rendered streak particles. I so hate HW rendering and compositing.

[poppy71]

Hello,

The muzzle flash I made was using a sphere pulled into the shape of the blast and then used a lambert shader with a ramp on the color and then used a ramp on the glow of the shader. It looked okay and then added a point light at the end of the muzzle. Then both were turned off and on at the appropriate times.

Hope this helps

Spill

[msimon]

Just use a spotlight with fog and a custom decay. Then instance copy the spotlight and rotate. It works great if you set a driven key on the intensity based on when a bullet is fired.

[jhp3d]

I appreciate all the input. This the first time I've posted here, having lurked around for awhile. It's nice to have some interaction. I wound up using the suggestion by Spill for a stretched and textured sphere. It worked great. I'm still learning about animating characters, though, and I still have trouble moving the arms and pole vectors around without things getting all catterwhampus.