New ale question
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[d]I’m sure it’s a simple fix but I’m just not sure what values to put the - next to exactly to make a weapon’s muzzleflash suck particles inwards instead of shooting them out. If FF or somebody else could say, that’d be awesome.[/d]
Right so that’s all sorted. NEW QUESTION. How do I make a beam or cone emitter tile a beam texture rather than stretching a single one out so that all the detail is drained?
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no simple way. I don’t know if the effect is enabled through some gravity simulation on the emitte or if every particle is being moved individually. Either way, you’d need to find them in the ALE’s, and since all muzzle flashes are different nodes or even different libraries, this is a pretty time consuming task.
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Right okay well, after having received little help probably due to me posting this in the wrong section, I figured I’d post the fruits of my work thus far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WOwBSAIGY0
There are only two things to really fix at this point which is getting the beam so that the textures don’t flip and make the beam invisible at some angles (Must be possible but I’m not sure how), and getting the beam to pinch at the business end so it seems to fade out rather than cutting off into thin air. It uses a cone emitter so I know this is possible, but I’m not certain of what values I need to plug in and where.
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A cone emitter only emits particles into a cone, it has nothing to do with the shape of the beam. Try scaling down the beam’s width over time, so it goes to zero. Since the beam appears to be instantaneous that’ll most likely take some tweaking to get right.
As for the beam being terrible, that’s just FL. Nothing can be done about it.
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They are in a + shape at all times, it’s just that when looking at different angles the + is seen from one of the angles where it looks terrible. Most modern games don’t use cross-shaped beams anymore for that reason.
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No, they’re not. I get the idea, one texture would fade out. That is not what’s happening at all. Both are flipping together making the beam invisible. Watch the video more closely and you’ll see what I mean.
Actually here, this screenshot shows the issue better.
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb317/Tyrkeyz/screen5344.jpg
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One ale you might refer to as a starting point might be the nomad large engine (beam section). There is a beam passing through the center of the ship which sounds like what you are looking for. You’d likely need to speed up its rate, and as suggested add a negative scaling to shrink over time, or do it through an opacity / alpha fade.
Syncing the fx length with your ini range stats should look pretty decent.
Come to think of it, most engines have a beam used similarly, they just look like smoke with a fire color applied. They section is straight line, directional, scaled, and has specific length.
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Yep except for the fact that I’ve checked engines and I cannot for the life of me find what’s different.
Also the FX and range stats are already matched, as is the refire and lifespan (largely reducing the flickering associated with muzzleflash beams)
