Create units with OpenFX

[muffins]

Just a quicky ... I've noticed a very useful option burried in one of the options tabs when you click render. You can set the ambiant lighting! Yay!

This means that you can increase the 'lighting' without adding more lights or changing their brightness.

 

[Tzar Sasha]

Yeah, I usually increase by 20% instaed of the default. However, on my current unit that didn't help like it did on the other. So I added more lights. I think it depends on what you are doing as to whether more lights or just an increase in ambience will help...

 

[Neomega]

At 240x240 it looks squished... It's also overly large and it doesn't have much more quality over my original .flc, although it does have some. Muffins seems to retain almost all of his quality in the transfer, I lose most of mine. Can I stretch it anymore without getting less resolution? It's too short.

loss of detail mostly a palette issue. If the unit is small, you will have to accept that you will not be able to see the gold "Eagle Globe and Anchor" pin on a Marine's hat. Also muffin's units tend to be larger models.

Ambient lighting: Allthough not optimal, it is functional. I have one spotlight very high up, and very slightly off center, my ambeint is set to 30, and my shading is to to 35 or 40... (experimenting with 35). This way changing views is very easy, just select the camera, press C and render.

 

[Mr. Will]

I have another problem...
My muzzleflashes dissapeared in one of my renderings. Why?
Also, the muzzleflashes that do survive rendering usually have a reddish tint,it makes them look odd. How do I fix this?

 

[The Great Apple]

What colour are you using for the flashes? I usually use the 2nd orange one down. Where do you get the redish tint? I've found the glow can take some of the magenta through into the alpha blend, when against the magenta background.

Are the flashes large enough for the anti-aliasing not to alter the colour, taking it away from the key colour - that can mean none gets glowed. And... I know it seems obvious... but make sure you have the keycolour right, and that the gunflash is luminous.

 

[The Great Apple]

Has anybody managed to get explosion working (the postpro which flings bits of model everywhere)? I want to use it for shattering glass.

I've separated the polygons, and have got the glass as it's own model, and it all seems to work fine in the animater, but when it comes to render it... doesn't. Just a black screen, nothing produced. It seems to load the textures, then say it's finished. I don't have any textures used twice... anybody any ideas?

 

[muffins]

For some reason, it works for some models, doesn't work for some others and does some really strange things to others I've never really had a serious problem with it though

You might want to try and 'seperate' different combinations of polygons 'cos it might just be the maths involved

 

[muffins]

I've found a different way of doing dust trails (I've never fancied doing it with 10-squillion dummy lights that had to be told where to go )

A deformed tube with knobbly bits on, duplicated about 8 times to make it really long (and self repeating) and given transparancy. All you have to do then is put the magentaish colours into the lighter end of the smoke/haze part of the palette

I have tested this in-game btw

 

[Mr. Will]

An easily anwered question, I hope...
Muffins, earlier you said that your muzzleflashes are custom shapes which you rotate to make 3d or something like that. I tried to copy a flat polygon and rotate it but couldn't, it would roatate both. Then, I copied something and unselected the shape, but now it won't paste. The copy option is useless for me right now as it pastes the sem thing in the same place. How do I us e the copy and paste in OpenFX without getting the same shape in the same place?

Has anyone here ever used Mozilla? It's very cool. (This isn't meant as advertising if anyone were to take it that way,, just a reccomendation.)

 

[muffins]

An easily anwered question, I hope...
Muffins, earlier you said that your muzzleflashes are custom shapes which you rotate to make 3d or something like that. I tried to copy a flat polygon and rotate it but couldn't, it would roatate both. Then, I copied something and unselected the shape, but now it won't paste. The copy option is useless for me right now as it pastes the sem thing in the same place. How do I us e the copy and paste in OpenFX without getting the same shape in the same place?

Has anyone here ever used Mozilla? It's very cool. (This isn't meant as advertising if anyone were to take it that way,, just a reccomendation.)

Select the stuff you want to copy. Click Actions > Duplicate. This will deselect the original object, select the newly created copy and change the tool to 'Move'. This way you can move the copy without altering the original. It doesn't matter that the copy is right on top of the original. If you don't want to move it - but want to scale or rotate the copy instead - then just click the tool you want to use. With gunflashes I've always double-clicked the rotate button and typed in 90 degrees.

If that doesn't help I can always give you all my gunflash objects if you want them.

I've never heard of Mozilla give us a screen-shot and a description of what it is ... pleeeeease. I'm thinking of experimenting with other progs like Blender or even *** gasps *** buying the kind of prog that the likes of Kinboat and aaglo etc use

ALL HAIL KINBOAT!

 

[The Great Apple]

A deformed tube with knobbly bits on, duplicated about 8 times to make it really long (and self repeating) and given transparancy. All you have to do then is put the magentaish colours into the lighter end of the smoke/haze part of the palette

I have tested this in-game btw

That looks rather good, although they seem to go on a bit too long, and your getting the FLICster bug. I would download the latest SBB which fixes that.

Mozilla is a web browser, and it is very cool. http://www.mozilla.org

 

[Mr. Will]

Sorry muffins, but Mozilla is a web browser, and it's excellent. You should download it and try it. It has so many add-ons... Wow.

About the tube, you just bend it to a more natural looking smoke trail look?

 

[Mr. Will]

What colour are you using for the flashes? I usually use the 2nd orange one down. Where do you get the redish tint? I've found the glow can take some of the magenta through into the alpha blend, when against the magenta background.

Are the flashes large enough for the anti-aliasing not to alter the colour, taking it away from the key colour - that can mean none gets glowed. And... I know it seems obvious... but make sure you have the keycolour right, and that the gunflash is luminous.

So I shouldn't use the glow effect? I think the reddish tint is coming through after the magenta and into the alpha blend. I have luminous shapes and the right keycolor, but I don't remember being able to choose your glow color. I'll look at it again.

 

[The Great Apple]

So I shouldn't use the glow effect? I think the reddish tint is coming through after the magenta and into the alpha blend. I have luminous shapes and the right keycolor, but I don't remember being able to choose your glow color. I'll look at it again.

There is the option to chose hot/warm/some other two ones. The warm seems to lighten the chosen key colour, while hot makes the inside white, and lightens the edges.

As for the reddish tint, it's the same as I got. I think you'd have to manually remove it, or set it as a high transpareny colour in the smoke/shadow palette.

 

[Mr. Will]

I'm pretty sure it only shows up because of the magenta background because in the shots where the blast is in front of a non-magenta object it looks fine. Oh well, fixing it manually isn't that bad.

 

[Neomega]

Select the stuff you want to copy. Click Actions > Duplicate. This will deselect the original object, select the newly created copy and change the tool to 'Move'. This way you can move the copy without altering the original. It doesn't matter that the copy is right on top of the original. If you don't want to move it - but want to scale or rotate the copy instead - then just click the tool you want to use. With gunflashes I've always double-clicked the rotate button and typed in 90 degrees.

If that doesn't help I can always give you all my gunflash objects if you want them.

I've never heard of Mozilla give us a screen-shot and a description of what it is ... pleeeeease. I'm thinking of experimenting with other progs like Blender or even *** gasps *** buying the kind of prog that the likes of Kinboat and aaglo etc use

ALL HAIL KINBOAT!

Save your money, blender is professional grade.

I use Mozilla firefox as my web-browser.

 

[muffins]

Sorry muffins, but Mozilla is a web browser, and it's excellent. You should download it and try it. It has so many add-ons... Wow.

About the tube, you just bend it to a more natural looking smoke trail look?

This is what I did if you want to have a look

@Neomega - Downloading Blender even as I type this

 

[Tzar Sasha]

The Morpheous once said that he uses a model for things like phasor fire and torpedos. Does any body know how to do that? I am growing weary of changing all my postpro effects... Don't know if anyone noticed but all postpro effects loose some color quality because of the background color. The only background color that doesn't is black... That's not an option since all Borg units have black in them... So help in using a model for phasors and torpedos would be great. Any ideas?

 

[Adler17]

There is a phaser model somewhere in the net. I dowloaded it. If you want I could email it to you or post it here. To the torps I use a mesh of 4 small torps. I could do the same. Look in my units and you can see them in action, if you want.

Adler

 

[Tzar Sasha]

There is a phaser model somewhere in the net. I dowloaded it. If you want I could email it to you or post it here. To the torps I use a mesh of 4 small torps. I could do the same. Look in my units and you can see them in action, if you want.

Adler

Pass them on please. And a brief explanation of how to put them to work in the model. If you don't mind, others might be interested so you could post them in the thread. If not, you can e-mail them to me. If my e-mail is not in my profile, drop me a PM and I'll let you know what it is...

Thanks