Muzzle Flash

[blantyre]

Muzzle flash tutorial using "If, Then" expression. There was one here a while ago and wondered if anyone knew how to go about it again.

Basically you paint the muzzle flash in PS or whatever and map the Top/Side/Front images onto planes parented to the front of your gun and either morphlink or IF/THEN an expression on the visibility of those planes to the trigger. When pulled Dissolve is 0% when released is 100%.

Help

[Matt]

you mean this one . . .

http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/18610.html?1042243467

:)

[kevman3d]

Its cool to know people are still curious about these things. I often forget I even posted that one up! :)

[mattclary]

Excellent! Can't believe I missed that!

[Matt]

should be on the LW tutorials page if you ask me!

[groodwanderer]

yeah this is a great little tutorial, diffenetly very usefull info. Thanks Kevin

[kevman3d]

Ta everyone...

Whats cool is with a little more creative experimentation, you can also link that expression driven effect to other parts of the gun such as recoil (if you IK a characters arms to the gun, you can get a small 'jolt' effect with some expressions) and cartridge ejection (Particle Emitter with a cartridge 'sprite' works well in this area)

I posted a few handy-dandy tips and tricks in the past onto that old forum system (I tend to start the subject with 'TIP: ') - Maybe they *should* be moved somewhere useful, along with other tips and tricks that shouldn't be buried in a pile of message postings?

I get the feeling there is a wealth of knowledge stored in a lot of forums that just gets lost over time...

[prospector]

So start a thread for just 'TIPS' and maby it won't go wanderin off topic:D

I started one called LW Tools

for tips to use LW & Toaster from stuff in home or office

[kevman3d]

Originally posted by prospector
So start a thread for just 'TIPS' and maby it won't go wanderin off topic:D

Sure, in some instances it is - I've already split postings I've made in the User Group forum into their own threads for the exact reason you make above.

However its not 'wandering off topic' that's I was referring too...

What I meant was its the fact once other threads start filling up the forum, knowledge just gets 'buried' under hundred and hundreds of threads in the list - I recall a tonne of posts from Larry Shultz on Splines that were filled with really useful material - Where those are now? Probably several thousand messages deep where nobody will read it - They're not easy to find when the word 'spline' returns hundreds of posts with just questions on 'how come my spline patch doesn't work?' (and in a lot of cases, no real answers).

Like some people have mentioned, perhaps stuff like that needs to be moved to a 'tutorials' section so good material is easy to find without scouring through a search engine trying to find that 'exact' post.