trying to create multiple lasers
 

Hi everyone, I'm trying to create a star wars space battle scene. I have everything done but I want to add more lasers to the scene. Right now I have been doing each individual laser by creating a motion path with a polycon cylinder. It's very time consuming and I was wondering if there's any quicker way of going about this. I tried using particles but when I substitute the polygon laser in for the particles, all the lasers face the same direction. :(
does anyone know a quicker way?

I'm a noob too but I found this..

https://www.digitaltutors.com/chit_c...?threadid=8416

Don't know if this helsp in anyway.. haven't read through it. or is that where you started too?

I'll keep searching..

Maybe you could check out the scripting tutorials in Maya.. they could have something in there to help you automate it maybe?

They mention somehting about an "emitter" here..

Are you familiar with this? Sounds like it might be what your looking for.. don't know..



http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/.../t-307676.html

Hey Monkey Wrench, what are you looking to achieve exactly?

One long laser beam?
Or short, controlled bursts, like tracer fire?

Lemme know, and I'll see if I can help:)

ExtrudedDingus:
I have the glow set and I'm not really looking for the lasers to bounce off other objects, but thankyou for helping me though!

Ragecgi:
Thats exactly what I'm trying to do, a tracer effect, :)


I dont know if this would be possible but maybe some kind of script where I could select a start point and an end point and have the laser run along a path between those two points?

Wish I could help more.. sounds cool. Anything Star Wars related is always good! Show us what you did if you can, I would like to see. :)

This is almost exactly what the "Tube" particle render type is for.

To set the Tube (s/w) render type:

1. Select the particle object.
2. In the Attribute Editor, set Particle Render Type to Tube.
3. To add default Particle Render Type attributes that let
you tune the appearance, click the Add Attributes For
Current Render Type button.
4. Adjust the head and tail sliders.
5. Apply a particleCloud shader to it with a little bit of glow, or add glow to them n post:)

To get your particle lasers to start and stop, simply key the rate.

I know this is not very detailed, but try those few things first, and remember it is trial and error, so keep trying:)

Hey, I deleted my previous Maya file, and made this new one giving you full targeting control using a locator as a simple Particle Goal.

Check the docs on how to tweak the goal weight settings per your given scene:)

Good luck!

Hey, sorry I havnt gotten back to you sooner, Ive been busy with school, I tried opening the file but I got an error

// Error: line 1: Unknown Maya file version: 8.5. // :eek:

I have maya 7.0, is there a way for you to save it as a 7.0? I hope there is because what you did sounds really cool and i dont want it to go to waste

No problem:)

I just whipped up the same scene in Maya 7 for you:)

Good luck!

thank you thank you thank you thank you!!:attn: :attn: :attn:

this will make things go much faster!

ps: thank you!!

No problem.

Goals are pretty easy and satisfying when you use them even ONCE:)

Things to look closely at when looking at this file:

- First, open it, pres play, then quickly stop it, and render a frame to see the lasers.
- I turned off the noise in the particle cloud shader to get a more even laser "beam/blast" look.
- Look at the goal weight and play with it to see what happens when you try to soften this value.

Also, a good habit I try to stick with is when dealing with particle settings, is to make presets that you can always go back to in the event you just want to play around and you don't want to fear breaking anything:)

Good luck!