Simply Maya User Community

Well a bit of an odd WIP this one. I got given a person model and had to pose him in a position, and build a scene around him. The final pictures will be used on a game mod site for raven shield (sorry I cant give too many details away, all hush hush at the moment).

Below I'll attach the latest incarnation of the scene, its the man standing looking menacing in the doorway, backlit with some funky fog. But what I really want to do is make a muzzle flash as though he's shooting his gun (which I made, not textured yet, its on the to-do list), but Ive not found a good way of doing this yet. Do I use particles for the muzzle flash, or do I make a poly plane and a texture for it with some transparency?

Im looking for thoughts of my muzzle flash idea, as well and thoughts of the scene as a whole. Feel free to point and laugh at the modelling job on the man, but I cant change him. Oh, and whats the setting on my Depthmap shadows that blends out that fuzzy shadow edge?