ok, I've decided to just post this question here b/c I don't like making multiple threads. I am animating a mech warrior shooting lasers. As of now, I have lasers positioned inside each barrel at the begining of the animation. The lasers are just really thin cubes that are red and have a glow to them. I have "hide source" checked for each laser, too, which gives it a better look. Anyway, the four vertices at the east end of each cube are in clusters. I key both the cube and the clusters at frame 0. They are inside the barrel where you cannot see them. At frame 1, I move the clusters out of the barrel quite a ways and key it. Then, I go to frame 15, select the cube, and move it far away from the barrel. I key it there. Now, if I play the animation, I get a laser being lengthened b/c of the clusters and see it shoot out. It's even cooler if I make ten lasers and have the animation loop on all of them. However, I have a problem. If I turn the mech warrior, the lasers aren't shooting out of the barrels any more. If I parent the lasers to the mech, it will work, but when the mech moves, so will the lasers that are currently suspended in air, which doesn't look right at all. So, I'm thinking that it might not be possible to make him shoot lasers with this particular setup. I really don't want to have to animate 50,000 lasers throughout the war. Another thing, is that I want to make the lasers dissapear when they hit something and make a *small* explosion upon impact. Like a minerature shockwave or something. This, I'm sure is very difficult to do. I was thinking about doing it in the expressions thing, but I don't know enough about it to do anything this complex. Any ideas would be gladly accepted.