Pod-engine ignition...

[svenip]

hi wgeddes.

do you remeber the movie ? there are some flat surfaces around the whole end. they are for the engines output to compress them or something like that. i've made something similar a long time ago. then you animate them to close a little bit this could be a good start. the it's a thing for particle setup.

heres the image.

[wedge]

only certain pods have those... this one doesn't... I actually did Gasgano's pod, which is the one that has those fins you described... I'm really just looking for a good idea to make a ring of fire that shoots out of this cone... but not particle fire.... something cartoony

[ACFred]

Yeah, I like Svenip's suggestion. Instead of shooting particles and having them bounce off of all of the different geometry of the "funnel", I'd create an invisible proxy cone shape to make the bounce calculations easier on your processor.

Since you don't need it to look perfect, the proxy will help to give you the results you want more quickly. If you want to get fancy, turn each part of the funnel geometry into passive rigid bodies that collide with the particles. With the proper constraints and rotation limits, you could simulate the motion in the funnel fins that would happen when you try to force hot gas through there.

When the engine starts, it should probably give a couple of puffs of smoke with maybe 3/4 to 1 second between each and then follow it up with blue flame or whatever's going to shoot out the back. You can simulate the distortion of heat vapors in post if you really want to trick it out.

oh, another thing. If you do add the funnel fins, maybe you can have them start out covering the engine hole and then shifting into funnel position as the whine of the engine begins. Then you'll get dual purpose fins that will be a nice engineering detail.

It's looking good so far. Keep up the good work, man.

[svenip]

hmm a cartoon like thing. this would be a thing for sprite particle i would say. only a few particles and then assign some painted images to them. so the motion etc for that would be easy to do with the particles.

or don't you wanna use particles ?

and AC Fred is right. looks very good for now so keep on working.

[wedge]

i think i'll try the cone idea.


UNRELATED QUESTION:
How can I export a model I made to .OBJ?

[svenip]

in the plugin manager you'll find a box for the obj im/exporter

[wedge]

This is the look I'm going for. I did this in Photoshop, but I'm looking for a way to do it without doing it frame by frame. Its only a few seconds of the animation, and I don't want to hand-touch 72 or 96 frames of this.

[svenip]

could be done by animated texture i guess. but also by a simple particle setup.

so which one you wanna try ? when i could explain more.

[wedge]

I completed the effects shot using After Effects. Turns out I already knew how to do this effect in post production... just took some problem solving concentration.

You can see the animation at my website on the PROJECTS page. Its a Quicktime video encoded with the On2 codec.



COMING SOON!!!

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.