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[Exar Kun]

Hallo,
I'm new here and this is my first post, so at first I introduce shortly myself. I'm from Switzerland, so my English isn't good, but i hope you can understand my anyway. I'm a great Star Wars Fan. It was my dream to create 3d Objects. Oneday it was for 25 days ago I found Anim8or. It's a great program I have to thank you very much steve

At beginning I finished the 3 tutorials than I started to modelling a cargo ship which looks like one from Star Wars.
I'm very happy with Anim8or so i had the idea to make little movies of Star Wars. Just like the game serie "Rogue Squadron".

It's important for me, that I will do mostly by myself (models, animation, texture) I only downloaded texture sheets from an other websites. The second point is,that I want to creat a movie, who looks realistic and created only by freeware.

So I'd like to show you some picture:
1. Here you can see my first own model. I haven't done the texture yet, I startet to texture my turbolasertower because it has a much easier shape.
2. My turbolasertower without texture.
3. My turbolasertower with almost completet texture.
4. I tried to make lasereffects with the programm effect labs demo, but they put a huge label of their enterprise at my video. So I decided to do my own laser in Anim8or. But i have to improve the laser, it isn't Star Wars like at the moment.

Thanks much for you interest. Critique is welcome 

[Olias]

Looks pretty good!

If I may make a suggestion, for any kind of laser, lightsaber, glow effect or whatever, in anim8or a quick and easy way to accomplish the look you want would be with a flat plane and an image of the beam as an emissive/transparent texture.

This works particularly well in still shots.  With animations, it takes a little work as you would want to keep the plane perpendicular to the camera.

[floyd86]

Looks pretty good!

If I may make a suggestion, for any kind of laser, lightsaber, glow effect or whatever, in anim8or a quick and easy way to accomplish the look you want would be with a flat plane and an image of the beam as an emissive/transparent texture.

This works particularly well in still shots.  With animations, it takes a little work as you would want to keep the plane perpendicular to the camera.

Or you just use a cilinder...
To make a laser: Make like three/four cilinders, the one a bit bigger then the other. Then make some materials (three or four again) give those give emissive values and various transparencies ie: 0.75, 0.5, 0.25. Place them inside each other and you got yourself a laser. This technic probablywont work that good in ART i think, since ART isn't that good with transparent things. But in scanline it looks fine.

[Exar Kun]

Olias: Thanx, that's a nice idea, but my final goal is to make movie episodes, I thinks it will rather difficult to reach always a realistic perspective.

floyd86: At first I used a half transparent cilinder for the glow effect, but in the animation I had some problem with the perspectiv so i mad a whole transparent cilinder around my red laser. Then I tried the V.97 with the ART. And the result was very good I think. Picture one...

I made a new green laser, with 4 cilinders and as you have said and give them some emessive and transparencies varies. Then I used ART again but this time it hasn't a such glowing effect like by picture one. Pircture two...

The red laser has a rounded start and end, maybe that's the reasen.

Update: I tried it out Olias   
Picture 3...for the compare I took the green one, without light and the new red one together. (I had to put the light out, because the red laser becomes also green )
It looks nice, maybe I take this one for my first trailer. But I will continue to make experiments with a laser model. But for the trailer I need to texture the cargo ship and this time I try to make only one map for the model

[Olias]

Trust me, give the transparent/emissive map thing a try.  You'll be amazed how much better it looks.

Create a gradient that fades off to total black (0,0,0) in something like Paint Shop, set it as both the transparent and emissive textures, hit the UV button (it should snap right on there perfectly without even having to move it around), and you're done.

[Parjii]

Nice models, I really like the turbolaser tower.
Keep up the good work.

[Exar Kun]

Thanks much for your comments.

After several hours I have completed now the turbolaser tower.
The Subbody has now also a bump-map (I had some problems with that, I don't now why, so I have retextured the whole subbody)

And the cannons has now some gunshot residues.

In picture 3 you can see, which texture each object has got. Next time I try to make only one JPG file 

[Olias]

Once you've settled on which technique you want to use for the lasers, another thing you can do to make it look even better is attach a local light to each "bolt".

Example:



Now in this picture of course the lasers (phasers) are a constant beam, whereas in Star Wars they are more like "dashes".  Attach a light to each dash and it will look really sharp as it passes by other objects.

In both cases we're playing fast and loose with physics, as a coherant beam of light 1) wouldn't be visible unless it was passing through something like smoke and 2) even if it was visible, wouldn't radiate.

But it looks cool.

[Exar Kun]

hello folks,
after a long time the empire strikes back with new reinforcements!

The Tie-Fighter

The mesh is now complete, it needs only a texture, but I do this later

critique is wished 

[TheBlackHole]

Or you just use a cilinder...
To make a laser: Make like three/four cilinders, the one a bit bigger then the other. Then make some materials (three or four again) give those give emissive values and various transparencies ie: 0.75, 0.5, 0.25. Place them inside each other and you got yourself a laser. This technic probablywont work that good in ART i think, since ART isn't that good with transparent things. But in scanline it looks fine.

I've done a (slightly modified) version of that technique to make rocket exhaust, planetary atmospheres, lens flares, comets, volcanic plumes, stellar coronae... I could go on and on about all the stuff I've used that for. Only I do it a bit differently: I make the base object (usually a sphere or slightly displaced sphere), then the material, and copy/paste scaling up the model by a factor of 1.01 and do it over and over until I have the right effect, usually using a transparency of 0.01-0.05.