Anim8or Community
General Category => General Anim8or Forum => Topic started by: rellik420 on September 09, 2009, 06:52:40 pm
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im going to attempt to make a light saber. i looked through the manual and i didnt get anything that i want. i think we all know what a light saber looks like so this should be fairly simple to explain. i would think that you would have a cylinder for the blade part. then another one slightly bigger with transperancy. i know depending on your setting you can make things look shiny and glowing but i would think that you would need a lightsource in the blade itself. ive never tried but i would think that you can animate the lights.
if any1 has some insight on the best way this should be done. please help.
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Well you can put a light inside transparent objects, but I'm not sure how you make the light stretch the length of the whole sabre without it looking spotty.
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You get into a few problems. If you put a light in the sabre, then you can't have any part of that object cast shadows or it won't look right. It is possible to use object parenting in scene mode to handle this problem. Something like this:
Create an object that is just the handle, have it cast shadows normally. Create a different object for the blade, no shadows, cast or receive. Make it the child of the handle. Make a local light, same color as the blade, it casts shadows, low intensity, child of the handle or blade.
Hope this helps out.
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so if a light is linked child to parent with an object the light will move with the object? if thats the case then i think the effect could be done pretty easily.
another question. if you put a light inside an object, will the light be contained in that object?
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well i tried to test a few things. i couldnt get inside the objects. although i didnt try the 2sided materials. but im still trying to get a glowing effect and its no good. i used 4 spotlights diercted twards 2 transparent objects. i only got more of a reflection than anything. maybe if i add like 20 more lights it might almost look like something. all the lights are different colors so i dont think color will effect anything. ive never really worked with lights but i took screenshots of what i tried to do. maybe some1 can help me out.
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I tried out a glow affect a while ago. It wasn't like a lightsaber but it might help you. I created it by shining a coloured light on each object and jacking up their emissive really high, unforutanatly this is the best I got, maybe you can improve upon it. The other thing to consider would be putting a plane with a texture, parented to the blade which would give a glow effect. You also should have lights pointing out from the blade to make anything near it glow... =)
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You can do a good lightsabre effect by using lots of crossing planes with a graded transparent texture and a high ambient value.
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think you can make a little tutorial on how you did that? cause thats about perfect and it looks great.
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I'll start one later today (got school now :-\ )
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Here is the tutorial it shows the general method to create a lightsabre, however the best results can only be found by experimenting with the different elements used in the tutorial.