New to Particular 1.5; Creating a ray gun effect?
by Gary Hughes
on
Sep 20, 2009 at 3:12:35 pm
I just got Particular 1.5 and am trying to create a ray gun effect. What's the best way to approach this project? Is there a Cow tutorial which might cover a similar effect?
Re: New to Particular 1.5; Creating a ray gun effect? by Mike Park on Sep 21, 2009 at 1:17:54 pm
What kind of ray gun effect are you going for? Are you looking for a simple effect like a star trek phaser, or something a bit more elaborate like a stargate zat blast or something else enitrely?
Re: New to Particular 1.5; Creating a ray gun effect? by Gary Hughes on Sep 21, 2009 at 1:25:08 pm
Something a bit more elaborate than basic Star Trek, I think. I'd originally used the lightning plug-in in AE CS3 before I got Particular. Since I am new to the software, though, I need to get thorugh the basic learning curve, which is why I though a similar effect covered in another tutorial might be an option.
Re: New to Particular 1.5; Creating a ray gun effect? by Mike Park on Sep 21, 2009 at 2:55:22 pm
I guess it depends on what you want. Do you want a straight beam or something with some movement in it. A ray gun to me would be a straight line - directional beam of energy, light......what look are you going for? Do you have any specific examples or pictures?
Re: New to Particular 1.5; Creating a ray gun effect? by Mike Park on Sep 22, 2009 at 5:36:16 pm
You have 1.5 and not 2.0, correct. If you had 2.0, I could just send you the comp project file and you could review and adapt at your leisure. However, since you dont...
You need to create a new solid layer and apply particular. Make the emitter a sphere and match the xyz size to the width of your beam. Change the mode to directional and adjust the xyz rotation to point the beam in the right direction. Also turn down the directional spread to 0. Increase the velocity pretty high - 2000 and change the pps to 5000 or so. Change the particle size to something small, like 1.5 and then under rendering, turn on motion blur and change the angle until you get the beam look you want. I personally like more of a broken random beam instead of a solid one, so I used 60 for my shutter angle.
Next, when you are happy with the speed and look, duplicate your particular layer. Next, add a fast blur effect and blur it out to mabye 30 or so. Change the transfer mode to add. Now this is where my comp diverges from yours. I used the 32 bit hdr function in particular 2.0 to make my particles super bright. You will need to color your duplicated glow layer. Think lightsaber glows from all of those tutorials. I only used one glow layer, but you can use as many as you want.
This is true 3d so, if you need to rotate, just add a camera and move it around until it matches your scene, or even animate the camera.
Hope this is what you needed.
Best,
Mike
PS, here is another type of particle weapon...more of a pulse style. Didnt know if you liked this one better. It is a little more complex to set up, however.
280_jaffaweaponsfiredesktop.m4v.zip
