HELP: Special Fx

[cdxbow]

I haven't made much progress with special Fx over the last couple of years and have put it into the 'to do' basket for a while, now it's time to take 'em out.

By special fx I mean explosions, fire, smoke (gosh, I love good smoke! Not that sort, rather big billowing clouds. Dont care if its black, white or something in between), dust clouds, glowing sparkly things, holographic effects etc. In some cases these are best done with particle effects by the engine, in others they may be able to be done either with models or particles. Here I am interested in what can be achieved with models.

For MekArcade many of these are important to the destructibles, which won't be implemented to later in 2013, but it will take a while to work out how to do them then actually make them, so now is the time to start. They also can add a lot of atmosphere to a map if just used as eye candy like the currnent particles, could be used with weapons and they may even be needed for damage fx on the meks in the future.

I thought I would list a series of generic effects, what (little) I know about them, what I have seen and any examples I have. If anyone has any experience, examples, rescources or interest in working on these please post. There may well a treasure trove of working, open licensed models that I don't know about. It could be Blender has some super duper tool for doing low poly explosions or clouds. Note of caution using high end modellers such as max. Max has a few tools to make explosion type effects, the trouble is most of them depend on particles, and can't be exported as models.

Explosions
I have some examples using an expanding models (torus, sphere) with transparent textures. I will put these on a map with some triggers to look at and work on, and look at the Max tools. I had a quick look at OGA and only found 2D artwork. There must be more out there?

Fire
I have seen examples using a simple model using few animated polys that jiggle around & expand/contract. I may have these somewhere.

Smoke
I have not seen any good examples but I will look. Front Mission Evolved has really great smoke (and explosions and flames) and I am envious.

Clouds
I have seen examples using simple rectangular models, arranged as sheets, with a mostly transparent graphic

Electric Sparcs/arcs
I have some md3 examples which I will put on a map.

Holographic effects
Possibly use shader effects or transparency here. We had an aiBaull gone holographic, I will find it.

Dust
Maybe done the same as clouds.

Forcefields
The zam examples at quad could be used as a force field, but they don't render the models behind them (makes the technique a potential invisibility shield), but I can imagine there are a few ways to do them

Galactic Map
Not stricly speaking special fx but utilizing some of the same techniques. I have tried to do this with a solid galaxy shape and it didn't work well. Half a dozen parallel rectangles each with a slighty different graphic of stars might work better.

[Sniper-Goth]

About particles in the weapons, in Iron Fist, they have already did something like that to them.
We could ask for some help to add this type of thing for Mekarcade/Red Eclipse?
Some screenshots of the effects:

[qreeves]

I'd really rather you didn't promote that as someone else's work, as I am the one who added that to RE (and was subsequently lifted and modified from my code). Red Eclipse does all those effects by default, all Iron Fist did was change the particle textures and colours. It is toned down to blend together more fluidly because it gets VERY hectic on screen as it is.

[Sniper-Goth]

I'd really rather you didn't promote that as someone else's work, as I am the one who added that to RE (and was subsequently lifted and modified from my code). Red Eclipse does all those effects by default, all Iron Fist did was change the particle textures and colours. It is toned down to blend together more fluidly because it gets VERY hectic on screen as it is.

Oh, i didn't tought that Red Eclipse already had this feature implemented, because i dont see much things like that in the game.
Sorry for thinking that Tempris had added it inside the engine =p

[cdxbow]

Sniper-goth & Quin have raised an important point. There is a hell of lot of stuff that the engine can be do, if you know how to configure it. For example with particles, there is not a lot of documentation, but looking at examples (?beams sauer map) you can see a number of examples.

[hulk]

I'd really rather you didn't promote that as someone else's work, as I am the one who added that to RE (and was subsequently lifted and modified from my code). Red Eclipse does all those effects by default, all Iron Fist did was change the particle textures and colours. It is toned down to blend together more fluidly because it gets VERY hectic on screen as it is.

Well, the last time I looked at the particles in Iron Fist, they looked greatly superior to those found in RE, not only in the way the particle textures look, but also in the way they are animated. Maybe you haven't seen the newest version, it's on Moddb: http://www.moddb.com/games/iron-fist/do ... -1-10-2013

[quintux_v]

Oh, i didn't tought that Red Eclipse already had this feature implemented, because i dont see much things like that in the game.
Sorry for thinking that Tempris had added it inside the engine =p

I'm agreeing with this, Tempris doesn't do a lot to describe how much of it is borrowed and how much is his own work.

[qreeves]

Welll, the last time I looked at the particles in Iron Fist, they looked greatly superior to those found in RE, not only in the way the particle textures look, but also in the way they are animated. Maybe you haven't seen the newest version, it's on Moddb: http://www.moddb.com/games/iron-fist/do ... -1-10-2013

Superior is subjective, I will agree they are well defined but that is not always compatible with visibility during frantic gameplay.

[DrachenComputer]

About particles in the weapons, in Iron Fist, they have already did something like that to them.
We could ask for some help to add this type of thing for Mekarcade/Red Eclipse?
Some screenshots of the effects:

Sniper-Goth pls send me these spezial interface from these pics. Thank you.