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Making Effects in Magos - Advanced techniques 2

IMPORTANT
Before reading these tutorials you MUST FULLY UNDERSTAND the basics of SFX in Magos and have entirely finished following the previous tutorial on Advanced techniques. I warned you, this is not easy stuff to master and I won't repeat all the basics.

Making SFX in Magos:
Advanced Techniques #2

Nuke base

PART 2: Circular translations (in other words: pretty circles)

I'll assume you've done all the steps to making the nuke in the previous tutorial, so you'd have the smoke/fire column and the smoke/fire cloud (which only moves up in the WE, due to a bug with the "model space" tag in Magos).

We're going to learn how to use the "bezier"-type of translation. Bezier is useful for making arcs of particles, and not just straight lines, like "linear" makes. Hermite also works well, but I prefer using Bezier.
This type of translation will be useful for making a big circle of fire as the base of our nuke. We could just make a large square emmitter, but this is a hell of a lot better... and a hell of a lot more complicated.

First step, make a bone. Right-click on it and select "Edit Node". Right after that, edit the name to something that fits, like "Stream1". We'll be making TWO circling emmitters, because one would move too slowly (looks ugly) and is even MORE complicated.

Click the "translation" button and a new window opens.
It should read:
Code:
0: { 0, 0, 0 }

Now go to the small list at the bottom that reads "Interpolation Type" (whatever the heck that means). Change the "none" to "Bezier". Instantly the texte will change to:
Code:
0: { 0, 0, 0 }
  InTan: { 0, 0, 0 }
  OutTan: { 0, 0, 0 }

Copy and paste it so the text looks like this (it's easier to explain when you have a second set of coordinates):
Code:
0: { 0, 0, 0 }
  InTan: { 0, 0, 0 }
  OutTan: { 0, 0, 0 }
0: { 0, 0, 0 }
  InTan: { 0, 0, 0 }
  OutTan: { 0, 0, 0 }

You're probably wondering what all these coordinates do. Please be patient, and I will try to explain as best as I can (I'm not all that good with this part of SFX, but I can explain).

0: { 0, 0, 0 } -----This is the first set of coordinates, where the bone will be at the start.
InTan: { 0, 0, 0 } ----- This says where the previous summit was. For us, it must have the same values as the previous "OutTan".
OutTan: { 0, 0, 0 }
----- This says where the arc's summit will be. It will go to that point in between.
0: { 0, 0, 0 } ----- This is the next set of coordinates. Where our bone will arrive at the specified frame.
InTan: { 0, 0, 0 }
----- This says where the previous summit was. For us, it must have the same values as the previous "OutTan".
OutTan: { 0, 0, 0 }

Here's a diagram.

TutorialNUKETRAILS.jpg
 
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