Making lights

[Doctor-Pepper]

Lightning Effect

Check the screen. It looks amazing. Can anyone tech me how to make such effects with Max 5

 

[TDR]

it's really easy. Take one blizzPart emitter, set it to tail only and crank up the tail length to the maximum (10) and set the cone angle to 180. The texture is up to you, whatever you think it'll fit and also you can tweak the variation and particle count to suit your needs.

 

[Doctor-Pepper]

Can you plz explain how to use BlizzPart emitters

 

[Mechanical Man]

Never got the point what head and tail of the particle is.

 

[TDR]

Can you plz explain how to use BlizzPart emitters

what do you mean, I just told you what to do and I guess you know how to place one in a scene. The art tools documentation does a pretty good job on explaining what every parameter of blizzprat does, that's where I learned how to use it from.

The difference between particles and tail is that the tail is basically a very stretched particle.

 

[Doctor-Pepper]

I couldnt find anything about blizzPart emitter in Art Tools documentation

 

[TDR]

oh really...

Warcraft III Particle System
Under the Create Toolbar – Particle Systems, you will find the BlizPart particle object. This plug-in is a complete particle system and material editor in one.
The particle type is always four vertex quads. There are three key frames you can set to determine the life of a particle: the initial Start, the Middle with user-placeable timing, and the End just as the particle life has ended. Animating the textures can then be done in the two segments: one from Start to Middle called lifespan, and the other from Middle to End called decay.
The Warcraft III particle system uses a relative orientation. Thus, it behaves oddly if you don’t do the following: always make these objects in the top viewport and animate them into position, leaving them with 0,0,0 rotation at frame 0.
A gravity space warp is used to add gravity per emitter.
BlizParticle options
Count – Has no effect.
Speed – Initial velocity of created particles. Can be animated.
Variation % – Random variation % of speed.
Cone Angle – Angle of random spray pattern from center. A value of 180 will cause particles to emit in a 360-degree ball.
Timing options
Life – Number of seconds each particle continues to be drawn after its creation.
Parts/Sec – Number of particles created per second. Can be animated.
Squirt – When the Squirt option is checked and an animated stepped Bezier controller is used on parts/sec, a large number of particles will emit simultaneously on the parts/sec keys in the amount of the key value. This is good for explosion effects.
Width and Length – Width and length of the emitter plane where particles are created randomly from its surface area.
Line Emitter – Cause the cone spray pattern to lock to one axis.
Texure options t
Blend, Add, Modulate, Mod, Mod 2X, and Alpha Key - Identical to the options in the Warcraft III material. Alpha Key is also known as 2 Bit Alpha.
Texture Filename – The .TGA texture being used for the particles.
Rows and Cols – If the particle is using sections of the texture at a time, you can use these options to set the number of rows and columns in a texture. Animating texture particles can be made to have frames all on one texture map that start at the top left and go to the right.
Unshaded – The particles do not use lighting and are always full bright.
Unfogged – Particles ignore distance fog.
Replaceable texture – Can be set to team glow to create procedurally colored glowing particles for a unit.
Particle options
Head – The particle is a billboarded square quad.
Tail – A tail particle is billboarded along the axis of motion and stretches in length based on speed.
Both – Draws both heads and tails.
Tail Length – A multiplier to the calculated tail particle length.
Time (parametric) Middle – The relative time of the middle key to the life.
Color, Start/Middle/End – Three values of RGB Multiply for the particle.
Alpha, Start/Middle/End – Three alpha values for the particle. Zero is transparent.
Scale, Start/Middle/End – Scale of the particle in units across. Lifespan Head UV Anim – Starting and ending cell number for animating texture sequence of the first half of the Head particle’s life. Repeat will cause this animating texture to cycle.
Decay Head UV Anim - Starting and ending cell number for animating texture sequence of the second half of the Head particle’s life. Repeat will cause this animating texture to cycle.
Lifespan Tail UV Anim - Starting and ending cell number for animating texture sequence of the first half of the Tail particle’s life. Repeat will cause this animating texture to cycle.
Decay Tail UV Anim - Starting and ending cell number for animating texture sequence of the second half of the Tail particle’s life. Repeat will cause this animating texture to cycle.
Other options
Priority Plane – When you are using blend mode, the Priority Plane option can cause particles to draw in a specific order with other blend objects in the same model. The lower the number, the earlier the particles will draw.
Particles in Model Space – Causes animation of the particle emitter to be carried over to the particles.
XY Quads – Causes the particles to be a type of tail that orients to the XY grid.