LW Modelling / scene Questions

[Rye]

Modelling : - How do you cut ships into sections for "slizer" beam weapon attacks?

scene : - for doing lasers and stuff in space, i've just loaded it all up at the start and keep the beams and light spots out of camera view, then suddenly move them in on the keyframe i want, is this the right way to go about it, or is there a way to make them unseen by the camera, then seen by the camera?

another thing...how exactly do you add sounds to the avi, and where can you download the various weapon sounds?

Thanks alot.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

To break a ship into sections you need to either do it manually or use a plugin. Use the Knife tool to cut things neatly, you just drag it across the area you want to cut and press the the right mouse key and it slices it. You then copy one side of the cut, delete it and then paste it into the next available layer. When you load it in next time it will appear whole, but each layer can be moved independantly and you can slowly pull them apart for effect. Ideally you'll have to model decks and damage and shit, but that may be a bit much right now.

There are also free plugins called Shatter or Crack-it and Explode, and these automatically chop a mesh up like crazy paving using parameters set by you, and the explode part does what it says on the tin. It explodes the parts away from each other using settings you define. You might want to investigate these, check out www.flay.com for tons of plug-ins and tutorials.

As for the phasers and stuff, don't move them at all. You keep the things in place but if you press the p key and bring up that particular items properties there's a bit under the 'rendering' tab that controls object dissolve. If you set it to 0 then the object is fine, at 100 the object has dissapeared. it's controlled by an envelope as well (click the E next to the percentage box) and this lets you fade it in and out at the correct times. Remember to press the m key to bring up the motion options, you can then parent a phaser to the ship you want to fire it and it will stick to that ship like glue, and you can also tell it to target another item as well. Very handy if you dont know about it already.

Adding sound has to be done post-production, there's a few free editors out there if you look hard enough, and weapons sounds usually come as loops from sound effect sites or from specific fan sites like www.stinsv.com for Trek noises. Any more questions just PM me to save boring the general public.

[Rye]

Thanks yet again kenny, i think i'm slowly falling in love with you .

Hmm...another thanks, and another...

When i take over the world, you shall have deity status.

[Rye]

As to not take up another thread...

my take on the whitestar vs defiant

http://babylondestroyer.tripod.com/wsvsd.jpg

a big pic^