Quote:
Originally Posted by rerodriguez13
I'm working on a project and I'm trying to figure out how to make an alien spaceship zap at objects and make the objects disappear after being zapped. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rerodriguez13
I'm working on a project and I'm trying to figure out how to make an alien spaceship zap at objects and make the objects disappear after being zapped. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
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1. Pick your weapon for this example lets say it is a cannon that fires spheres. This is just conceptual the ship does not need to actually have a cannon but you do need to decide where on the ship it would be.
2. Select an object you will use to represent the cannon add it to the movie and position it where the cannon would be on the ship. Don't worry about what the cannon looks like it won't be seen in the final movie. You can use a dummy object for this but I would suggest a physical object if you are just getting started as it is easier to visualize what is going on.
3. We want the cannon to stay "glued" to the spaceship so that when the ship moves the cannon moves with it. To do this, set the vehicle of the cannon to the spaceship (look for the vehicle property.)
4. Select the object to use as your projectile, this does matter as it will be seen in your movie. Lets say we pick a sphere, size it appropriately.
5. To start with, set the opacity to .6 or .7 so that you can see it but can also see what is behind it.
There are several things that will be needed to "clean up" the movie but for a start this should give you the basic setup.
Now firing the weapon will involve a "cycle" of steps that need to be done each time your cannon is fired.
1. Initially the projectile should be invisible.
2. Move the projectile to the cannon. This is the real purpose of the cannon to give a point on the ship where the projectile starts.
3. Make the projectile visible.
4. Move the projectile to the target.
5. Turn the projectile invisible.
There are of course numerous variations to this scenario. Some steps can be done together, the timing of steps can be changed, explosions at the target can be added and the projectile can be changed but the basic steps are basically spelled out above.
When the cannon is working the way you want you can make the cannon invisible. In the case of the cannon this can be done before the movie starts, just set isShowing to false. In contrast the visibility of the projectile will need to change dynamically (as the movie is playing) so you will need to change the isShowing, or better still the opacity, during the firing sequence.
Hope this is enough to get you started.
Mark