Looking for modeled effect props
Alric
Posts: 215
in The Commons
I'm working on some comic book renders and I need some effect props for stuff like energy blasts and muzzle flashes. The catch is that I'm rendering with the Fil;aToon shaders so the standard method of making the props out of flat planes and transmaps won't work very well. As a result I need some actual modeled effects. I found a couple of 3d water splashes that are useful but not great for lasers and such.
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Lasers are just long, small diameter cylinders. Muzzle flashes are cones. dFormers can help make cylinders and cones more interesting
True, but I'm lazy and hoping someone else has done the work and will make them look a bit more interesting.
I found these in my library.
https://www.daz3d.com/sci-fi-dual-weapons
https://www.daz3d.com/orestes-electromancy-for-iray
Hmmm... The only thing I can recall that comes ready-made with modeled beam effects for Filatoon are the ones with https://www.daz3d.com/spacewatchers-guns-for-filatoon and as you can see, only one of them is really more than just a tubular shape. Beyond that, you're probably going to have to:
1.) go back to some really basic stuff from back when modeling was the only option... things like some of the really early light saber models for Poser and then convert those to Filatoon using the emmissive and opacity sections in the surfaces tab
2.) take some existing shapes, be they parts of existing props, primatives, or whatever and "beam-a-fy" them by scaling them up multiple times on one axis and scaling it down to like 10-15 percent on the other two for a laser-like beam and/or using emmissive textures and opacity maps to give them mass. I used to do this a long time back, and you'll find that things like a basic ground terrain can pass as an enery field with the right texture applied, while things that are vaguely pear shaped, like a vase or the body of a lamp work pretty well for beams. Things like streams of water, spash effects, etc., are logical choices, as are some of the morphing primative packages like https://www.daz3d.com/everyday-morphing-primitives/
3.) just use an existing beam or energy effect for Iray and render your scene twice: once with the filatoon scene rendered in Filament minus the ray beam and another rendered in Iray with all of the lights out and only the emissive portion of the beam turned on. This method has the two advantages of 1.) requiring no additional work beyond a second render pass and b.) creating an interactive lighting effect on the items nearest the beam when the two passes are combined in post.
4.) do it the way most animated films do it and just draw the entire effect in in post.
Thanks for the suggestions, there's some stuff I can work with. It also occured to me that there are a number of sets of explosions and muzzle flashes made for 3d printing. Those are trivial to convert to OBJ and reduce the number of faces.
maybe https://www.daz3d.com/crystals-volume-1
As long as the T.O.S. for those products doesn't conflict with your intended use. I'm always extremely careful with any 3D product obtained from beyond DAZ, Renderosity, and CGBites/Rotica, as what one obtains elsewhere may not be properly covered.
santjaga1975 has a couple of products with meshes related to flames and fires (I never tried to use them in Filatoon though):
https://www.daz3d.com/santjaga1975
an upsidedown bare tree retextured and scaled can pass as toon lightning
https://www.daz3d.com/sy-bullets-and-muzzle-flash-iray <-- iRay and the VDBs miht not toon very well, some other bits might be useful
https://www.daz3d.com/power-blast-props-for-victoria-7-and-8-and-michael-7-and-8 <-- iRay
https://www.daz3d.com/orestes-electromancy <-- NOT iRay (the 'You might also be...' list is also worth reviewing
https://www.daz3d.com/electromancy-power-poses-for-genesis-2-male-s ; <-- A poses set for ^
https://www.daz3d.com/fantasy-and-sci-fi-effects <-- Poser and OBJ
Some good possibilities there. And I already have some of the older ones, a benefit of 26 years of buying poser/daz toys.
One vendor you should take a really close look at is Flink over at Renderosity. He has a large number of effects products that usually incude a number of 3D modeled varsions. His lightning pack, for example, https://www.renderosity.com/marketplace/products/129077/flinks-lightning , contains 20 modeled lightning bolts as well as 8 3D modeled "exploding sp spark/impact" models, all set up as poser, object, and VUE files, along with a set of Iray textures.. and happens to be on sale this weekend.