Need help making spaceship engine flames

vbr2809

Hey guys,

Its my first thread here.

Can anybody tell me (or point me to a tutorial) on how to make engine flames from spaceships, I dont know what to call them, its the blue flames that comes out of the rear of a spaceship

I am making a space shooter kind of game with a friend for Unity, and I want animated blue flames to come out of the rear end of the ships, I have made a flame in photoshop, but Im completely lost in how I animate it and import it to Unity, without showing a background.

Zodd

I don't know how exactly do the flames you draw look like but if you are thinking of something that looks like.. lets say jet/rocket/space streak like flame there are a couple of ways you could simulate that effect.

The easiest way to make those is using particles they simple enough to use ( i think any youtube tutorial can help you with those) and tick the "color over time" property.

Second way is using trail renderer, just set starting and ending width to something to suite the scale you are using for your scene.

The third and maybe the most complicated way is drawing sprites of animated flame and then
use them with shader that supports frame animation <- wouldn't recommend this because it may be too tedious drawing animated flame.. by hand... and make it loop and whatnot, unless,
of course if you explicitly need it to be like that i would go with first two options.

Quick test i did ( not the best results but try it and see if you like the direction )
GameObject>CreateOther>ParticleSystem
Then in the particle parameters change these:
Prewarm X
Start Lifetime 1
Start Speed 10
Start Size 1
Simulation Space World
-Emmision
Rate 20
-Shape
Mesh
-ColorOverTime
Put gradient and make it
Alpha 255

---

0
Orange/Yellow>Magenta>Purple>White
-SizeOverLifetime
Curve Starting at 5 going down to 1
-Renderer
SortMode = Youngest First

Set it up so it comes out of the engine then parrent it under the spaceship mesh.

vbr2809

Hi Zodd,

Thx for the fast answer

I think the flames you are talking about is exactly what i mean, When I look at games like EVE Online for example, it looks like they have made some animation of a flame and then rotated copies 4-5 times, so its visual in all angles, it was kind of what I was looking for.

But I will give the particles you talked about a go. We are aiming for mobile platforms like Android and so, can particles still be used there?

I have always thought that particles uses a lot of memory, am I wrong about that?

.Wiki

Particles can be used on mobile devices but you can´t use too much of them. You could create a particle simulation in a 3d application and then bake it down to a simple plane to get the effect you mentioned of EVE.

Another "easy" approach would be to paint a view different engine effects by hand.

Yog-Shoggoth

vbr2809,

Take a look at the Unity Training project Space Shooter http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/projects/space-shooter they have a particle system setup for doing something similar to what you are trying to do.

They demo it in the third video 'The player gameobject' at around the 8 minute mark. There is an asset package available for free for this project (http://u3d.as/66k) that you could download and take a look at how they built their system and tweak it to your exact needs.

vbr2809

Thx for your replies guys, some questions tho.

Particles can be used on mobile devices but you can´t use too much of them. You could create a particle simulation in a 3d application and then bake it down to a simple plane to get the effect you mentioned of EVE

This sounds interesting, would I be able to bake down an animation of the particles as well?

Another "easy" approach would be to paint a view different engine effects by hand

I dont understand what you mean.

Take a look at the Unity Training project Space Shooter http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/p.../space-shooter they have a particle system setup for doing something similar to what you are trying to do.

They demo it in the third video 'The player gameobject' at around the 8 minute mark. There is an asset package available for free for this project (http://u3d.as/66k) that you could download and take a look at how they built their system and tweak it to your exact needs

This is great, I will look at it when I come home in a couple of days, right now my connection isnt good enough to show videos

.Wiki

vbr2809 wrote: »

Thx for your replies guys, some questions tho.

This sounds interesting, would I be able to bake down an animation of the particles as well?

You can bake to a sequence and then arrange it on a spritesheet. In unity you could apply this spritesheet to a simple plane and "pan" the UVs.
The baking depends on the application you use.

vbr2809

You can bake to a sequence and then arrange it on a spritesheet. In unity you could apply this spritesheet to a simple plane and "pan" the UVs.
The baking depends on the application you use.

Is there any chance you know of a tutorial on how to it in 3ds max? I have been searching on Google but cant seem to find one. The problem could be that Im not searcing for the right things, I havent done many animations before or worked with particles for that matter.

.Wiki

Juar treat the baking and the particles as different tasks, so its easir to find a tutorial.

You could also try this http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/15/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/index.html?url=files/GUID-4AA2CF4F-32E2-4FDC-A8EF-CE59EA20B399.htm,topicNumber=d30e459577

For the baking you would use a simple plane and place it beside the engine fire so the raycast goes through the fire during the bake.

I´m not sure if you can bake a sequence in 3dsmax, I haven´t used it for years. If not you would need to bake each frame by hand. And don´t forget to save a alpha channel to mask out the black background.

You would also need some padding, xNormal has a cool photoshop filter which gets automatically installed. It´s called "dilatation".

vbr2809

Ok I will look in to it and see what I can find.

Thx a lot mate