Hi All, I'm trying to do an animated sequence in bryce of a WWII dogfight. I think I can do most of what I need. But I need help with some of the effects. Does anyone know of any tutorials in bryce that simulates machine gun rounds being shot? Or do I have to do something like 100 little glowing spheres and animate each one separately? Does bryce have particle systems? Or something to simulate an explosion? Any help will be greatly appreciated. thanks, john...

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Let me make some screenshots and I will get back to shortly. Meanwhile check out the link. Look at "Battle Damage", and "A Tough Night at the Office". That is how I do machine gun effects. It will take a little more work to animate them, but it can be done.

just from what I've seen, I've seen long streaks from the tracers..you could probably just duplicate the basic rounds, and project in an arc towards the target. I dunno, it's worth a shot (no pun intended..;)

Yes pakled that is the method to use for most realistic tracer action. Each round would be constrained to a slightly curving path originating at the gun barrel. Plane guns are set to converge at about 800 yards, so you would have to take that into account too. Here is a simpler method to use for near instant tracer gratification. It is not nearly as realistic though. I will post on the other method later after I have had time to experiment.

for when the actual machine gun can be seen, a bright flash at the end of the barrel for one frame coupled with a slightly fuzzy white elongated sphere that is placed in the end of the barrel for 1-2 frames to simulate muzzle flare can create a nice effect. stunning gun shots can be produced in photoshop by just editing one or two frames in this way. obviously you wouldn't do that with machine gun fire though ;)

Here is the setup in Bryce using one enongated sphere constrained to a path.

Here is the crappy gif anim. Bryce anims will look much better.

Obviously one trace bullet is not gonna cut it. So you will have to do is go to the first frame of the animation in Bryce and then make the bullet hidden in the attributes dialog. Now duplicate it how many times you will need. Select the first bullet and unhide it, then move the time scrubber forward a little, move the bullet down the line a few frames, unhide the next bullet, move the time scrubber etc. until all the bullets are traveling down the path. Be careful when animating to make sure the time scrubber is where it needs to be before moving anything.

Won't work hiding it, that is a state and not animatable. You have to note the x,y,z size of the object and write it down somewhere then reduce the objects size to 0,0,0. The frame before you want it to appear set a keyframe then the next frame set the size back to what you wrote down. Repeat for each bullet. Reuse a bullet once it get's to the end of it's path.

Thanks Aldaron, I knew it sounded too good to be true.

I mislabeled my trajectory a path, sorry it is a trajectory.

Not much yet, much tweeking to do.

What an amazing tut! I'm so impressed....I didn't know this is possible.

Groingrinder, I've seen some of your pics., with these explosions (really great) how is it done (non animated) where can I find a tut on this. I would like to do a pic with explosions all over the place. Would appreciate your reply!!

Thanks TheBryster and coolcatcom. Coolcatcom I will try to get something posted later on this afternoon. The explosion is built of six duplicate parts which are rotated around each other. Three of the parts have the fire mat and three of the parts have the black smoke mat. The still explosions look alot better than the animation because they are extensively postworked.

Here is a rather old WW1 dog fight animation that I made in Bryce. It requires quicktime 6. http://209.245.59.22/Gimme/79381624/32274677/14A67183-E97E-4456-AF52-6E5C403CCFC4/0.267299/2/zepfinal.mp4 I hope that it might give you some inspiration. :)

Cool animation Pedrith. What program did you add the soundtrack in? Did you compose the soundtrack?

Here is how I do explosions. There are only 4 parts here instead of six that I mentioned earlier.

I'm glad you like the animation. The soundtrack was composed by my friend Maureen and her husband Steve. I used a very old program called soundedit 16 (mac only). :)