Can anyone enligten me on what one might use to create muzzle flash from a weapon. I have tried a stretched sphere with all kinds of different fire textures with no luck. Usually it ends up being invisible even when the texture scale is set to very low. I am assuming if there is a way to do a muzzle flash that an explosion would also be possible too.

I took long grass, mapped it with red glass and made it glow.

Added some flames...

OK, this is still ab bit cheesy, but this is how I did it: I used the bitmap from my exploding firtree-material and mapped it onto a alpha-plain. I changed the material of the alpha-plain to a more fiery colour while leaving the transparency intact. (You'll have to do this after the initial creation of the alpha-plain, since you will have more access to the plains material from the editor compared to the dialog at creation which offers access only to adding bitmaps.) After this, I rotated several copies of the alpha-plain 30 degrees around the y-axis to get a more "volumetric" effect. The bitmap used for the muzzleflash is not really good for creating a muzzleflash, but it is acceptable for this presentation. Maybe I have enough time tomorrow, to make a more accurate bitmap.

Have fun,
Joerg

I wasn't as lazy as I thought. New version, new bitmap, better muzzleflash.

Also doubles as a decent excuse for a target-deceased marker (aka explosion):

Oh, almost forgot: the bitmap...

Have fun,
Joerg

it's excellent Joerg ! You can also create this with volumetric and simple materials. This one was done by mixing together : 1. spheres with volumetric materials : some with an additive light model and others with a shaded light model (luminous 100%). To make the additive ones "glow" put point lights (yellow, red, white / no shadows) inside the spheres. 2. spheres and cylinder with a fuzzy gray smoke. 3. spheres with glowing simple materials. GREEN FUZZ from the "volumetric" material collection, SMOKE from the "special effects" collection and GLOWING LAVA from the "glowing" collection can get you started ! P.S. : While mixing objects with additive volumetric materials use Ctrl+S constantly. VUE will crash a few times before you can finish... Eric

Wow, this is amazing, everyone. Thanks for all the great tips!

Wow, I wasn't even expecting a reply to this much less examples and source files. One question though. on what scale are you working, and would this be a viable solution for a gun barrel when it is about 1/100th the size of the images posted here? Or is that just a matter of sizing down the alpha masks to make it look proportionate? Oh by the way, you guys are my hero ;-)

Hi, if you are using the alpha-plane, it is just a question of scaling down the size of the plane. The image is always resized to fit the plane. And don't trust the preview: It messes up the alpha-plane. The final render is correct. Have fun, Joerg

Excellent tips, everyone! Looks like the techniques would work well for fireworks, too. :)

I thought muzzle flash could be made with a small orange volumetric point light with strong dust setting. I would have to try something and post a pic, but some problems makes me uninstall vue for some times... If it can helps... :-)