I am making a laser turret and getting incosistent results with the laser beam. Sometimes it is a long solid beam like it is supposed to be and sometimes it looks like it is shooting bursts, which is sometimes cool. But sometimes the beam doesn't even show up. I am using a cylinder with the blue laser preset and a really bright round parallel light. I need help to keep the beam steady.

here is the wireframe with the laser light in the turret and an obviously unbroken super long cylinder.

Message edited on: 10/12/2004 19:16

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Hi TobinLam. I had a lot of probs with using cylinder lights for laser effects too. There definitely is a problem in getting them to render consistantly. I finally gave up on using lights and went to using cylinder and cone primitives with variations of the "greenlit" preset from Bryce's complex material category. You can tweak the mat to be any color you want and it renders dependably. Another advantage is that you can use an elongated cone primitive to get that effect of a beam getting narrower with distance. This pic uses primitives for energy beams.

I've had this same problem. The only way to go is cylinders and cones......

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Yep cylinders, the greenlit preset with ambience colors changed.

The laser beam is simply a long cylinder with the Blue Laser Beam volume preset. I just tried applying the greenlit preset and got absolutely nothing. I tried the cone an now I have this sweet laser beam that only shows from certain angles and still sometimes does the bursts.

I've never used that material, but wonder if you've tried things like different texturing modes, different tiling etc? Might be worth experimenting with? edit to add: DUH! just looked at the material, and see that no tiling is involved.

Message edited on: 10/13/2004 02:03

TobinLam one thing i would like to suggest to you. Get rid of the spacecraft/ship out of your image, whatever made you pick something like that to use in it, i'm sure you could find something else for it ;)

lol don't listen to lunartick, he's just using it himself :)

See, i think the problem with Greenlit and the laser materials, is that in certain settings they get touchy. For instance, in certain lighting situations the Greenlit material won't show up as-is. Something about ambient colors cancelling each other out, i think. Maybe you could try modifying the colors and/or settings of the Greenlit material.