Lasers on Planes

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Lasers on Planes

Blitz123 (Posted 2006) [#1]

I found the best way to create a laser on a plane(not the endless one!) is use a semi-transparent tube coming out the front.. hope to have some code up soon..

Sir Gak (Posted 2006) [#2]

Neat idea. Very neat. Like it.

Ross C (Posted 2006) [#3]

If you use two tubes, scale one slighlty smaller. Give them the additive blend mode. Make the larger one semi-transparent, you get more of a glow from it :o)

Sir Gak (Posted 2006) [#4]

Ross C: Even cooler idea. Like it as well.

Jazz (Posted 2006) [#5]

Would this work as a lightsaber sort of effect too? Not that I'm working on a Star Wars game, but I do have need of a lightsaberesque effect...

John J. (Posted 2006) [#6]

For laser-beams, I've found it works well to use a X-prop style quad with a simple laser beam texture. This way you can make the beam look like anything you want by changine the texture image, giving the effect described by RossC, or anything else you want. Even better would be a single quad, which you would dynamically rotate along it's local Z axis (assuming it's Z axis would represent the length of the beam) so that it faces the camera all the time (I think this is called Axial Billboarding, although I'm not sure). Jazz: For a lightsaber effect I would use a transparent colored cyllinder, and an array of camera-facing sprites along the length of the cyllinder, sort of like a static, motionless, particle effect (to do this you would just parent the sprites to the light saber mesh). This would create a surrounding glow along the length of the lightsaber.