Hi all, just been playing with the idea of a sci-fi door force-field & strobe lighting. Have a look at the video and pics below and tell me what you think.


You tube video

That's a realy cool effect,how did you do it.

Dave

Hi granada, it was done with a decals and one model.

A few things your need to start, well files and images anyway.

For the force field your need to make a fpe or use one already made. I used one from the Mega Pack 01 in the Decals folder.
The original file was BarsBlue.fpe - the original image is 4x4 small images in one... which we are not going to use

\Files\entitybank\Mega Pack 01\Decals\

Next is the visual effects (fx) file. I use the decal_animate4.fx file and renamed it just in case I wanted to change the specs later.

\Files\effectbank\reloaded\

The next step was a little cheat, which was not to make 4x4 small images but one large one. We are going to use the 4x4 image fx which is read from left to right, line by line then repeated. This is all we needed to make the effect to the screen which will give the illusion of the force field.

Now make a force field image in your favourite image program and export as a dds file or png. The fiel format depends how you’re going to use the file down the line - dds will be better long term.

I used a 2048x2048 for this example with transparency in dds format, using a plasma effect in my image program.

Next create a BMP file of the above image 64x64 with the same file name as the fpe file.

Now add all files to your file structure. I just put it back in the Mega Pack 01 folder but it’s up to you lol.

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The strobe light which is a WIP, as I'm still working on the texturing; I used the same process but change the fx file a little to slow down the speed of the strobe but created 4x4 images in one.

In the fx file I changed the specs under the heading [ float FramesPerSec : Power ] to slow it down a little.

I also used the ceiling cam model and change the texture quickly for the test. In the example above I just changed the texture to just black and red for the test but now re-texturing so it looks like a strobe.

\Files\entitybank\Mega Pack 01\Industrial\Ceiling Camera.fpe

Really well done gd, your scifi work is coming along nicely. I love the force field it looks excellent. All you need is for it to buzz "If it doesn't already that is". Great work.

That's cool ,thanks for this info .

Dave

I think the strobe would work better as a animated model to get the real effect of a strobe and not a decal. Plus the strobe light source will reach better.