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Zeus's Behind an' Stuff - A Guide to Special FX!

Archive: 6 posts


Want to have awesome explosions like this?

http://i6.lbp.me/img/ft/50680283d55a38d1f4a98a62121cda2619502f05.jpg

Or like this?

http://i1.lbp.me/img/ft/d0185cfae05fcfee25a74778d50e1dab4499d44d.jpg

Well, these cool explosions were both done using Holograms.

Explosion with Mushroom Cloud:

For explosion No.1, you'll need to make a shape using holo that looks like the top part of a mushroom cloud. Only the top part. Y'know, the part that sits on top of the "trunk", as I like to call it.

Then you set it on fire. Oh noes! FIRYAH!!
Copy and paste it several times, and each time you paste it, make it a bit smaller. Glue all these copies on top of each other to make one big flaming... thingy. Now attach a mover and gyroscope to the big flamey thing.

Tweak the mover's speeds to something like +4 for Up/Down, and +2 for Left/Right. Acceleration and deceleration to 100%. The gyro should be tweaked to 1500 for speed and 100% for both acceleration and deceleration. Now, capture the big moving flamey thingy into your goodies bag. It will be used later. Don't worry about the "trunk" of the cloud, there will be a short trail of flame left behind by the big moving flamey thingy as it moves up.

For my explosions, I like to use sequencers. They allow for heapsa annoying glitches better timing. Yes. Betta.

Place a sequencer on the thing you want to blow up. The first thing we want the sequencer to do is to show the explosion, right? So you make a circle with hologram, and put it in a emitter. The emitter should be tweaked to these settings:

Velocity: 0.
Turning Velocity: 0 or 1500, your choice.
Lifetime: 0.1 Seconds.
Emit Frequency: Doesn't matta, brah!
How to emit thingy: Emit Once (not On/off).
Appear Effect: Appear.
Destroy Effect: Explode.

Now put the emitter on the sequencer, right at the beginning.

Put the big moving flamey thing into a second emitter. Set this one to:

Velocity: 0 (It has the mover, remember?)
Turning Velocity: 0.
Lifetime: 2 Seconds.
Emit Frequency: Told yah, doesn't matta!
How to emit thingamabob: Emit Once (not On/off).
Appear effect: Expand.
Destroy effect: Dissolve.

Put this emitter right next to the first emitter. Now put a buncha exploding sound objects below the emitters. Put a few more sound effects like groaning metal or falling debris if you like.

If you feel like it, put a mover and a rotator on the sequencer too. The mover has the effect of making it seem like the explosion throws the object up. The mover should be set to a nice slow speed, like 3 or 4 up/down. The rotator makes it seem like the explosion flips the object over. This should also be set to quite a slow speed, like 90 or 120. The mover and rotators should take up about 1 to 3 stripes on the sequencer, depending on how your sequencer has been tweaked.

Also, you could put some batteries on your sequencer and link them to danger tweakers on various parts of your object (set to fire, stay on). Or you could put emitters on the sequencers that shoot small bits of flaming hologram at high speeds into the air to simulate debris flying off.

Set the sequencer's "time per stripe" setting to something like 0.3 seconds or 0.5 seconds. If you put a signal into the "play forward" input now, your object will be blown up with a firey mushroom cloud. Awesome.

Lightning:

Make a lightning bolt using hologram.

Tweak it to these settings:

Colour: Any colour you like. IMO, it looks best with a very light blue.
Animation speed: 0%
Brightness: 100%
Animation speed when off: 0%
Brightness when off: 0%
Input setting: Dimmer (not on/off).

Copy + paste this lightning bolt. Using the corner editor, change the shape of the first lightning bolt, but keep it the same length. You don't have to keep it the same length, it just looks a lot neater. Repeat this until you have 4 to 6 different shaped lightning bolts.

I find that the easiest and most convenient method is to use a sequencer.

Put timers on each stripe of the sequencer. Each lightning bolt shape needs its own timer. Each timer should be set to these settings:

Time length: 0.5 seconds.
Input setting: Countdown.
Timer length: Who cares? It's best to leave it to its default length.

Link each timer to its own lightning bolt shape. After each and every lightning bolt shape has its own timer connected to it, overlap the lightning bolts and glue 'em together.

The sequencer's "time per stripe" setting should be set to something like 0.3 seconds. The reason the timers' countdown time is longer than the sequencer "time per stripe" is because this means that at the different lightning bolt shapes fade into each other. If the "time per stripe" was the same as the timer's countdown time, then there would be a gap in between each bolt.

Sound effects!! I don't think anybody has ever experienced a silent lightning storm. For the whole duration of the sequencer, have thunder rumbling in the distance (thunder is in the "earth, wind and fire" sound object) and a few lightning strike sound effects. If the lightning is supposed to be in the distance, there should be a short gap in between when the lightning actually strikes and when the sound plays. Just like in real life; light moves faster than sound. This shows how far away it is from you.

Now if you put a signal into the sequencer's "play forward" input, the lightning will move and look all awesome, spewing awesome sounds straight from Zeus's behind. Yay.

Moar effects coming soon!

(This was copy + pasted from LBPlanetarium because I wanted to share my methods with everyone but was way too lazy to type it again).
2012-07-08 04:09:00

Author:
Kaboosh99
Posts: 359


Only issue is if you're using it in cinematics, any sackboy would die...2012-07-08 17:04:00

Author:
Undarivik
Posts: 442


Only issue is if you're using it in cinematics, any sackboy would die...

Hmm? I don't see what you're getting at.

If you mean that the explosion will kill you, then you're wrong. There is no way for sackboy to die in the explosion if you put the big flamey moving thing in a thin layer. Destroyers don't kill you, neither does anything else in my method of blowing stuff up.

But you could be talking about something else, so please clarify.
2012-07-09 02:37:00

Author:
Kaboosh99
Posts: 359


Wowzers, this could help A LOT in my future levels.... thanks for the method!2012-07-09 07:04:00

Author:
ConanUltimate
Posts: 104


Ahhh this will help me a lot. But these were taken when I the proud wheelbase has blown them up! I'm gonna blow stuff up!2012-08-05 10:01:00

Author:
wheelbbase911
Posts: 54


Most helpful tool for special effects: sticker panel. And lots of lights and global lighting changers...2012-08-12 23:58:00

Author:
Tynz21
Posts: 544


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