Couple of questions

[darklemur]

I'm attempting to do a sort of "shoot 'em up" type of animation, and the more I play with A:M the more I realize there's tons of stuff I still need to learn. Anyway, there are several things I'm having problems with.

 

Firstly, I'm trying to do a muzzle flash when a gun is fired. I was reading on the the special effects page on the Killer Bean website, and he said he did muzzle flash by modeling a vaguely conical shape, making it glow, etc, then scaling it up and down in (I assume) the choreography. I thought it might be easier to just put the muzzle flash on the model of the gun, and make an action that scaled it up and caused the gun to recoil (because then one wouldn't have to place the cone in the proper place every time). All this seemed to work out fine, but I noticed for the brief frame or two the flash is visible it casts a shadow on the ground, which to the best of my knowledge shouldn't happen. So is there a way to make part of a model not cast a shadow? Or do you think I'd would just be better off keeping the flash as a separate model, and, I dunno, constraining it to the tip of the gun? (Because I know you can make entire models not cast shadows).

 

The second thing I was wondering is what would be a good way to put bullet holes/blood splatters on walls, and make them appear after a certian time. Is there a way to make decals appear on a model in the choreography using a on/off pose or soemthing similar?