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Lightning Ball


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I just modeled one of those lightning balls, I had one in my room and I thought it would be a cool prop. Here what it is if you dont know what I'm talking about...

 

http://storeforknowledge.com/itemdetails.cfm/ID/616 (Lightning Ball)

 

The one I modeled is at the bottom, anyways I have all of the materials and everything on it except for the 'electricity'. What would be the best way to make it? I have been playing around with different stuff and I just want another opinion. Thanks in advance, and hope you like it so far :) !!

post-7-1085506691.jpg

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Looks just like the real thing. Good work.

 

Hmm..here's something to experiment on. How about an animated sprite emitter perhaps or a hair emitter using a short lightening animation and rotate the emitter to make it do it's electric dance.

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Hey!! I tried using hair for the electricity and it works great! Thanks so much, I've attached a picture at the bottom and I am going to make an animation of it rotating around soon. I'll put it on my site and include a link to it. Thanks again for your help! This is my first model with use of particles in it! :D Hope you like it, and please tell me if I could improve it! -Later

 

(If you find the picture is dark, I meant to do this to show the glow of the 'electricity') :)

post-7-1085539678.jpg

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How about a couple of forces with turbulance. And give us an animated render. This should blow the hairs around which would give a great impression of the flickering light in the ball.

 

Wade

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Try setting the force type to vortex, fan doesn't seem to do anything. Make sure dynamics are on also. Instead of a force, you could create a pose percentage and move the hair guides to different locations between 0% and 100% to get movement.

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The more I think about this the more I think you would have to script something like this to get the randomness that would make it worth while. The problems I see are as follow:

 

The end hair guide must be constrained to something. I would assume this would be a surface constraint to allow for the maximum flexability in movement. However, to constrain to a surface you have to use a bone.

 

I don't even know if you can add a bone to hair guides.

 

Adding a bone would then take away the ability of the force to affect the hair guide. Or so I would assume. I do not have V11 so I am only guessing to some extent.

 

So Maybe the best answer is to just manually animate and give us a render.

 

Then there is the possiblilty that I am totally wrong and it is just a matter of making sure the forces you are using are inside the glass ball so that the surfaces of the globe are not interfering with the forces.

 

*shrugs* keep trying I wanna see this animated.

 

Also there is the possibility of using the sprites along a path option that was discussed just a couple of days ago here in the forums.

 

Luck,

 

Wade

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Ok thanks for some more ideas :) , I'll first play around with the forces and turbulence more. The force was inside the glass, and I tried vortex and fan. I will play around with the dynamics and I will also play around with some sprites. Thanks for your help again and again! I want to see this animated too, and I should 'hopefully' have one very soon. I cant wait to use this as a prop or somethin :) . So I'll experiment with all of that and I'll update as I go... -Later

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Is this the look your looking for? Done with a pose slider on the hair guides. You could pull the hair guides to one side of the globe and have a bone for the center ball pointing in that direction and use an aim at constraint on a hand to have it follow.

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wow yeah thats good, and i know...well start making people out of hair...anyways that video is really awesome! I'm trying to get the tips pink and I'm trying to get them to bounce off of the edge of the glass. but this is only working for the particles. How did you make the pose sliders for the hair? I wasnt able to animate it :)

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First turn hair dynamics off. Create new pose/percentage. In the action window go into hair grooming mode, and just move the hair guides around at different position on the slider. For the hair color you need to go into the timeline and at about 80% change the color to pink.

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  • 2 months later...

I havent updated this in quite a while do to problems with getting the hair "electricity" to glow. But now that so many people have helped me with it I could finally work on it some more... Thanks so much!! I think this is as good as it gets, please tell me what you think!

post-7-1091035458.jpg

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That looks great.

I think your reds may be too intense. Most plasma balls that i've seen are purplish pink. I use to work at a "science" store that sold them. And never rely on box advertising to be accurate! :D

I also noticed that the electricity is casting shadows and the glass isn't.

If you want to get it to more electrical, or "plasmatic", you could add a soft glow around the inner sphere.

Cool none the less.

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