Can this background effect be achieved with an overlay scene?
See my character has this “Power-Up” action with a camera that pans around him. I would like for him to have an effect similar to this one, but I don’t know how to actually achieve it. Any suggestions?
If you can create a targa sequence of the animation. Like use light and particle effects then render it into .tga. dont forget to include the alpha chanel (RGBA) then take those frames of animation and put them all onto one 2d image in like Gimp, then use that as a texture on a Mesh>plane that apears when you like it to. that is for the omitting light. make it a halo as well so always faces camera. then for the secondary ring of spikes i would make a seperate animated texture on a seperate plane. but thats a personal opinion.
I know i havent been around a lot so hopefully some guru or regular will back this up but im confident you can do it this way.
T.
Or instead of a sequence of .TGA files, you might be able to use IPO and animate the file’s size, rotation, color and opacity. I’m using that in a project I’m working on, IPO’s are very powerful when you learn how to use them (something I’m learning -right now- 
).