realistic lasers

Support Compositing and Post Processing
1

I’ve been toying around with laser effects directly composited onto video with blender, and I have had no good results.

How does one go about making a realistic laser with nodes?

I’ve tried particles, and I’ve tried volume lighting, but neither provided me with a cool enough laser effect…
I’ve also got some awesome laser stuff with LW3D, but it doens’t transfer to blender as Blenders lights have a minimum come angle of 1. Lw3D has 0 degree lights, making them quite laserlike.

Heres something that I did, but don’t like.
http://www.jbserver.com/forums/attachments/10116_JasonLaser_Blend1.jpg

(yes, thats comp’d onto a HD video)

2

It won’t work with raytracing, but you can use a highly subdivided line with a halo material.

3

I tried that… Not sure why you’d need to raytrace it, but whatever.

I spent 2 more hours and I got some results.

Now before you click that picture and ask for a tut, I must say that I’ve never ever ever ever used nodes before, and I only have seen them used in one scene, so don’t be too supprised if my nodes arn’t as pretty as they aught to be.

Well 'nuff talking. Check this out y’all!!!:cool:

[That site also has some pretty cool sorta OS games worth playin’ (www.jbserver.com)]

I’d love to hear what y’all think!

4

Try this:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=62611
It gives some pretty specific instructions that will get you started with halo lasers.
You can adapt it for almost any laser-like effect, I would think.:cool:

5

Useful info, but as I said, I sorta figured a lot out already.
I will definatly use that in the future… it may possibly look cool doing an animated deform.

I did finish my current laser project, and I’ll prolly hafta get it online.