I am prepareing to render a large scale space battle animation and i was wondering if anyone has any pointers on generating interesting weapons FX.
Iv’e tried several different methods to generate the effects but havn’t really gotten one I am happy with yet.
I need Starwars like blaster bolts. particle beams, missles. etc. Iv’e pretty much got the missiles to look like I want them to but energy weapons are giving me a hard time.
I would also like to hear some ideas on creating shield impact effects.
Don’t know how old they are but there’s a few good tuts here:
http://stblender.iindigo3d.com/tutorials.html
(Includes a great shield tutorial)
You can probably find more with the Google thingy.
I’m working on a short and was wondering about those effects too.
Thanks for the link 
Halo materials (one vertex per mesh!) could work for some weapons. Just add a short lived particle system…
If you make a path for the trajectory you want you can use the single vert or particle to follow path. If you animate the start times you can get bursts of lazer fire or increase the life of the particle for long lazer effects.