#59 - Animation - Engine Textures

I had a lot of trouble with the particles when trying to make the engine flares, and frankly it looked terrible. I then realised that actually, why use particles at all when in Star Wars the engines just have a bright glow coming out of them, rather than a flame? So I deleted the particles and created a new texture with maximum glow on it, and the effect that resulted was perfect. I its so much easier to make, looks far better, and is easier on the render time. I added this texture to the engines on the Venator and the Invisible Hand and the glow looks very realistic.


After the pain and effort that was a failed attempt to create an engine flare, I am very happy with how the engines now look. What is really nice about them is that there is a whole shot where you can see the whole back of the Venator, providing a great view of what might be the most realistic part of the entire animation. This significantly improves the whole effect that the specific camera angle was intended to create in the first place. One small issue is that using a texture instead of particles limits the different techniques I have used, but I will be using particles for the EMP blast anyway so this shouldn't be a problem really. The main downside for using this texture is that you can only see any glow at all if the face with the texture applied is visible to the camera. To fix this I might add the texture to more faces inside the engine, if I decide it is necessary.


When it comes to the Invisible Hand, there is an issue with the glow reaching too far around the engines because the faces which are textured go slightly through the surrounding faces, meaning the light can escape the seams. However, I am choosing to leave it like this so that in the first close-up shot of the Invisible Hand the viewer can properly see the intensity of the engines as it passes by underneath. It could also provide a nice effect when the ship jumps away at the end. Otherwise, the engines aren't really visible so should not block out any other effects. If they do, I will have to fix the modelling of the engines to prevent the light escaping, or turn down the glow. I added a third engine to the Invisible Hand model in between the first two because it looked right, and I'm pretty sure it has that many in the film.



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