CompuServe Thread

Someone recently asked about creating realistic lightning using 3D Studio. Here's a method I tried last night. With a little tweeking, it should give the desired effect. 1. Create an LSphere that fills the Camera View 2. Assign BLUE WIREFRAME material to the object 3. Setup a 10-20 frame animation in the keyframer 4. Setup the Plasma IPAS as follows: Number of arcs: 1 Inner size ratio: 0.1 Browninan variation: 0.1 Arc progression: Walk Max degrees per frame walk: 0.01 Random seed: 12345 <-play with this 5. Using Video Post, setup the IPAS Glow routine as follows: Hue: 167 Attenuation: 5 Pixels: 5 6. FIDDLE! <g> By adjusting the camera position and tweeking a couple of the above parameters, you should be able to get the "lightning" in the area of the screen that you want. Using this method you'll be able to setup your lightning the way you want, then just use Video Post to combine the lightning with your animation. Note. For that extra bit of realism, use SPURT and GLOW at the point of impact of the lightning. For what it's worth, Danny…