Creating custom explosions?

[[]V[]essenjah]

One big thing I need to work on for D3, is animated explosions.

I was wondering, in D3, for weapon explosion animations such as the concussion missile explosions, are we looking at animated sprites (Square polygon that always faces the player)?


I also need a decent tutorial for creating these animated explosions if possible.

In particular, I would like to replace the plasma ring effect you see when plasma blobs int the wall into a sort-of plasma cloud/burst effect.


Edit: It seems that I have found an effect that will work. I will still want to replace the explosion textures down the road and create particles though.

The big question now:

What file type do these explosions/animated textures fall under in the table.gam? Game files, textures, or generic objects? Some must act as sprites while others perform as flat animations. I noticed that the effect I found is called: ExplosionH. It lays flat where other explosion textures are always facing the player.

[Floyd]

it's a texture, more specificly a .oaf (animated). D3IT can create .oaf out of single .tga frames.

if you are searching anything in the .gam, hit ctrl+f and type it in

[d3jake]

Plus, I believe you need an alpha channel for the parts that will be see through. Pity you can't make a model for the explosion so you know exactly how close its getting to you.

[Duper]

look in the texture files. You will see that depending on the explosion, they are often 2 to 3 aof's combined.

[[]V[]essenjah]

Hmmm.... I know they are tga's combined into an OAF. I was mostly wondering if anyone has any examples or any information on how to best create this illusion. Apparently, you do need to have a certain amount of frames to make it look as though it is animated but I'm wondering how many should be used and how I should go about making modifications to each image to make it look as though it is a smooth, well-done, animation.


The other problem, is that some explosions lay flat when hitting a surface. Others face the player at all times, so no matter what direction you turn in, it will always face you and appear to be 3-dimensional. The same way the orb is created in D2. The problem, is that the only way I know of to do this, is to create a facing OOF file in D3Edit with the texture on it. Thus, creating a sprite.

This is a weapon explosion so it needs to appear to be 3D. The effect I'm using lays flat in most cases and doesn't look right.

[Interceptor6]

You need to uncheck \"planar blast\" under flags for the weapon's page (not the texture) in gamtool. \"planar blast\" is what makes explosions \"stick\" to walls like that.