[TwoBrainedCylon]

Queen,

I don't have any experience with Cinema 4D but will try to give some insight with MAX and LW experience. If this doesn't seem helpful, feel free to ignore it. (In other words, always do what's best for you and not any critic).

MAX's engine lights were a huge pain and worked as you described. The fix was to animate the size and intensity of the engine light as the model moved towards and away from the camera. That took some trial and error but it worked out.

With Lightwave, the engines always benefited from adding a noise channel into the intensity and animating it around so it fluctuated. This did a good job of simulating an engine burning fuel.

For the general scene, I always found it better (in LW) to build scene segments around a null. I made everything a child of the null and locked the lighting rig to it. Then, I would animate the models and no matter how I moved them, the lighting would stay in place. This allowed they to always keep a good light setup and also prevented them from growing brighter and darker as they moved around.

Some suggestions for your lasers: Firstly, the TIE fighter almost always had long lasers, -- although with the special edition they shortened some of them. They also fired in burst of 3, 5, or long volleys that weren't typically uniform and regular. The original series lasers were regular volleys like those of a machinegun. As long as the trigger was pulled, it spat pulses. The GINO fighters were akin to WWII fighter planes in the beginning and F14 fighters later in the series. It depends on what look you want for this but I would definitely experiment at varying up the lasers. I don't know what 4D does for these such things but you can also usually really bring the lasers to life by adding a small glow to them. If that's possible, I'd definitely try it.

Also, when lasers come that close to something, I've found its a good idea to pass a light of the same color by the model to link the lasers to the rest of the 3D world. To make this work, you must disable the light from affecting everything but the model. This is similar to the effects they used in Star Wars. There, ILM actually painted the laser illuminations onto the film but its the same effect. (If you want to check it out, this was most prominent in Empire Strikes Back). Another trick is to have a small light embedded at the cannon of the fighter firing the laser and flash it whenever the gun fires. This takes some keying but it can really add a strong effect once you get it right.

If I could be so bold, I'd strongly suggest that you stop animating and work on the lighting rig before going further. I think you'll find that goes a long way in the way everything else looks. The best 3D advice I was given was "get the lighting right before you do anything else". I've found that to be absolutely true. A crappy model properly lit can still look good. The best model with poor lighting will always look bad, no matter what else you do with it.

All my best,


Russell