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Creating Automatic Weapon Muzzle Flashes with EffectsLab

by Simon Jones

This tutorial will guide you through the process of creating automatic weapon muzzle flashes in EffectsLab. For automatic weapons, you don't always want to have to manually place every single muzzle flash, so EffectsLab can simplify the process for you. For the purposes of this tutorial you can use your own movie clip, or download this short example file from Fxhome.com:

http://fxhome.com/effectslab/tutorial_movies/muzzleclipmpeg4.mov
(Quicktime mpeg4)

Getting started:

Load EffectsLab and select New Video Project from the welcome screen.

Select the bare muzzle flash clip as your background plate, and check the settings:

Drag a muzzle flash effect from the effects browser onto the timeline to begin. The default muzzle flash will appear in the middle of the canvas.

Use the crop tool to alter the length of the effect as required. If you are using the example file, stretch the effect to the full length of the clip.

Textures

The first thing we want to do is import some more interesting textures. Hit the blue 'Import texture' button in the toolbox, then locate and select the smoke_1 and smoke_2 textures in the EffectsLab/textures/smoke/ folder and the blobby_glow_1 texture from the EffectsLab/textures/ folder.

The new textures will appear in the texture browser:

The muzzle flash is now much more exciting. The appearance of the muzzle flash is determined hugely by the textures. Different combinations can create wildly different results.

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