speed skin idea

[herodad1]

got an idea last night at work and wanted to share it. would it be possible to give a speedster like character a second skin for when he moves/runs? an example is the old issues of avengers/x-men when quicksilver is running he's just a green blur. no features what so ever. just motion lines. thought that would add to their speed effect. imagine flash,quicksilver,ect running so fast they're a blur!

[bearded]

what about a speeding bullet fx that covers the whole body? like a ball of force sort of thing. any ideas for which fx would work for that?

[Kenn]

Yes, it should be possible.   The Golden Age Ray mesh actually switches between two skins during the flight and ranged animations.  It should be possible to have a mesh change between two skins during the running animation.  I'm not quite sure what would be needed to make it work though.

[daglob]

Probably impossible but...

A run effect that leaves afetrimages behind, each moving slightly behind the next. Like Carmine Infantino's Flash.

[tommyboy]

Probably impossible but...

A run effect that leaves afetrimages behind, each moving slightly behind the next. Like Carmine Infantino's Flash.

When i was making my Quicksilver_tf mesh I was desperately trying to build in a speed trail that was particle effect based:


without much success, unfortunately. The particles were not "global" they were "local" to the mesh. So if as above the mesh ran round someone, youd get a nice circular trail built up. Then he'd run off and the circular trail went with him. Maybe it can be done. I got tired of banging my head against that particular wall and put in an old-fashioned speed-trail-plane, of the type which dates back to bullet in ff1.
If it had worked, the idea was to leave behind after-images, or a blur, or just a "flexible" speed trail rather than a straight line.
Then we found panda can do this:

and more.
I would love to push the FF engine beyond it's limits, but sometimes we can't.
In panda, I'm pretty sure I can turn on a speed trail better than anything in ff, on any character who moves beyond a certain speed. Or add it to characters temporarily given super speed.
I still hope this one is possible, but don't have the time and energy to sort it out myself...

[herodad1]

thats cool but i was wondering about the mesh switching skins.

[tommyboy]

thats cool but i was wondering about the mesh switching skins.

If you wanted specifics on your question, I think youd need two meshes, one using the normal skin, one with the blur skin. These would get shrunk and grown at the appropriate times.

[herodad1]

was looking for an example. hope this works. it was just an idea i wanted to share. maybe get someones creative juices flowing.  working 12 hrs at night by yourself you think of all kinds of crazy stuff. http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/1/11352/1228629-fantasticfour_v1_304_p20_super.jpg

[daglob]

That effect on Quicksilver goes all the way back to a story Jack Kirby did in one of the pre-FF monster mags about a man who discovers a formula that speeds up his reactions to the point that he is almost invisible (or possibly earlier). Seen it in a reprint. Kirby used something similar whenever he illustrated something blurred by speed. This is Buscema's take on it.

That effect would take another skin.