How to Make Realistic Muzzle Flashes | Blender Tutorial 

Thanks for the encouragement, man! That means a lot to me!

Thank you so much!

Yeah, for sure! Experimentation and repurposing is great for creativity!

That’s also possible, as long as the camera doesn’t have much parallax. One thing that might be missing if you do that, though, is the loss of realism that comes with the differences in each muzzle flash. If you randomize and keyframe the displacement and/or texture, you can get a completely different flash each time. Something to think about. Thanks for asking!

You might have to change your preferences. Go to edit, then preferences, make sure you have the add on tab selected on the left, then search for and enable Import-Export: Images as Planes. Then you should be able to access it through your add menu (with shift+a or the dropdown), images, then images as planes. Hope this helped!

It's not something you have to do, but I did for a couple of reasons. 3:35 - It doesn't work in Eevee as a volumetric shader, and (4:35) I liked having the control to color grade the flash afterwards. Now, this is a video about how to make this effect in Blender, and I wanted to show how you can do basically compositing in realtime, which I would usually have done in After Effects. Thanks for asking!

@@VFXpert That makes sense, it didn't register at first that the volume output doesn't currently work in evee. Thanks for the reply!

Super easy

The same for me. There is an advice to switch to cycles in the comment above, but that doesn't work.

@@fantasy9917 yeah I did that too and the other engines but still nothing

It might be because you’re in the preview mode, which uses eevee regardless of which engine you pick.

@@VFXpert how do I get out of preview mode?

If you toggle the “z” key, it should bring up a pie menu, and the render viewer should be on the top. There should also be an option on the top right of the main viewport to switch modes. Hope this was helpful!

The windows are just a plane using a wireframe modifier with edges where I wanted the window panes. And yep, the background is just an image plane.

You have to add volume scatter instead of principle BSDF

You might be in Eevee, in which case, switch to Cycles for that stage.

@@VFXpert Thanks a lot!

My laptop doesn’t render in cycles… please is there a way to go around it?

@@Phoenix3D_ i mean you can always just use a simple orange emission or something, won't look as good but if bloom is on then maybe itll look decent

@@in.zclouds alright, I’ll try that Thanks

1. Make sure that you add volume scatter instead of principle BSDF 2. Volume works only on cycle 3. Increase units of volume on your light path at render properties 4. if you are a beginner and doesn't decrease the density to lower than 0.05 then do it

You should just be able to render out any frame and then export it, overlaying it with a blending mode of screen in an external software like After Effects, or Hitfilm, which is free. Alternatively, you could use the Blender compositer.

@@VFXpert thanks

It’s from a video I made on my other channel about making day for night shots. Here it is if you’re interested: m.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-w8OMHME-j_w.html

@@VFXpert Perfect ⚡

You should be able to. You can do most of the things I do in Blender on pretty much any hardware. It's just how fast you want to get it done...

Yep! Should take you directly to the Sketchfab model if you have an account. If you don't, it's free!

That is a good point. These shoot smokeless powder, but there would still be a little. It’s a detail I should have added to give it a bit more realism. Thanks!

@@VFXpert It’s fine man the actual flash itself looks great and it’s an old vid. Keep it up

You make a valid point. But, it’s also a video about how to make the muzzle flash IN Bender as opposed finding a shortcut. Although there are benefits to simply grabbing something off the internet, this method provides versatility in that it’s 3D. You can easily adjust the angle and shape to fit your shot and firearm. Appreciate the insight, though!

@@VFXpert ye

Oh, how so?

@@VFXpert i don know why the roughness is all over the model

The model is to shiny I don't know whether the fault is in the texture

Also that red dot at the back was blue in mine

@@toonanimationstudio Yeah, I definitely made some tweaks. I pretty much just deleted the roughness input node and I think put the specular back to default. And I believe I also changed the emissive material on the back, too. Just wanted it to look a little different.

I did! I received it activated, then when I rebuilt it with a different motherboard, it decided not to recognize it. 🤣

I think it looks fine to me