Hello.
I am here to explain the most simplest way of making a muzzle flash for your GFX to place as a game thumbnail, game icon, or whatever else you may need it for.
REQUIRED ITEMS
–blender v2.8-2.9
–Muzzle flash images
–Model
STEP ONE
So, for your first step, you will need to get your model you created in studio (or modeled in a 3d modelling program) and insert it into blender. If you do not know how to do this, here are a few images to assist you with.
INSERTING
After you have inserted your meshes, you will now insert a Plane mesh. You can do that by pressing Shift + A and going to Meshes, Plane.
After inserting the Plane mesh, align it to the front end of the barrel, or also known as the muzzle. After doing that, your progress so far should look more or less like this.
One thing to note is that you may have to resize the Plane mesh, varying on the size and shape of your model. As you can see in mine, the Plane mesh was resized.
After you finished these instructions, you will now switch to material mode, or preview mode. I would prefer material mode, since it’s easier to use, and if your rendering in Cycles, it will be a little slow. If you do not know how to do so, follow these pictures.
Now you are done with the first part, setting it all up. Now, you will move onto part 2, which will explain how to actually add the muzzle flashes themselves.
PART 2
Now you are on the second step on making your realistic muzzle flashes!
For this next part you will switch to Shader Editor. If you do not know how to do so, follow the picture.
I would recommend opening a separate screen, so you can still see and edit the actual muzzle flash in the 3D Viewport. You can do this by going to the side of your screen (most likely your left side) and drag it to the correct scale.
After doing this you will see a new page. Once you see that new page, look up and find a button that says “New” with a “+” symbol near it. Once you click that, a new menu will appear.
After this, you can press Shift + A to pop up a search icon. When you do this, you can either click the search bar, or press S. Then, search up “Image Texture”. After this you should have a screen similar to mine.
After this, you will want to click the button that says “Open” on the Image Texture menu. It will show you your files, and you will have to select which image file you want.
Select which file you want, or just search the name of the image file. After doing this, you will want to connect the Color to the BSDF menu Base Color. You can do this by clicking and dragging the dot near the name.
After doing this, connect the Alpha on the Image Texture menu to the BSDF menu Alpha. Your muzzle flash should appear. Your muzzle flash will most likely look small and stubby, but we will fix that later. If your muzzle flash is facing the wrong direction like it is in this picture, you can simply rotate it using the rotate tool.
[NOTE] You can also set Color to Emission, it makes the flash itself brighter. It is recommended, but you can choose not to if you want.
After fixing the position, you will want to go to the Plane mesh, select it using LMB (Left mouse button), and go to properties. After finding properties, find Material Properties, and scroll down. The settings tab in Material Properties should be opened by default. When you do this, you will see 2 tabs saying Opaque.
Change the Opaque to Alpha Blend , Alpha Clip, or Alpha Hashed. Alpha Blend looks the best to me, so I would recommend using that. The second bar I would recommend changing to Alpha Clip, but changing it barely affects anything.
Nice, you’ve completed parts 1 and 2. You will now move onto part 3, where we explain how to actually setup the entire muzzle flash together.
PART 3
For the last step, you will resize your muzzle flash. You can resize it by using the resize tool. Change the flash to the size that you prefer.
After doing this, you can now duplicate the Plane with the flash, and set it 90 degrees up like this image shows.
Be sure to realign and resize it if you need to.
This is just half of the muzzle flash done, but your almost done. The next thing you want to do is to insert another Plane mesh, and place it vertically in front of the muzzle. Then you can follow the previous steps to add a front view muzzle flash. After doing this, your muzzle flash should look more or less like this one.
And that’s about all! There is still one more step in an extra part you do not have to follow, but will add more realism to your muzzle flash.
PART 4
While this muzzle flash can vary at different looks and such, every muzzle flash has an actual “flash” of light. We will now add the actual light from the flash. It’s very simple.
You want to insert a point light into the 3D Viewport. By now you should know how to insert objects. Place that point light at the muzzle of the gun, and change the settings. Based off of the size of your model, you could expect having 500-100,000 Watts of power for your light flash. After doing this, you should change the color of the flash to bright orange, yellow, red, or someplace in between, the flash color isn’t just a bright white. After you finished these steps, your final flash should look more or less like mine.
And your done! Your quick, simple, and easy muzzle flash will most likely look excellent in your GFX. Of course, this isn’t the best muzzle flash, but this was a way to create a fairly nice muzzle flash in a short amount of time. Now, the tutorial could have taken away your time from getting this done in 5 minutes, but once you get the hang of it, you could do it possibly shorter than 5 minutes.
Was this helpful? If it was, please send me feedback on this tutorial! If you need any help with stuff I could have forgotten, or just want to ask questions, please comment on this tutorial!