During the process of animating I can come across a really useful tool in Maya which is the "Hide" tool. The hide tool allows me to make objects "hide" (go invisible) and they can be unhidden at any frame. This has been useful for creating bullets since once I am done using a bullet I can hide the bullet and therefore the bullet is no longer taking up any space and nor is it being rendered. The hide feature can be used by pressing CTRL + H on an object when on the correct frame. The object can also be unhidden using SHIFT + H.
Glow
Whilst creating my animation, I was always looking for a way to add a flare to the engine to give a better impression of the ships flying rather than just floating quickly in space. I attempted to use point lights and spot lights, however this did not give me the results I wanted and I found it difficult to get the right light settings possible. For example I would find that using lights, lit up other parts of the ship or would affect the lighting on the sky box which did not look right. I came to the conclusion that the best choice was to use the glow feature. This can be found in the "special effects" section in the attribute window on a material.
Here are some examples of the results I got from using the glow special effect. As you can see the glow effect gives a "powerful" shine effect which helps reflect the flare of the engine and gives a better impression of the ships flying.
The only downside I found to using the glow effect is that I now am required to render using "Maya Software" rather than "Maya Hardware." I have found that Maya Software is slower for rendering however the results make it worth the time.
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