How could I make a trailing starlight effect?

[Emerson3]

Hey Clickteam,

How could I create a cool fading, light trail effect connected to a shooting item? Kind of like the tail of a shooting star? Thanks Clickers!

[Storsorgen]

Hello Emerson3!

What I would suggest is making an Active Object that only has the animation "Disappearing", and making the animation one that fades the object through use of alpha levels(this can be created in you look at the Transparency part in the animation editor).
Then add an event where the item is created at the position of the object that is moving, every .05 seconds or so! This should result in a fading trail.

[Emerson3]

Thanks Storsorgen!

Everything sounds simple except the fading through the use of Alpha levels. I know where they are at but don't understand how to use them just yet. Would I use many frames fading the object set to different alpha levels? If you don't mind and have time to explain to a newer user. Thanks!

[schrodinger]

Hey Emerson,

you can create and edit an alpha channel in the animation editor, by clicking the "transparency" button (alpha symbol)
on the right of the crop icon
with an alpha channel, you set the "amount" of transparency of pixels, so if you do as Storsorgen says,
you can draw an increasingly transparent animation, to give the impression of a fading element.

You can also access "global" object transparency with the Alpha Coefficient during runtime,
without editing animations, see example below:

trail_projectile.mfa

[Emerson3]

Great example Schrodinger! That was pretty easy to understand and implement.