O.k. first off we'll need to get max running so load it up and make sure the work area is blank. Now we are ready to add out cylinder which will are going to add the texture and glows to, draw a cylinder in the front work are with the settings in (figure1) now right click the on the cylinder and select "properties" and change the "object channel" to 99, [click here for reference]

Now we are ready to add the texture to the cylinder, press "M" on the to open the "Material editor". Pick any of the coloured sphere's in the menu scroll down to "Specular Highlights" and apply the settings seen in (Figure2) Ok, now scroll down to "maps" and click on it to open it up, now click the button to the right of "Diffuse Color" which has "None" on it, a small window will appear and you should pick "Celluar" refer to (figure3) for help. K here is where you pick the colours for your phaser, if your doing federation then you'll be using orange and red, but if you want to do borg it's gonna be green. But we're doing a federation phaser today folk's, so in "Cell color" click the "white" colored box and change the color to red. move a little down to "Division Colors" and change the first color to orange and the second to a slightly more red than orange color. Now go a little down to "cell characteristics" and select "chips" and change the size to "1.0" (figure4) Now hit the "parent" button to go back to the beginning! (figure5).

Ok Now click and drag cellular to "Self-Illumination" and drop (figure6) then the little window appears pick "instance". now click "opacity" and pick "noise" and change the size to 10 (figure7).click the "parent" if you cant remember how go back to (figure5) and then assign the material to the cylinder! and finally change the blue 0 to 14 (figure8) and then close the "Material Editor"

OK, we are now half way there folks, and it's going to get easier from here, all we're going to do now is add 2 glow's to the cylinder and then you'll have that feddy phaser!

First we need to open video post, go "rendering" and open "video post, a small screen will appear and you'll need to add an "event scene" click the blue icon (figure9) and select and from the window that appears pick "perspective" and then o.k.(figure10) Now let's add our first glow, click the "add image filter event" icon (figure11) and select "Lens Effect Glow" from the drop down menu and name it "Primary" and click o.k.(figure12) Now the word "Primary" has been added to the queue on the left side, double click it and select "Setup" from the widow that appears. now we are going to add the setting for the glow so it will look like a phaser, do you see where is say's "object id? well change it to 99, and the click the "preferences" tab. OK, make sure "pixel" is selected and change the size to 1 (figure13) now click o.k. to close the window.

Now you should be back in the "video post" window and now we are going to make another "glow" do the same as before by name is "Secondary instead of "Primary" if you can't remember then look at (figure12) not the word "Secondary" has been added to the queue, double click it and then click setup! k, this time make sure there is no tick by "object id and then tick "effects id" and change it to 14. (figure14) now go to the preferences" tab and this time click "gradient" instead of pixel and make the size 1. now click the "gradient tab and then you should see two rectangles, one green and one grey (figure15) double click the first one and change the color to reddish orange the then double click the second one and change it to totally red and you should have something like this (figure16) Now click the "inferno" tab, do you see red, blue, green there off to the side, tick them all and change the size to 15 and reseed to 4000 (figure17) now click o.k. to close thw window to go back to "video post" now click the icon that looks like a running man (figure18) a screen will appear and change it to single (figure19) and you should get a rendered pic on a few seconds that looks like this (figure20)

Well wasn't that fun? well if you've failed to do it or noticed a mistake in my tutorial please contact me.

Tutorial by Liam Williams (Cyberbob and a special thanks to Kenny Z (MCGI founder) for teaching me this!