Post processing effects

I recently discovered how to leverage post processing effects, and more specifically target specific objects and exclude others from the renderer. I immediately had to do something about the hideous attempt at making muzzle flash- originally throwing together an animated mesh, with a texture bound to it, only to delete it and slam my head to the table when I realized making something remotely look like fire is gonna be... well... hard. Relieved to see this turned out looking better than I expected.

I made some basic mesh boxes which would be bound to the barrel similar to how I did it originally, only made a bunch, of various sizes and dimensions. Next I applied a shader material to these boxes, making them visible when the weapon fires, and samples a diffuse texture in random opacity and vertex deform. Finally I targeted these meshes and added a bloom post processing pass to them to make them look illuminated.