"Alien Abduction" Ufo Creation: Duerer's Progress

The aliens have upgraded their invasion fleet 😉🛸:

Aliens at work 😉🛸:

Further detailing the UFO with panels:

Reminds me of a 1980's film style!

blanchsb Shawn, I even thought at older films, not a special one but in the style of old black-and-white movies.

A short animation test of the "Abduction Beam":

The "Abduction Beam" in action as seen from the ground and from the orbit:

With the completed rig it's time for the UFO animation:

Not a time to panic!!!!

Our Saviours are here..... 👽

I'm still working on the rig. It's lagging heavily when rotating the bone in the image below while in "Pose Mode", but in "Edit Mode" the same rotation works fine. How can I fix this?

The two bones in the bottom part of the screenshot above are used for opening the shutter and scaling the "Abduction Beam" with the help of "Drivers". But I don't see there a reason for the lagging.

The lagging can be avoided by switching off the visibility of the UFO mesh object. But you have to either uncheck the "Exclude from View Layer" box (strange naming since the unchecking excludes) or turn off the "Global Viewport Visibility" ("Screen Symbol") which switches off the visibility of the original object as well as of all instances in the same file or "Linked Duplicates" in external files:

The "Eye Symbol" also turns off the mesh object's visibility but this doesn't remove the lagging of the "Bone" movements in "Pose Mode".

The rig for the cannons is now complete:

Now, I need some laser beams 🛸📡 😉!

A first laser test:

And with impact sparks: