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Made in us
Been Around the Block






I can't figure out why some people paint there plasma weapon emission green and some paint them blue...green more in the 30k realm and blue in the 40k realm. anyone know?
   
Made in ca
Poisonous Kroot Headhunter





Green works well with my paint scheme. I've seen purples a lot lately and the occasional red.

It's never been consistent enough in the army photos over the years for me to think there was an "official" colour for plasma, even though it kinda makes sense that there should be, or at least an explanation why there isn't.

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Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut





A plasma's colour would be determined by the fuel being burned, no? Strictly speaking, something that lets you fire "a portion of the sun" into your enemies should be "white" for colour, but if we assume that it has some kind of colour for whatever allows the plasma to maintain heat in a "packet" of delivered destructive energy like that, then the fuel that is burned to create that packet, or the chemical that creates the containment of the packet, is what would create the colour.

It would stand to reason that the most commonly used chemicals/fuels change from time segment to time segment, chapter to chapter, world to world, or (REDACTED) if those gods should choose for them to be that colour.

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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





What colour do you think they should be? Surely any colour…….
   
Made in us
The Marine Standing Behind Marneus Calgar





Upstate, New York

Agree. It’s more artistic license, based more on the color wheel than physics.

   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut




Plasma weapons are meant to be firing high temperature plasma.

Therefore any plasma would be radiating. The below shows the color vs temperature of black body radiation. Just as the human eye never sees green stars (due to the mix of colors of stellar spectra also having more blue at higher temperatures which leads to it being perceived as increasingly white or blue-white by the human eye), it would not see hot radiating plasma shots as any shade of green.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation#/media/File:Color_temperature_black_body_800-12200K.svg

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/10/05 19:56:29


 
   
Made in nl
Dakka Veteran




Iracundus wrote:
Plasma weapons are meant to be firing high temperature plasma.

Therefore any plasma would be radiating. The below shows the color vs temperature of black body radiation. Just as the human eye never sees green stars (due to the mix of colors of stellar spectra also having more blue at higher temperatures which leads to it being perceived as increasingly white or blue-white by the human eye), it would not see hot radiating plasma shots as any shade of green.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation#/media/File:Color_temperature_black_body_800-12200K.svg


Depends of the ions surely?

Perhaps they’re full of Ba2+
   
Made in gb
Preparing the Invasion of Terra






The answer is yes. Plasma Guns are that colour you said.
Its pretty much down to you tbh, different designs might do different things to the colour.
   
Made in fr
Trazyn's Museum Curator





on the forum. Obviously

ratlaw wrote:
I can't figure out why some people paint there plasma weapon emission green and some paint them blue...green more in the 30k realm and blue in the 40k realm. anyone know?

Because they want to.
That's pretty much it, there's no hard rule that says plasma must be X.
It is true that plasma is usually depicted as blue, but that's not really a rule and more of a suggestion.

What I have
~4100
~1660

Westwood lives in death!
Peace through power!

A longbeard when it comes to Necrons and WHFB. Grumble Grumble

 
   
Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






Well, the glowy bits aren’t actually the powery bits. They’re the cooling bits intended to prevent it going all kaboom into your face.

So we can handwave it by “different materials being used”.

   
Made in gb
Ultramarine Librarian with Freaky Familiar





For me, it entirely depends on the colour scheme of the army the plasma belongs to. In my Ultramarines, I wouldn't use blue plasma, so I use green. In my homebrew Chapter, I think blue looks better, so I use that. In my Deathwatch, I use red plasma.

As a made-up gun, you can use whatever made-up reason why it looks why it does!


They/them

 
   
Made in us
Buttons Should Be Brass, Not Gold!






Umm I never paint any halos on my plasma weapons. Are you saying I'm doing it wrong?

The way I see it, anything less than a LED inside the weapon bit would look off anyway. I dont think painted lighting effects look realistic IRL, even if they look aight in pics
   
Made in ca
Poisonous Kroot Headhunter





 tauist wrote:
Umm I never paint any halos on my plasma weapons. Are you saying I'm doing it wrong?

The way I see it, anything less than a LED inside the weapon bit would look off anyway. I dont think painted lighting effects look realistic IRL, even if they look aight in pics


Totally agree, I've never thought the lighting effects ever looked good, even from the pros.

This is making me miss the Necrons green plastic rods, I always thought that was a really unique way to tackle this kind of thing.

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Made in ca
Veteran Wolf Guard Squad Leader






I find they are a fantastic way to add a nice spot colour to compliment the models paint scheme.

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Made in de
Contagious Dreadnought of Nurgle





Space Wolves Plasma isn't blue and DG Plasma isn't green. You know why...
   
 
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