3d Studio Max Tutorial - The snow particle system - With subs

Hello everyone! My name is Francesco – and I'm sorry in advance for my bad English, but you can turn on subs, I hope it will help! In this tutorial we will study the Snow particle system of 3D Studio MAX and its features. This is a simple introduction: we will study basic characteristics of the particle system, to get familiar with this object, not topics like the Space Warps for particle systems or the bounces and the collisions, that we will view another time; almost all the Snow parameters are identical to those, viewed in another tutorial, about Spray, however the behavior in general is different: in Snow, the particles “float” on air a bit, like snowflakes. With certain parameters or material settings, is possible to use Snow to achieve, for example, snow –obviously-, confetti, soap bubbles, smoke and more. We launch 3D Studio and add a particle system of this type selecting, from the menu found on Create panel, on the right, the Particle System item, and then clicking on Snow button that will appear with the other particle systems upon the Object Type tab; thereafter we insert a particle system of this type into the 3D scene by clicking and dragging, releasing when we have finished define the dimensions of the particle system. We observe immediately, on a 3D navigation window, that the icon of the particle system is represented by a plane with an outgoing segment: the plane is the area of the emitter, the emission area, that then goes resized depending on our needs, while the segment indicates the emission’s initial direction of the single particles. In 3D Studio, a particle system, represented by this icon, is an object to all effects, whilst the emitted particles may be considered as sub-objects. A particle system defined like this generates an animation in a “native” way, in fact clicking on Play, at the bar with the animation buttons below, we will see the emitted particles from the system. Starting up a rendering, we will notice that the plane of emission IS NOT rendered, whereby that icon just help us to understand, in the 3D navigation windows, where from the particles start, their initial direction and how big is the surface of the emission. We see therefore how is possible to set up those and other characteristics. With the particle system selected, we open the Modify panel, on the right, and we study the object’s parameters: Viewport Count indicates the number of particles to display in modeling phase, in the 3D navigation windows; Render Count indicates the number of particles to render; the values of Viewpoint and Render are different because during modeling phase is better to set a low number of particles, particularly if collisions and bounces are expected, for not slowing down the system too much, and then carry out the rendering using a higher number of particles – specified in Render Count-; Flake Size indicates the dimension of every single particle, every single snowflake, in Rendering phase; Speed indicates the velocity of every particle; in particular, Speed at 1 indicates 1 unit every 2 and a half frames, whereby in an animation of 25 frames per second a particle will move, in one second, by 10 units of 3D Studio’s space, and so on; Variation indicates a chaotic variation both in speed and in direction of scattering of every single particle; the default value is 2, that is a minimum dispersion; with a higher value, for example 10, the result will be significantly different. Tumble and Tumble Rate help us to define the entity of the rotation of every particle emitted, or rather -with Tumble- how much a particle can rotate on itself, with values between 0 and 1, whilst with Tumble Rate we can set the number of particles that have to rotate at each frame. The buttons of Radio Button group with labels Flakes, Dots and Ticks allow us to define which aspect give to the particles in the 3D navigation windows, not in phase of rendering; in particular, we can choose between asterisks, with Flakes, or dots, with Dots, or crosses, with Ticks. The aspect of the particles in rendering phase is defined by choosing one of three buttons of Radio Button type in Render section; in particular, with Six Point we will have six pointed stars, with Triangles we will have equilateral triangles and with Facing we will have square faces that will always point towards the camera. Assigning the materials, for example, with images loaded from files like texture, for every particle obtained with Facing we will have a copy of such image oriented always towards the camera, rendered image with Alpha transparencies as well, if provided. In the Timing section we can define the “circle of life” of the particles. By default, the emitter starts to emit the particles immediately, at frame 0, but we can change this parameter inserting the frame number of the emission beginning at Start; we can set up negative values as well, in this field, with the effect that particles will be already into the scene at frame 0. Life indicates the life duration of every single particle, that by default vanishes after 30 frames. Generally, the number of particles emitted per frame is constant, but can be set at will clearing the Constant box and inserting a value in Birth Rate field. The last section is about the emitter’s dimensions: by width and height is possible to define, intuitively, the rectangle’s width and height that determines the surface of the emission. It goes without saying that, with the same number of particles emitted, based on the emitter’s dimensions will change the spatial density of the particles as well, in fact an emitter with small surface will emit a set of particles very close to each other, whilst a large emitter will produce a set of particles well spaced between them. Lastly, selecting the HIDE box, the emitter’s icon will not displayed not even in the 3D navigation windows. Now, a few considerations regarding how the particles are rendered. Generally a Material is associated to the emitter, at object’s level, not at the single particles, whereby associating for example a basic material with widespread red color to a Snow emitter, all the emitted particles will colored in red color. To assign different colors to the various particles of a single particle system, we need to resort to Multi/Sub-object materials; in this case, every particle will match to a Multi/Sub-object Material from the sub-material list. Lastly, a consideration to animations: the particle emitters, treated as objects, can be animated, in the sense that is possible translate, rotate and resize them during an animation; of course the effects of those transformations will appear upon the generated particles: Let’s see an example. At frame 0, with the emitter selected, we switch in Set Key mode by clicking on the Set Key button upon the timeline bar below, and we click on the key button to insert a keyframe for the emitter; afterwards we move on to another frame, the last frame of the animation for example, we move and rotate the Snow emitter object in the 3D navigation windows and insert a keyframe by clicking on the key button again. We click on Set Key to exit from animation keys insertion mode. Clicking o Play, we can take a look at the result. That’s all, I hope you liked it! Bye bye!