Author Topic: 3DS max particle help please  (Read 1751 times)

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Offline starbug

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3DS max particle help please
Hi guys i am trying to animate a space battle in 3ds max, but i am really struggling to do the rapid fire lasers, Somebody suggested using particles for it, but i havent got a clue on how to do it and i cant find any tutorials on how to achieve it, does anyone here know how to make a rapid fire laser effect, like the rail guns of stargate ships?
http://www.youtube.com/user/AnubisX1

if there is any consistancy with the Shivans, it's their lack of consistancy - -Norbert-

 

Offline starbug

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Re: 3DS max particle help please
No takers or no advice to help me???
http://www.youtube.com/user/AnubisX1

if there is any consistancy with the Shivans, it's their lack of consistancy - -Norbert-

 
Re: 3DS max particle help please
I haven't explored animation much beyond the odd walk animation.  The setup in 3ds max is pretty intuitive, so I think I might have a solution for you.

Looking at the object creation panel, click on geometry (where you make boxes) then click on drop down menu (standard primitives, extended, etc), then select particle systems. Superspray seems like the kind of thing you'd want. You make it with a click and a drag. There are a bunch of settings that you can play with, and it looks promising. Just position the Superspray at the tip of your laser guns, then link the Superspray to your ship (use your schematic view to see the setup).

A couple of things I've noticed right off the bat:

-The particles have to travel faster than your ship, or they'll fall behind. You can change that under the "particle generation" drop down on the right hand side.

-There's a feature in the "particle feature" drop down that lets you use instanced geometry. I think that means you can make a little model of the laser bolt and then select that as the object to get shot out.

-There's a material feature as well, so that could get you the glow for your lasers. I don't know what impact a bunch of light-emitting particles would have on the render time, but it would look cool.

Hope this helps!



Edit: To turn it off and on, go into your curve editor and have the birthrate set to zero. Then at the moment you want to shoot the guns, make the birthrate jump to whatever you want, then back down to zero. You'd use the stepped tangent for this ( the button third from the right in your tangent buttons in the curve editor)
« Last Edit: April 29, 2013, 11:01:16 pm by bobbtmann »

 

Offline Doko

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Re: 3DS max particle help please
Video (sorry no youtube, lazy to make an account)

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?9lh7124ddt5ztt6

Max scene (saved from 2014 for 2011 compat

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?fh3vd4e51tiricu

Hardest thing was figuring out how to fix a bug that was causing particles to spawn without their orientation set (order of the spawn event matters :D). The rest is just basic placement. The material is NOT functional for a large scene as if you place an object nearby with bright colors the shots will light them up as if it was the surface of the sun, couldn't manage to fix it utilizing that material and shader.
Could probably be done with post procesing but I have no idea how, just recently started using max and mostly for modeling.

 

Offline starbug

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Re: 3DS max particle help please
Cheers guys :) I will give them a try thank you :)
http://www.youtube.com/user/AnubisX1

if there is any consistancy with the Shivans, it's their lack of consistancy - -Norbert-