Ah Where Did All This Smoke Come From!

This post is going to comment on how to use particle systems and in particular create smoke.

The first thing to do is to create the object that will be creating the particles, to do this we need to choose particle systems from the drop-down menu and then choose 'Super Spray'.

From there you need to click on the 'load/save presets' tab on the right hand side, then click 'hose' then 'load' to load the preset, this will give you the spry which you can see when you play the animation

This image shows what the super spray particle system does at its basic form.

Then comes the modifying of the particles which each person does to their own opinion, however there are quite a few different modifiers that can be changed in the particle system. However for example you could use a rate of 40, this means that the super spray will 'spray' out around 40 particles per rate of the animation. Also you could change the speed if you wanted this will make the particles come out quicker or slower depending on how you set it up. Lastly you will want to display the particles as 'mesh' this is so that you can see the particles clearer and know that when you modify them any further you will be able to see the changes clearer, also you could change the particle size to ten for example just to make things a little easier.

This image shows the particles with the properties mentioned above, as you can see the particles are much clearer.

Then it is a good idea to change the timing of the particles, for example change the start and end times, so that the particles are playing constantly. Then to make things easier it is advised to change the particle type to facing, this means that the particles are always facing you in whatever view you look at them in.

This image shows the particles in facing view form, as you can see it is a lot easier to see what the particles are doing, (for example how fast they are spinning).

Once you have chosen your settings to your liking, the next job is too add material to the particle and for this post it will be smoke, which is quite simple to create.

There are many different ways to create smoke, but an example would be to give the blank material some colour, (white, light grey and dark grey) this will be your base. Then you could give the material a mask and add gradient and noise to the particle but you will need to add different colours, or you could go simpler than that and just use the smoke preset within 3Ds Max.

However it is just a case of choosing the settings to how you want them and trying to achieve that perfect smoke effect.

This image shows my first attempt at creating smoke and I must admit I don't think it is a bad attempt.

Finally from learning this new technique, I have decided to use particle systems as my new technique to learn about, which now I have got the basic knowledge to create particle systems, I will be testing out different particle systems to use in my animation.