INSIDE 3DS MAX® 7 [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

1.

Go to a Left viewport, zoom out to show the whole scene, and create a large Blizzard particle system (found in the Create panel > Geometry > Particle Systems) with a width of 80,000 units and a length of 15,000 (Figure 18.54).

2.

Go to a Perspective viewport. Move the Blizzard just above the camera's view of the biplane and off to the left, in the neighborhood of X = 60000, Y = 50000, Z = 20000, on the World Coordinate System (Figure 18.55).

3.

In the Basic Parameters rollout, set the Percentage of Particles to 100%.

4.

In the Particle Generation rollout, set Use Rate to 1. Note that a visible percentage less than 100% will result in no visible particles at all. Each particle will represent a single cloud puff.

5.

Set the particle Speed to 100 units per frame, with a Variation of 25%.

6.

For a subtle tumbling effect, set Tumble to 1 and Tumble Rate to 25.

7.

These particles need to start emitting before the animation begins, continue emitting throughout, and last well beyond the animation. To accomplish this, set Emit Start to 1000, Emit Stop to 350, Display Until to 400, and Life to 1400.

8.

The clouds should be quite large, and should maintain their size throughout. Set Particle Size to 3500, with a 50% Variation, and both Grow For and Fade For to 0 frames.

If you go to the Camera01 viewport and scrub the Time Slider, particles will move across the scene's sky, from left to right (Figure 18.56).

9.

To slow the rotation of the particles, go to the Rotation and Collision rollout, and set Spin Time to 1000 frames, with a 75% Variation.

10.

Set the Variation to 100% so that the particles will not be rotated identically.

11.

In the Particle Type rollout, leave the default setting of Standard Particles, but change the shape to Facing.

12.

If you wish to preview the density and scale of the particles, change the Viewport Display setting to Mesh (found in the Basic Parameters rollout).

13.

A material has been prepared for the cloud particles. Apply the material Clouds to the Blizzard particle system (Figure 18.57).

1.

Open Video Post (found in the Rendering menu).

Note

Do not use the Object Properties dialog of a Particle Flow source icon to set its Object Channel ID. Each Particle Flow event has a separate Object Properties dialog and separate Channel ID slots.

2.

Add a Scene event using the Camera01 viewport.

3.

Add an Image Filter event, choose Lens Effects Glow, and click the Setup button to open the Lens Effect Glow dialog. Take note in the Properties tab that the effect is keyed by default to objects with an Object ID of 1.

4.

In the Preferences tab, set the Effect Size to 11 and Color Intensity to 50. Click OK to close the dialog.

5.

Add an Image Output event if you wish to save the animation. For single rendered frames, this event is not necessary (Figure 18.59).

6.

Return to Particle View. Select the events that produce renderable lightning bolts, specifically the Lightning Main Bolt and Lightning Branch events for the three lightning particle flows. Note that you must select the events (by their title bars) and not the operators they contain.

7.

Right-click one of the selected events, and open the Object Properties dialog.

8.

Set Object Channel to 1 to specify these events for the Video Post effect (Figure 18.60).

While the lightning bolts we have created look fine without any postprocessing (Figure 18.61), a small amount of glow adds a nice final touch (Figure 18.62).