Particle Dispersion Effect Using 3DS Max and Particle Flow
on Dec 22 in Particle system by Paul
In this tutorial, I will show you how to create an awesome particle dispersion effect using 3DS Max and its particle system!
Concept
There are lots of similar animations on the Internet but I couldn’t actually find a good tutorial that is explaining how to create effect like this so here you can find one. First let’s take a look at the final animation and a sample screenshot from the middle of the movie.
Usage
That’s what we are going to create but before we start I’d like to point out some possible methods of creating this effect that I’m familiar with and some situations where you may find it useful. Effects like this one are usually very basic stuff and at the same time they have a wide usage anytime when you want to:
- dissolve,
- explode,
- burn,
- destroy,
- hide,
- and more…
something in a quick, simple and believable way. You can do it using different techniques and some examples include:
- using modifiers such as “delete mesh”
- using plug-ins like RayFire that are affecting object’s mesh
- using materials that are not affecting mesh but making object invisible.
Here I will show you the third method because that one works best for me and is probably the best one in most cases, especially, when it doesn’t have to be perfect. Also it’s probably the quickest one to do and it gives you relatively the best results. So, of course you don’t have to play with all your mesh because it is much more complicated, time consuming and hard to calculate on average computer that you are probably working on at the moment, than if you had to use particles that are in a matter of fact made for such things. We won’t even touch our object (excluding a need of selecting it occasionally) but we will hide it using materials instead and let particles simulating sand appear in the correct place and time.
Step 1 – Objects to disperse
Open up your Max and create some kind of an object. I chose teapot because it is more complex and has more details than other objects. It doesn’t really matter if it’s big or small. I used 40 centimeters for radius so I was playing with quite big teapot 
. Don’t forget that size does matter if you are going to render your scene. Some rendering engines works better if you keep real world dimensions.
Step 2 – Setting Up Particle Flow
Once you’ve done that turn on Particle View window. Usually it’s under 6 hotkey so you only have to hit 6 right after you’ve made teapot but if it doesn’t work go to Graph Editors -> Particle View in the top menu of your 3ds Max. Right click in the window that will appear and create Empty Flow (under Particle System section). Then create Birth right next to that and connect them together (find part of table that makes your mouse cursor like 3 arrows pointing to the center and drag and drop this part of your table on the top of another).
Step 3 – Modyfing Particle Flow
We have to modify a list of items by adding there some new objects. Right-click again and add Position Object, Force and Shape from a list.
- Position Object – because we want to add our teapot (or whatever you are using) to a system
- Force – because we want to add wind (otherwise particles won’t fly away)
- Shape – because we want to see particles on renders
We have to modify all of them slightly before we can go any further but first let’s add one more thing to our scene.
Step 4
Go to Space Warps, choose Forces and then Wind. Place it somewhere on your scene. Again it can be either big or small as you wish because it doesn’t make any difference except it’s easier to find in viewports. I made it around 10 meters. Rotate and move it a bit so that it has direction in which you want your particles to fly. You can also make it falling ground but in this tutorial I’ll only cover flying.
Once you have your wind you can modify its setting. I found that standard wind’s strength is too high so it’s good idea to decrease it a little bit. Also you’ll probably want to add some turbulence to it so that it won’t go perfectly straight. Try to change other settings here if you won’t satisfied when we’ll be able to see the result (we can’t yet).
Step 5
Go back to Particle View and select Position Object. Add your teapot to Emitter Objects list.
Step 6
Now choose Force and obviously you have to add there your forces. In our case there is only wind.
Step 7
Go to Display and choose there your particles’ color as well as their type. I decided to make them look like a sand so I think Dots and yellowish color will be great.
Step 8
Now select Shape and decrease its size a lot like for example to 1cm or 2cm.
Step 9
Go to the Birth and change Emit Stop to something bigger like 50 and Amount to something really high. I think 20,000 would be enough for now but for the final renders you’ll probably need to increase this number to around 100,000 (depending on how many particles you need). Finally we can close that and get back to viewports and our teapot. Animation is already there. Maybe values I chose are not good for you but always you can play with them as you like. Now it’s good time for that. If it slows down your computer don’t worry. You can go to your PE Source settings and look for Quantity Settings. Decrease Viewport % a bit and it will show less particles in your viewport but still they will be visible on your renders.
Step 10
We can get back to our teapot again. We want it to disappear and that can be done using gradient ramp as an opacity map. Opacity slot as many others works that way it grabs value from color of any grayscale map and make your objects more or less transparent. For instance, if you will put there black bitmap it will be invisible all the time because black has value of 0. Go to Material Editor (M) and select one of the material slots. Select opacity slot and then change it from NONE to Gradient Ramp.
Step 11
Basically what we want to achieve is animated material which will make teapot disappear while there are particles flying around. We need to animate gradient and make it change from white at the beginning to black at the end during 100 frames. It’s a bit complicated process. Try to even set key frames for already set indicators (colors)(for instance if indicator is already white set it white again anyway when you move it to another position). Turn the Set Key mode on and go to the 1st frame.
- Frame: 1 – 1% indicator set to black and rest white at positions 2%, 3% and one at 100%
- Frame: 2 – 1% and 2% indicators set to black and rest white at positions like before (remember to change their color to the same color here even if they already have this color – this will make key frame)
- Frame: 98 – move indicators from 2% and 3% to accordingly 98% and 99% (1% indicator is black and 2% indicator is white all the time)
- Frame: 99 – 99% indicator set to black and rest black but 100% is still white
- Frame 100 – 100% indicator set to black and rest are black
Now you should have nice gradient moving from left to the right. It may be hard to achieve so I’ve prepared a video presenting whole process. Make sure to turn on Set Key mode as I did and to press key button each frame to create a key frame.
A couple things to note:
- to see material’s key frames on your time line you have to add this material to teapot or other object first
- you will have to move key frames then because particles are starting to appear slowly and you want your teapot to disappear only when there is a lot of particles already and not right after animation starts.
Step 12
If we now render that at for example 50th frame it will be ok for some objects but not for teapot. You have to add some mapping to it. Modifier called UVW Map should work fine with standard settings but simple objects like teapot. Animation is ready. It looks almost or exactly like we wanted to but you can play with gradient a bit and make it softer or add there some noise to make effect better. I’ve set my noise amount to 0,08, size to 0,93 and mode to Fractal.
Conclusion
Well, that is all for now. I hope you enjoyed my tutorial. As I mentioned you can use this effect in variety of ways. Especially it is useful when you are going to burn something and want to burnt part of your object disappear, when you want to make an explosion and want your object to disappear consecutively part by part. It doesn’t require much calculating power as it is with modifying mesh and gives you quite good results.
@GR Thanks
. It’s like mine particles. If you want them to follow the opacity path you will need to create a second material with slightly different gradient ramp which will tell them when and where to appear. I could have added it to the tutorial but it looked fine without it so I left it as is.
Thank you very much for your useful tutorial.
You could act as the model satisfied!
A video of step 11 was saved.
please tell me about fire effect and interiour lighting effect.
nice tutorial thanks for share..
Hi Paul,
Thanks for posting a fantastic tutorial. I feel it would have been really nice if you could have used more steps to explain the process so that even a beginner could recreate the same.
With regards,
Srinivas.
if i want the text in place of teapot with multiple clours is it possible that final output b multicoloured
i love tatoria 3d max ok .you namber 1 .tankyou
Brilliant tutorial-I tripped a bit on the gradient ramp, but after a few minutes of fiddlin i figured it out. Its a matter of tinkering, I suppose.
nice n well explaned but not able to animate gradent ramp
Very simple and easy way to make an animation of a dissolving object.I continued to mess around in the Gradient Ramp material because I wasn’t getting the desired effects.Coming back onto the site,I see why.I put the Gradient Ramp Mat in the Diffuse color slot.Lol,should pay more attention,but overrall,beautiful tutorial!
nice tutoril thanks for share.and pls show the fire effect becouse i am in same industry.thanks a lot.
Very nice explanation however i couldnt make last gradient part.I’ve been tring about 2 weeks but it only gives black color to all indicators for all frames.I beleive its a bug in 3dsmax
I feel very happy to use illegal version of this software , I cant imagine myself in my current stiuation after i purchased a license for this software and payed 100s of dollars.
Ill try to avoid engage in 3d till adobe enters this market.Only adobe can do this to make a working , logical software.
Hi Paul,
Great tut man! I managed to follow most of it including step 11 but my finished result doesn’t have the correct material. It has the gray Gradient Ramp which desolves – I need the object (a pivot door) to have it’s original material which is a red door with a black frame.
Where am i going wrong??!
All help will be apreciated.
Here’s 2 screenies of the problem.
http://www.nicedicedesign.com/download/partial_door.jpg
http://www.nicedicedesign.com/download/colour_door.jpg
Thanks in advance.
D
@niceDice
If it’s a single object then it should be easy. Create a texture for entire door and put it into diffuse channel (if you’re using scanline renderer): http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/383/particle.jpg
That’s the easiest way to achieve something like that I guess. In case you’d like to have two separate materials it is going to be a bit harder. Try to use Multi/Sub-Object with number of materials set to two. Use the first one for frame and the second one for door. Copy the same gradient ramp to both (insert it into opacity slot). I haven’t tried that yet but it should work.
The method with texture works for sure.
Hi Paul,
Im using Vray renderer with Vray materials – but I’ve managed to get the gradient Ramp mapped onto the vray materials within the Multi/Sub-Object and the results are spot on – thanks very much for your advice!
Here’s a link to a new screenie:
http://www.nicedicedesign.com/download/partial_door2.jpg
Just got to work out haow to do the rest of the animation now!
Cheers,
D
@niceDice
I’m happy to hear that you’ve solved your problem. By the way your door looks great in motion with all these particle around!
Thanks so much! Your diagrams and video are excellent and very clear.
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great tutorial paul .. i got everything right except that UV mapping . could you explain me it in detail plz….
i have followed your tutorial, everything is set but at the end i do not see anything happen, any advise?
@Adam
Make sure you’ve applied your material to the teapot.
@prasanna
If you are using teapot try to just apply a modifier called “UVW Map” to it. Actually, it should work for almost any object
Great tut, but when i tried to apply the material with gradient ramp, i can`t get the desired results,
the teapot doesn`t follow a linear gradient but a radial gradient, all around the object, like the gradient is twisting
i checked linear on thoses boxes above de gradient , but nothing :/
help ?
Did you apply a modifier called ‘UVW Map’? I mentioned about it in the next step.
I hope that this will solve your problem!
diamond tut is very nice but, how we can do it in 3ds max8
hi.. paul
i m not able to do anything after step-9
will you plz tell me how to animate gradent ramp.
plz give me more detail after step-9 plzzz..
rahul
will you plz give me video of this tuts. plzzz i m not able to do anything after step-9 plz help…
I’m not sure what exactly are you trying to do. Once you have your object and particles set up go to ‘Material Editor’ (hit ‘M’ on your keyboard) and use ‘Gradient Ramp’ for opacity slot. Then there’s a video showing everything in the 11th step.
I hope it’s clear now! Let me know if you managed to do it!
How about giving credit where credit is due.
Allan Mckay!
I always credit everything and I usually give some links to related articles/tutorials for your convenience.
This kind of effect is very popular and I found it on YouTube for the first time (but I didn’t find any good tutorial explaining everything in detail). Of course this idea isn’t mine and I’ve mentioned about it but I don’t know who should I credit because this kind of effect can be found in lots of movies, games etc. (which are being made by different people)
Wonderfull but I did’t understand quite the material designing part.But really awesome.
Good but you have to rewrite the material(opacity) part widely..
thanks for the tut.
i only had one problem though, for some reason; i cant get the teapot to disperse right to left. instead, all i can get is the teapot dissapearing in sections going counterclockwise. what am i doing wrong?
Apply a mapping to it (use modifier called ‘UVW Map’).
Hi paul ,grt8 tuto. but 4m gradient map the animation could nt take place.i watched dat video but….when i change the color black and giv key then i move 2 another frame the prev color becomes white again. Wat 2 do….
Apologies for late response. I must have missed your comment before. Well, you must be doing something wrong with key frames. Are you creating a new key frame each frame like me? Don’t use ‘Auto Key’ but ‘Set Key’.
Same was happening to me and as I was typing a question about that, I tryed something and it worked, the problem was with the Key Filers, it wasn’t saving the changes for the Material, I just enabled all filters and now seems to be working well.
awsome tutorials
thanks for sharing
^_^
love it
Nice Tut. Thanks for Sharing.
Nice tutorial. I only have a problem with the particle flow. When I change the type of the Ticks in the particle view to dots, it isn’t visible in the render. The particles don’t change to dots but stay triangles..
Even though the dots are visible in 3D max..
Can somebody help me out please?
Thanks!
Hey Bram, try to change their ‘Shape’ instead of ‘Display’. That should work.
Hi Paul,
Thanks, it works with the dots now.
There is only one other problem.. The opacity from the theapot. I managed to set the keys right but the opacity is not working good in the render. The opacity is not working from left side of the teapot to the right side of the theapot, but it starts right in the center. It seems like there’s a problem with the map of the theapot. Even though I didn’t change a thing. Also with other options dan ‘linear’ it doens’t work proper. A friend of my said that maybe you are using a other version of 3D max with other settings. I am using 3D max 9 SP2.
Can you help me out on this one or is it just a versions problem?
Thanks!:)
Add a modifier called ‘UVW Map’ to your teapot. I mentioned about it in 12th step but people keep asking about it for some time so you’re not alone with this problem
This modifier will surely work
I followed the hole tutorial, also step 12.
That map isn’t solving the problem for me.
I believe all Max versions works the same way. Can you provide a screenshot of that problem? If you do everything like in the tutorial it must look exactly the same
Thanks again for the tutorial, it works great but I added a metal-like reflection to the tea pot and when I render it, the half of the tea pot that is hidden sill has a reflection, like this: http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/324/teapot2.jpg
This problem occurs only on some rendering engines. VRay works well in this case. If you use scanline you have to copy the opacity map to all the slots you’re using. It will make reflections disappear during the animation, too. And if you already use some maps in these slots then you’ll have to mix these maps with opacity map.
hi Paul ! thanx to share this very nice tutorial ! I have an issue about the particles display. I’m using Position Object (teapot) and Location -> Surface. The problem is that my particles are display ON the teapot. I dont want the particles to be visible on the surface. How can make them to be invisible like yours ??
thanks in advance.
You have to apply a material with opacity set to 0% to your teapot (or rather a gradient ramp material). Your teapot will disappear but all the particles will be still visible. See the 11th step for more details and video.
First things first, very nice tutorial Paul, very nice indeed…
Now, I have a little problem that I can’t to solve on my own…
Here’s the deal: Everything goes just fine, except for the gradient ramp, instead of starting from the left, it starts from the middle of the teapot! And I just wasn’t able to do it otherwise…
Does anyone have a clue on how to solve this?
Have you applied any mapping to it? Try UVW Map modifier and I hope it’ll work fine with it.
Nice thiking, gonna have to try it later though, the boss is telling to do something else right now…
I’ll be back with the result…
Thanks, Paul!
Hi again, I´m just returning with the results…
The UVW Map modifier worked out perfectly!
Thanks again!
For all of you who had the same problem as I did, (with the sading starting from the middle of teapot), there is another to solve this intead of using UVW Map modifier…
On the material editor, on the COORDINATES rollout, there´s MAPPING selection, wich has “explicit map channel”, all you have to do is change it to “planar from object xyz”.
It works the same way as the uvw map modifier
I really love oll off them and keep going
wonderfull i like it
First of all, tanks for this tutorial, it’s a really nice effect!
Maybe this is the wrong place for a question that I have, but it seems to me tot you’re very familiar with the particles options in 3D max, so I hope you can answer my question.
I’m trying to make a animation from a falling box, and when it touches the ground, I want the photos, which laying on the ground, to fly away. I already realised the photos flying away with different events in the particle view. For so far everything turns out good. I used one plane as a standard for the particles. No I’m having a problem with the material.. For the materials (different photos) I made a multi/sub object material where all of my photo textures are placed. In the animation they al work but when the animation arrives to the next event in the particle view, 3D max randoms the photos. So photo 1 becomes photo 4 and so on. I want that photo 1, photo 1 remains and won’t change during the animation.
So it is a pure material problem. I tried to disable the random pick but this doesn’t work. Also placing the material option in the PF source isn’t working.
I hope you’re able to help me out on this one. I hope you’ll understand my discription.
Thanks. Tobias.
Great tutorial too bad half the people cant read and follow directions so there isnt the same question over and over again lol.. amazing.. keep up good work we appreciate it
thnks lot…
a good tut for a basic move
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3ds-max/create-a-logo-dispersion-effect-using-particle-flow-and-after-effects/
this one is different, but easier to understand maybe?
Hello … I can not pass Part 9 … my particles do not appear … and I can not find the source of the EP such settings to adjust …
help me please
terimakasih…from INDONESIA!