vfxsolution.com

Here you can find literally hours of content on Particle Flow, Fume FX, Afterburn, Dynamics, Compositing and other FX related material for 3D Studio Max.

Before you download - nearly all of these use the camtasia techsmith codec you can download here

These tutorials are labeled LEGACY as they are all pre 2009. As part of this websites redesign I've archived these here as they are still downloaded 150-200 times a day, and 99% of the information is still very valid and useful in day to day production and learning. However I plan on building loads of new content, some of which will re-cover some of the same material here.

If you have any cool ideas for tutorials or subjects you would like to see covered, shoot me a quick email!

If you find this information useful, please feel free to tweet/diggs/stumble or whatever it is you do to get this information out there for others to discover!

Thanks!

-Allan McKay

Also known as Galaxy Explosion Tutorial - This is based on a 1 day pitch I put together for the new Dolby DTS logo piece. This isn't the actual pitch but a quick remake of it just explaining how it was built and a lot of the concepts behind it. This is interesting as its a more hands on tutorial rather than theory, going through creating the particles, shaders and rendering them and then later compositing all of the elements together.

Pretty much a coin phrased term now, this was one of the first tutorials for particle flow I ever put together, based on a simple fx test I put together in 2003 to demonstrate particle flows potential for 3dsmax 6's launch event. This takes a simple concept of creating particles and having them blow away in a control motion through taking advantage of particle flows events driven system.

Another very popular tutorial that still holds up very well by todays standards. This tutorial covers how to build a rain drop system and have it create automated splashes on the ground when rain drops come in contact. But takes the method one step further, with rain drops that land on the main object in the scene, will then run down the surface leaving a trail of water as they do, and then fall off and splash on the ground. Highly Recommended

In this Fume FX Tutorial we go through the basic functions of Fume FX in 3dsmax, including the interface, primary controls and how to initially set up a example of fire burning in ffx.

In this exercise we cover the basic principles of creating explosions through heat/fuel/expansion etc. This was recorded as a very quick demonstration of the principles of explosions, I've since then developed several methods for building explosions for production that are a lot more advanced, so this is a core tutorial to get the basic understandings down - but I will be releasing some more up to date exercises on this very soon.

A very quick tutorial on Fume FX to understand the principles of fuel, and also utilizing fuel maps to drive fume fx simulations. In this example we're able to create fire burning from one end an object along to the other over time, and in specified areas we control.

A quick method I discovered fairly early into Fume FX's initial release that it appears most other people overlooked, so I put together a quick example of how I use use Fume FX and pflow together on a per-event basis.

Very quick tutorial on afterburn 4.0 and how it differs to 3.2, this example is a quick walkthrough of its controls and how to build some basic raymacher clouds.

Quick introduction to particle flow scripting and linking physical objects to particles.

Very basic concept of maxscript, in this exercise we walk through the absolute basics for people who have never scripted before. How to build variables, modify objects etc. Designed for artists who want to jump into maxscript but want their hand held through their first few steps of getting their head around what it is and how it works.

Very basic concept of maxscript, in this exercise we walk through the absolute basics for people who have never scripted before. Here we cover some more examples on building strings, generating objects, modifying them and building loops.

Moving forward in the maxscript beginners series, here we cover how to build a basic script and wrap it in a interface to use as a tool. This is an essential step in scripting, as we begin to develop actual tools.

This is a much more advanced tutorial and very practical for maxscripters. Here we begin looking at SuperStrings and automating tasks such as reading directories, creating information and automating a lot of manual required tasks. Highly recommended.

This is another particle flow tutorial designed to script particles to transform from one object to another via pflow script.

Demonstrates how to use this quick script to fracture objects, but then import them into Particle Flow to completrly control through scripted events.

Tutorial on creating flames using just particle geometry

This tutorial is an introduction to customizing your UI and setting it up to work better for how you work.

This is a demonstration of taking the strengths of maxscript to automate FX tools to do all of the work for you.

This video tutorial is a bit out of date, as initially when pflow came out it didn't have any ability to create an initial state, so here was a workaround for this.Initial state being pre-rolling your particles. However right after this I bugged Oleg B to create the initial state feature for pflow tools, as well as dozens of other cool tools - so fast forward to max 2010 it has initial state built in, however the method shown here has a lot of cool information on creating a nice shockwave effect, but also on creating particle looping events.

Please Note: The recording quality is quite blury, it was the first video tutorial I believe I ever recorded (I was writing tutorials rather than recording them back then!)

Old tutorial on the basics of being able to select and delete particles.

Please Note: The video quality of this recording is a bit old and blurry, but still viewable.

Old tutorial on controlling particles via various forces. This is more old school ways of manipulating particles, that most people overlook these days, so I think its a good crash course in the core of particle manipulation.

Please Note: The video quality of this recording is a bit old and blurry, but still viewable.

Old tutorial on creating cigarette smoke with particle flow and manipulating turbulence forces.

Please Note: The video quality of this recording is a bit old and blurry, but still viewable.

Old tutorial on exercising how to get particles to stick and move along a surface, in this case a large ocean with people in it moving over the wave..

Please Note: The video quality of this recording is a bit old and blurry, but still viewable.

Tutorial recorded to demonstrate other interesting old school particle effects, such as generating orb like particles emitting off an object.

Please Note: The video quality of this recording is a bit old and blurry, but still viewable.

Old tutorial on having particles attached to a surface and then based on objects velocity detach. In this case a character covered in liquid that then shakes the liquid off.

Please Note: The video quality of this recording is a bit old and blurry, but still viewable.

Freestyle tutorial on explaining particles, how they work and lots of cool tactics and methods for using them.