Created using Cebas Thinking Particles inside 3ds max, it randomly divide bacteria and uses Bullet Solver for dynamics.
You can control the timing and division percentage, but you need to dive down 😉
Note:
-Don’t change the frame sampling, I put it to per half frame.
– For more accuracy you can increase the Bullet Solver iteration so bacteria wont overlap in case you need this.
In this video tutorial I am going to demonstrate creating a twister with PhoenixFD in 3ds max 2011. This continue my PhoenixFDseries, will be focus on the spiral gravity force. If you find this tutorial too hard, please read my previous PhoenixFD tutorial.
To follow this tutorial, you need two free plugins: footools Forceviewer and Peter Waje SpiralGravity.
fooTOOLS’s Forceviewer help us to visualize the SpiralGravity.
SpiralGravity: Adjust the Inward Str, Downward Str and Angle Str, our goal is to make the force focus to inner and upper direction. This will simulate force like a twister.
Uncheck “Std Gravity” since Spiral Gravity is the only force influence our smoke.
Set Sampler type to Truc, this will render every voxel of PhoenixFD without blurring them.
Change simple color to gray.
In this video tutorial I will show you how to use free plugin “Blur’s random walk” as force, to make particle move in random/natural ways. In thinkingParticles, with help of SC operator, we can make each paper collide each other. And we will use PSeclection to manually delete the papers that penetrate to each other.
Tutorial
This technique is not limited to paper, you can apply to feather or leaf or any other stuff you like.
You need those to follow this tutorial:
(1) cebas thinkingParticles
(2) Blur’s Random Walk plugin (free). You can download from MAX Plugins.de.
Here are some important screenshots of each steps / parameters:
You can find RandomWalk in Force/Blur’s Particle & Dynamics
Viscosity: higher value make particles move more randomly, but in the end, particles will attract to specific points in space (attractor: is a set towards which a variable, moving according to the dictates of a dynamical system, evolves over time—Wikipedia ) :
Visual representation of a strange attractor—Wikipedia :
To avoid this effect, we can increase the %Walk:
The Alignment Operator can randomize rotation of your geometry (paper):
Spin operator give more natural movement to papers:
In the SC operator, remember to set parameters as follow, otherwise the paper will freeze…
Use PSelection to manually pick up particles in the scene that penetrate to each other, and use Particle Die to delete them:
This continue my previous two tutorial: explosion, nuke cloud. Please read those tutorials first if you are not familiar Phoenix FD.
Though this tutorial is for advanced user, it actually no much different than previous tutorials. We will show you some tips/tricks when creating large scale smoke with PhoenixFD.
First of all, upgrade your OS to 64-bit Windows 7 and get as much memory (RAM) as possible. Since large scale smoke means lot of cache generate during simulation. So if you want to create high detailed smoke like this, be sure to get a powerful machine, total 8GB system RAM at least.
Scene setup:
The main different than previous tutorial is, we have a 3dsmax std gravity force here, point to left to make our smoke moving from left to right. Otherwise, the smoke will moving upward.
For the PHXSource, we want to it emit smoke continuously, so set the discharge to 100, temp to 2000 and smoke to 10. Add the plane as source.
For the dynamic simulation part. Quality, Maximum step and cell size—those there parameters are the must important. Set cell size as lower as possible (if you have enough system memory), here I use 0.6 cell size, this will generate roughly 5GB of cache after total 300 frames simulation. The default Maximum step is 8 which is not enough to generate detail. I set it to 30.
Uncheck the std Gravity. This will force the simulation system to use other force in the scene (you should create a Gravity point to left in the scene, strength=1)
Sampler type the Truc, this will force it to render each voxel withous bluring it
Image above showing when not using enough Maximum step (=8) will generate bad resuls.
For the Colors and Transparency, change the color to dark gray. Set the Multiplier to 2 (enhance the light scattering effect)
For the target Direct Light, make shadow a VRayShadow. Multiplier to 5 and color to orange to mimic sun color/intensity. Check the Atmosphere Shadows.
Finally, for the rendering setup, set Vray as screenshots above. Do not set the Irradiance Map presets too high, since we set the Sampler to Truc which will render each voxels, too high sampling will render voxel over sharp.
For those who want to render the fire, in the PhoenixFD Render Parameters/Emission, make the source type to Temperature.
OK, that’s it. Have fun with PhoenixFD and good luck ; )
Thanks for joining me!
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
Ekbercg 
