Tutorial 2: Quick Start - Part 2

This next tutorial builds upon the basic particle system you created in the first tutorial, and will show you how to add shape to your particles so that they can be rendered.

Position Born particles generated

By default, the particle system you just created in the first Quick Start tutorial can be seen in the 3ds Max viewports (as shown above), but cannot be rendered yet. In this tutorial we are going to create a Shape node for the particles so that we can see them at render time.

• Continue on from the previous lesson or open the file QuickStart02Start.max from your C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\cebas\Sample Scenes Shared\thinkingParticles\Tutorials folder
  

• Render frame 50 and you will see that no particles are rendered out.
  

• Open the thinkingParticles Properties View by pressing Alt+Shit+P on your keyboard.

thinkingParticles UI of the loaded scene

• Select Master Dynamic and click Create to add a new DynamicSet. Rename the set Shape.

This DynamicSet will generate the shape for the particles.

• Go to Create / Operators section, choose Shape from the dropdown menu, then choose the StdShape operator.

• Click in the middle schematic area to add the StdShape operator to the Shape DynamicSet.

thinkingParticles dialog with the StdShape operator in a Shape DynamicSet

You see that DynamicSet has a red box at the top that says Invalid and that there is a yellow Particle input data stream on your StdShape operator. This means that something must be connected to that input to make the DynamicSet valid. As it stands now, this new DynamicSet won't be evaluated by thinkingParticles and until you make the Shape DynamicSet valid, it will be ignored by the system.

• In the Create rollout click on the Groups button and click First Particles.

• Click in the schematic area of the Shape DynamicSet right next to the StdShape operator to create this new First Particles Group node.

Group placed in the Wire Setup View

Now, if you'll recall, the First Particles group contains all of the particles created by the Position Born operator. This means that we can now connect this group operator to the StdShape operator and have the particles within the First Particles group take on the shape that is set by the operator.

• Click on the Particle output (clicking on the name of the output data stream is generally the easiest) of the First Particles group and drag it over to the Particle input of StdShape operator. 

When you drag the wire over the Particle input data stream, the Particle name will turn green, indicating that you can connect it to that port. This is a great visual way as you get into more complex setups, to quickly see what output data streams can connect to other input data streams.

Wire Setup View with the First Particles Group connected to the Standard Shape operator

• Render frame 50 of the scene to see that now we have small triangular faces for the particle shape. 

Now we'll tweak the shape to something more appropriate.

• Select the StdShape operator ether in the DynamicSet Tree View or the Wire Setup View and change the shape to Cube in the Standard Shape rollout.

• Render frame 50 of the scene to see the particles.

Render of particles with a shape operator

Now that we have a Shape operator you can display the results in the viewport.

• Select Master Dynamic in the DynamicSet Tree View and go to the Master Dynamic rollout that comes up on the right.

• Choose Drops as the display type from the dropdown list and activate the Show Mesh checkbox.

Now you can see the mesh in the viewports and get the extra information that the Drops display give you.