thinkingParticles in the Create panel
In this tutorial, you will create a simple Born operator
and add some motion to it.
In the Quick Start tutorials, you used the Position Born
operator to get started. This operator gives you the ability to see some
particles and motion right away. In this tutorial you will be using the
Born operator which has far fewer predetermined options,
but can offer more control and customization in most cases.
Start up 3ds Max with a new scene.
Go to > Create panel > Particle Systems> Thinking. Click in the Front viewport to place a thinkingParticles icon in the Front view.
thinkingParticles in the Create panel
This brings up the thinkingParticles Properties view. This is where
most of your work will be done with thinkingParticles.
Click the Create button within the Particle Group Tree View under Master System.
This adds a new group to put your particles in.
Name the group Particles.
To rename a group, click on the name Group once, then click once again
and type in the new name. This is similar to renaming a file in Windows
Explorer.
Next, create a new DynamicSet under Master Dynamic in the same way, and name it Generate.
With the creation of a DynamicSet, you are ready to begin building your
particle system. The first thing to do is to cause particles to be born.
Select the Generate DynamicSet and go to the right of the window where you will see some new options.
Select the Operators Icon 
from
the Create rollout on the right, then choose Generator
from the dropdown list.
Click on the Born node to highlight it, then left-click in the schematic portion of the middle Wire Setup View to add this node to your DynamicSet to the scene .
With the Born operator you get less automatic setup
controls than the Position Born operator, and you can
see that there are fewer options in its rollout. When you add this generator,
by default you'll get a single particle positioned at 0,0,0. It doesn't
move, it just sits there. Also, by default, that one particle is part
of the All Group, and that's not where we want it.
In the Born rollout to the right, select Particles as your Group.
Minimize the thinkingParticles interface, and play the animation in the Top viewport to see that only one particle is appearing in the viewport.
Of course, that one particle is not moving. This is because you have
not assigned any velocity or other forces to the particle to get it to
move.
Create another DynamicSet by selecting the Master Dynamic and clicking Create. Name this new DynamicSet Motion.
With the Motion DynamicSet selected, go to the
Create rollout and click the Groups icon. 
This will show you all the available particle groups in the Master System.
The groups that appear here change depending on which groups you have
added within the Particle Group Tree View. The group All
will always be present, and because you added the group Particles,
that is also in the rollout.
Click on Particles, then click in the middle portion of the Wire Setup View to place this group into the Motion DynamicSet.
Now you have the group Particles in the Motion DynamicSet. The Born
operator has its Group set to Particles, so whatever operators you pipe
into the Particles group will affect the Born particles. Next you will
pipe in several operators to the Particles group to give them motion.
In the Create rollout, click the Operators
icon 
and
choose Standard from the dropdown list.
Click on Velocity and add a Velocity operator to the Motion DynamicSet.
As you can see above, on the Velocity operator the Particles
input data stream shows in yellow and the Motion DynamicSet becomes Invalid.
This means it needs to be linked to something or the DynamicSet won't
be evaluated.
Click on the yellow Particle input data stream, then drag a wire over to the Particle output data stream of the Particle group and release. The Particle input of Velocity will turn from yellow to orange, and the red Invalid indicator at the top of the Motion DynamicSet rollout will change to a green Valid indicator.
Press play to see the results.
You should see a single particle traveling up on the Z-axis with a speed
of 1 (because these are the default speed and direction) values of the
Velocity operator), then disappearing at frame 30 and a new particle being
born and travelling up. While the speed and direction is now being controlled
by the Velocity operator, the life and the number of particles is still
controlled by the settings within the Born operator.
In the Master Dynamic list, select the Born operator. This brings up the Born rollout to the right.
Change the Count value to 35 and the Life Span value to 100.
In the Master Dynamic list, select the Velocity operator and change the Variation Angle value to 25 so that the particles spread out a bit.
Press Play to see the results.
As you may have noticed, whenever you change some settings with thinkingParticles,
you need to press Play and let the animation time loop to see the results.
This is because there is a setting called Edit on the Fly
in the Master Dynamic. With the Edit on the Fly option
On, you are able to edit your particles system with out having to wait
for it to update. If you are dealing with simple settings that you want
to see in real time, you will want to turn this option off.
Select Master Dynamic, and click on the Edit on the fly button in the Master Dynamic rollout to turn it off.
Select the Velocity operator again and try changing the Variation Angle to 85 and then back to 25 to see the real-time update. You can even click and drag on the spinners while the animation plays back.
Save your file as Tutorial03Part1.max.