Hello there,
A guy asked me how he could build up a building in a specific way, after a little while and after a bit of chit chat with the guy, I came up with this. Let?s get started.
Open 3ds max if you haven?t done it already. Make sure your animation length is about 500 frames long. Before we start making our particle system we need to create a few objects in the scene:
Before we start, you need to remember the every time we will add a spawn even in the PF source, you will need to make sure that you are at frame zero otherwise max could either crash or you could come up with some weird results
Create a wind pace warp and leave the settings as they are.
Create a box in your top viewport with both its height and width value set to 10, give it a length of 2 units. Now you will need to adjust its pivot like so
Now you are ready to create your PF source. To do so either press 6 on you keyboard (default max hotkey) or go in Graph Editors > Particle View. Once your particle view window is open, right click in it and go New > Particle System > Empty Flow. Doing so created a new node in your particle view along with an icon in your viewports. Change the value of its length and width to 0. Go in your front viewport and rotate the icon so that its arrow is pointing to the left ( the left is that way ? )
Go back to your particle view and right click the ?PF Source 01? node then go Append > Operator > Material static. Open your material editor (hotkey M) and drag a standard material in its slot (make sure you instance it).
With your particle view still open, right click and go New > Birth Event > birth. Set both the start and Stop value to 0 and change the amount to 1. Right click the birth event and go Append > Operator > Position icon, leave its settings to the default ones. Right click the birth event and go Append > Operator > Speed. Set the speed value to 100. Right click the birth event and go Append > Test > Spawn. Change its Spawn rate and amount to ?by travel distance? and set the step size to 10. You also need to change its speed inherited to 0. Right click the birth event and go Append > Operator > delete and set its remove to ?by particle age? and set the life span to 200 (this value will determine the width of you wall). At last, delete the display node since you don?t need it.
With your particle view still open, right click and go New > Operator event > Rotation. Set the Orientation matrix to ?World space? and set the X value to 90. Right click the rotation event and go Append > Operator > Shape instance and add the shape we created at the beginning of the tutorial. Now you need to make a copy of the spawn event created in the previous one and place it below the Shape Instance (make sure you copy it and that you don?t make and instanced version of it). The only thing you need to change is the Spawn rate and amount to ?once? instead of ?by travel distance?. The last thing you need to do is to link the spawn of the previous event to the new event.
With your particle view still open, right click and go New > Operator event > Rotation. Set the Orientation matrix to ?World space? and set the X value to -90. Right click the rotation event and go Append > Operator > Force and add the wind we created at the beginning of the tutorial. You also need to change the influence to 17%. Right click the birth event and go Append > Test > Spawn. Change its Spawn rate and amount to ?by travel distance? and set the step size to 10. You also need to change its speed inherited to 0. Right click the birth event and go Append > Operator > delete and set its remove to ?by particle age? and set the life span to 150 (this value will determine the height of you wall). At last, delete the display node since you don?t need it. The last thing you need to do is to link the spawn of the previous event to the new event.
With your particle view still open, right click and go New > Operator event > Spin. Set it?s spin rate to 1800 and the spin axis to ?world space? and set the X value to 1. Right click the spin event and go Append > Test > Age test. Set it to Event age, change the Test value to 3 and change the variation to 0. At last, link the spawn of the previous event to the new event.
Finally, with your particle view still open, right click and go New > Operator event > Spin and change the Spin rate to 0. The last thing you need to do is to link the age test of the previous event to the new event.
And that?s you done... I hope you made it all the way through and if you have any problem, you can find my contact on my website
http://www.richardadenot.com . Enjoy and have fun.
Here is the Max file:
http://www.richardadenot.com/Tutorials_ ... ut/max.zip
And here is the final animation:
http://www.richardadenot.com/stuff/zxc.mov 
xsub 33 posts15 Jun 2006
Master_Blaster 43 posts18 Feb 2007
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