Pro tips for particles
From smoke to shooting stars, follow a collection of professional tricks for 3ds max, Maya, LightWave and Cinema 4D to bring your particle effects to life.
Most visual effects would be impossible without them. Animators rely on them for complex scenes that would be ludicrously time-consuming to keyframe. You can even use them to create fur, feathers or grass. Yet particles remain one of the most under-exploited tools in 3D software.
The problem is that the enormous versatility of particle systems is also their undoing. Faced with a bewildering array of controls, drop-downs and parameters, many artists simply opt for the default settings. The result is either one of the tell-tale signs of CG animation - sparks that seem to move in slow motion, synthetic-looking flames, and smoke that fails to respond to the prevailing wind - or flames that take days to render. Yet all that is often needed to transform such problem systems into flexible, fast-rendering effects is a few simple parameter tweaks.
Over the course of this article, our three visual effects professionals will be revealing some of the tricks they use to vary the homogeneity of their software's default particle settings, and translate complex real-world phenomena into manageable 3D simulations. They will also be suggesting some more creative uses of particle systems, beyond the standard repertoire of smoke trails, explosions and starbursts.
Although we'll be focusing on four applications - LightWave, 3ds max, Maya and Cinema 4D - most of the techniques set out here can also be adapted for use in other software packages.
Click here to download the PDF for free
Click here to download support files and hi-res screenshots
Get the Creative Bloq Newsletter
Daily design news, reviews, how-tos and more, as picked by the editors.
Thank you for reading 5 articles this month* Join now for unlimited access
Enjoy your first month for just £1 / $1 / €1
*Read 5 free articles per month without a subscription
Join now for unlimited access
Try first month for just £1 / $1 / €1
The Creative Bloq team is made up of a group of design fans, and has changed and evolved since Creative Bloq began back in 2012. The current website team consists of eight full-time members of staff: Editor Georgia Coggan, Deputy Editor Rosie Hilder, Ecommerce Editor Beren Neale, Senior News Editor Daniel Piper, Editor, Digital Art and 3D Ian Dean, Tech Reviews Editor Erlingur Einarsson and Ecommerce Writer Beth Nicholls and Staff Writer Natalie Fear, as well as a roster of freelancers from around the world. The 3D World and ImagineFX magazine teams also pitch in, ensuring that content from 3D World and ImagineFX is represented on Creative Bloq.
Related articles
- 3 of the best 3D scanners we've tested are cheaper on Prime Day
- I’m already emotional for the stop-motion Over the Garden Wall anniversary special
- Forget Prime Day, our favourite 3D printer is cheaper direct from the manufacturer
- Redshift 2025 review: an iterative update for the world’s first GPU renderer