Deconstructing the Elements with 3ds max : create natural fire, earth, air and water without plug-ins

344 Pages·2009·15.733 MB·English

by  Pete Draper

Deconstructing the Elements
with 3ds Max
Third Edition
Dedication
To my family and close friends, no matter how near, far, or on any plane of existence.
Deconstructing
the Elements
with 3ds Max
Third Edition
Create natural fire,
earth, air and water
without plug-ins
Pete Draper
AMSTERDAM (cid:129) BOSTON (cid:129) HEIDELBERG (cid:129) LONDON (cid:129) NEW YORK (cid:129) OXFORD
PARIS (cid:129) SAN DIEGO (cid:129) SAN FRANCISCO (cid:129) SINGAPORE (cid:129) SYDNEY (cid:129) TOKYO
Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier
Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier
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Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK
Copyright © 2009, Pete Draper. All rights reserved.
The right of Pete Draper to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted in Accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the publisher.
Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science & Technology
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Application submitted
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-240-52126-8
For information on all Focal Press publications
visit our website at www.elsevierdirect.com
Typeset by diacriTech, Chennai, India
08 09 10 11 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
Contents

Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
Equipment xii
About the author xiii
Introduction xv
Why 3ds Max? xv
3ds Max Versions xv
Your level of experience xvii
You are only as good as your reference material! xvii
Format xviii
Structure of each tutorial xix
The online digital assets xx
The video tutorials xxi
Tutorial support xxi
FIRE 1
1 Ball of fire 3
2 Sun surface – extreme UV solar imagery 20
3 Angle grinder 42
4 Afterburner 60
WATER 81
5 Ice aggregation 83
6 Icicles 96
7 Condensation 113
8 Soap bubbles 131
vi CONTENTS
EARTH 151
9 Mountain weathering 153
10 Atoll 177
11 Snow drifts 191
12 Mars 206
AIR 219
13 Bubble stream 221
14 Large bubbles 242
15 Galaxy 262
16 Ray of dusty light 290
APPENDICES 305
The next step and further reading 307
Plugin solutions 309
Index 311
COMPANION WEBSITE – Contents
Brand new video tutorials include:
Electrical sparks
Fire strip
Swimming pool caustics
Paint spillage
Bucket of water
Whirlpool
Geode
Island
Snowscape
Contrail
Barn tornado
Foam
A ll 3ds Max support files for each video tutorial as well as for each chapter
included!
Brought to you from the Second Edition of this book:
FIRE
Candle
Match
Gas hob
Oil fire
Flamethrower
Tunnel explosion
Fireworks
Coals
Solar flare
Video tutorials
Atmosphere entry
Lava fountain
Lightning
Wood fire
viii CONTENTS
WATER
Lemonade
Calm seas
Stormy seas
Underwater
Moving surface water
Rain
Hailstones
Snowflakes
Lava lamp
Glacier
Video tutorials
Waterfall
EARTH
Volcanic terrain
Lava
Grass and dirt
Grasses
Frozen wastelands
Mountain
Asteroids
AIR
Cigarette smoke
Tornado
Eruption
Pyroclastic flow
Video tutorials
Clouds
All 3ds max support files included!
Foreword
I first met Pete Draper in 2004 at the Animex International Festival of Animation
located at Teesside University in England. Within minutes of meeting him, it’s as
if we’d been friends all our lives. I saw in him many of the same qualities I see in
myself. Besides being good-natured, friendly guys, we both share a great love of
m ovies and visual effects. We’re self-taught, “learn it as you go” kind of guys,
and we both got our start with the DOS version of 3D Studio. My career took
me to companies that tend to use proprietary software, but when I do work on
a project in 3ds Max, Pete is my “go to guy” when I get into trouble. Plus he’s
pretty good in a bar fight.
When Pete told me he was writing a 3ds Max book on visual effects, I was
intrigued. I knew he’d already written dozens of articles for 3D World magazine as
well as several other publications, and I’d seen him giving workshops at Animex.
It was clear that this man knows what he’s talking about. When I finally got a
copy of his book, I was blown away. He’d decided to take on some of the most
challenging elements of CG effects that even seasoned effects veterans dread. On
top of that, he taught the reader how to create them without the aid of costly 3rd
party plugins as well as presenting the information in a clear-cut, step-by-step
process that not only tells you what to do but also explains each step in a easy-
to-understand language. One of my favorite parts about his tutorials is that he
stresses the importance of getting good photographic reference. This is so impor-
tant and yet so many people I’ve met don’t think they need it. There are so many
different places to get reference from, that there is no excuse not to have it. I’ve
learned early on in my career that good reference is the key to creating realistic
visual effects, and it’s great to see that at the forefront of Pete’s lessons.
H aving read and learned from the earlier version of this book myself, I can
promise that you’ll find this a great learning tool and an invaluable reference. If
you follow Pete’s formula of gathering and analyzing your reference, breaking
down the event into its core components and then building up the effect from
the individual pieces, you’ll have a great foundation for reconstructing your
own elements.
Tom Martinek
Digital Supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic