BUBBLES by Erik Borzi
If you ever need to create bubbles for an
animation, and would like to do it without
spending a fortune on a plug-in that will
animate hundreds of spheres that are
texture mapped - then this tutorial will
be a sound solution. 3D Studio Max has
many powerful tools, that when used
correctly will give surprising results.
For this tutorial, I'll show you how to
use the snow particle generator and a
simple texture map to create convincing
bubbles.
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I am
assuming that you know how to use
particles, space warp modifiers, and
the material editor. Lets begin by
creating a Snow particle emitter. It
would be best for this example to copy
the settings from the settings in (fig
1). Set the emitter at the center of
the world and point it upwards. Note
that the "Render:" is set to "Facing"
instead of the default "Six Point."
Facing particles work best when
rendered with a Camera, or a
Perspective viewport.
Make a copy of this emitter by
shift+left clicking on it - rotate it
from the top viewport about 45°. This
is so that we can get a random set of
particles without changing the
parameters too drastically. The only
settings you need to change are the
render count (change 300 to 400),
flake size (change 3.0 to 1.5), the
speed (change 2.0 to 2.3), variation
(5.0 to 7.0), and leave all the other
settings the same. Notice that the
timing is set to: Start = -200, Life =
200 at constant, this will create a
looping cycle for the particles. Now
we need to create our texture for the
particles. Facing particles are
basically a square shaped polygon. I
created a 200 x 200 spherical bubble
map using a paint program. It's
important that you have an alpha
channel so that the edges are
invisible when the texture is
rendered, that way, all you see is the
bubble. See (fig 2) for the texture
map, and the mask. Once you have
created the texture, go into the
material editor and place the texture
into Diffuse using a bitmap browser.
Copy this into Opacity by dragging and
dropping into the Opacity box. Be sure
to set the mono-channel output to
Alpha. This will ensure the edges are
invisible.
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Figure 1
Figure 2
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Figure 3
Next we need to throw some life into these
bubbles so that when they move, they will
wobble. With a fancy and expensive
particle generator we could apply a noise,
wave, or ripple space warp modifier to the
sphere and get similar results. Apply
Noise to Bump, and set the value for the
noise Size to 30, set it from Regular to
Turbulence, and animate the Phase from 0
to 1.0 over 100 frames.
Finally, all we need to do now is to add a
Wind space warp modifier so that the
particles will swirl, and wander about as
if they were raising through turbulent
water. See (fig 3) for positioning of the
wind space warp modifier. Using Bind to
Space Warp, link the Wind space warp to
both particle generators, one at a time.
The settings for the Wind space warp
should be: strength 1.0, decay 0, planar,
turbulence 0.44, frequency 0.43, scale
1.0. Experiment with the Wind space warp
modifier by animating it from left to
right gradually to get varied motion.
Now you are almost ready to render. For a
finishing touch, I added a gradient
background using similar color values from
the bubble. At this point you can do what
you would like so that the bubbles merge
in with your scene. You may want to use
motion blur, which adds realism to the
motion of the bubbles. Render away...
All rights reserved. No part of this
tutorial may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without written
permission from CELEFEX ANIMATION, except
for the inclusion of brief quotations in a
review with credit to CELEFEX ANIMATION,
and respective authors. © 1998 CELEFEX |
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