In this tutorial from Jonas Ussing, you will learn to create a fly-through of a realistic cloud tunnel that renders relatively fast, using 3D Studio Max with no plugins or 3rd party renderers.
Re: COW Tutorials: 3ds Max Flying Through Clouds by Joe Mineer on Jan 4, 2008 at 7:55:08 pm
This is an awesome tutorial that would be very useful. But I am stuck early on. I am using 3DMAX6 and when I get to creating a new material for using the image file created in a paint program, I get stuck. I cannot seem to create ANYTHING that resembles the finished material. In the tutorial it looks like a square material with the "popcorn" clouds surrounding it. The only way I could seem to use the image file was to click on "bitmap" in the map window but I still end up with a ball. The instructions are kinda vague. It makes it harder for beginners to learn this stuff. Can you elaborate for the "dummies?" How do you make a "solid white color" material and then use the image file for the opacity map? Thanks!
Re: COW Tutorials: 3ds Max Flying Through Clouds by Video Fx Universe on Jan 4, 2008 at 8:39:44 pm
Alough this is a great tutorial, I really believe that rather important steps have been completely missed out,which really annoys me with tutorials. Maybe a video tutorial would have been better. I am stuck right at the beginning by creating the cloud using a teapot. I do not get the fluffy material that is shown at the end of the first part. And i copied the whole tut word for word about 6 times and still got the same result which resembled nothing like the cloud. So I know for sure that important key points where missed out which really makes this tut absolutly useless. So could the author maybe redo it with a full step by step guide or a video tut
Re: COW Tutorials: 3ds Max Flying Through Clouds by Joe Mineer on Jan 4, 2008 at 9:36:34 pm
I was just about to post the same response. I managed to figure out the material and everything went as expected until I got to 1.10 and rendered out "something". All I saw was a black background with what looked exactly like an inverted version of the view port teapot. I went ahead and deleted the teapot as instructed but the particles were not there so I know something must not have taken.
I agree that there are not enough instruction with this tutorial. If you go to the author's website he has a PDF of the tutorial. I don't know if it's different or not.
Re: COW Tutorials: 3ds Max Flying Through Clouds by Joe Mineer on Jan 5, 2008 at 12:50:24 am
I could be wrong about this since I am a newbie. But, I wonder if the light has to bind with the teapot to get the effect? Because as I said, when deleting the teapot, I end up with a small spot of light in the viewport. I may be way off but it's a work in progess following some digital tutorials. If I manage to get this thing working, I will post about it. I would certainly appreciate the same from anyone else. Thanks.
Re: COW Tutorials: 3ds Max Flying Through Clouds by Jonas Ussing on Jan 7, 2008 at 1:13:39 pm
Hi guys, thanks for trying out the tut, sorry you're having trouble with it. The extent of the tut is rather large as it covers Particle Flow, Material Editor, advanced lighting, flight path setup and volumetric ray-marching theory, so I've had to base it on a certain level of Max knowledge - it would've been a 300 page tutorial if I had to explain all the little things, and I'm not getting paid by the letter. ;)
I'm more than happy to help you get past the step that's not working for you, but you'll have to post screenshots of your setups and what it looks like when you render, because currently I have no clue what's going wrong. Others have made it past those steps just fine. :)
Re: COW Tutorials: 3ds Max Flying Through Clouds by Will Towle on Mar 1, 2008 at 11:44:44 am
Hey Jonas,
Well I'm actaully getting stuck on part 1.1 I'm afraid. You say to open up the particle view and make your list of parameters, but in the diagram you have another "PF Source" box which I never get, just hoping you'd be able to tell me how to get this?
