Fire!

Creating Fire.

Although we learned in class how to create fire, I decided that I would like to take it further and look at how to create a realistic fire/flame effect; I watched a youtube video tutorial and followed that to create a good fire effect.

Firstly I went up to the create menu > particles > super spray.
I then drew the super spray on my stage. 

I then changed the settings of how the particles would appear.
I changed:

Percentage of particles = 100%
Particle motion > Speed = 0.2
Use total amount of particles = 200
Emit time = -100
Emit stop = 500
Display until = 500
Particle Size > Fade for = 30
Standard Particles = Facing, this meant that no matter how the angle or view point of the fire, it would always face the user.
Rotation and collision > Spin time = 1
Rotation and collision > Variation = 0.5
Rotation and collision > Phase =180
Rotation and collision > Variation =  1

I then could add the textures to my fire, I opened the compact material editor selected diffuse and assigned a noise map to it, I could then add the colours to my flame, I chose yellow for colour 1, and an orangey red for colour 2 and changed the setting to ‘Fractal’.

I then went back to the default and checked the face map, I then clicked on opacity, and then selected gradient as the map. I then gradient map I had three different colours, black, grey and white, I selected the grey and changed it to black, so that only white could be see through, I then changed the noise setting to 0.7 and the size to 3.5, but this depended on how I wished the flame to look.
I then changed the noise threshold, both setting the low and high to 0.5

I then went back into the parameters of the super spray and changed the size of the particles which gave it a more meatier, fuller kind of look to the fire.

I really enjoyed following this tutorial on creating a fire, it was simple to follow and the outcome was very good, I am hoping to use this effect in my animation and incorporate it in some way.
There was a lot of numeral settings which I changed by following the video, but these only made sense when I started experimenting after I had finished, by changing different aspects and seeing what different it made to the fire.

Youtube, 2011. 3D Studio Max Tutorial - How to create fire [Online] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVHBJSq7rpg
[Accessed 11/04/2013]