romanschmidt.com | Tutorial #1 - Create Realistic Sparks Look


	Tutorial #1 - Create Realistic Sparks Look [zur Ordner-Übersicht ] This brief tutorial is about the realitsic look of sparks, that appear when welding metal or when electronic circuits fuse. Software used: 3dsmax and Trail 2.0. - Sparks are very intense glowing small metal chips/splints - In every photo they look sharp and bright, mostly long drawn-out due to the motion blur, but sharp! These two principals are the main goal to achieve with this tutorial. The Lens Effects like Glow from 3dsmax are not able to get the appropriate look, so i decided to use a free plugin called Trail 2.0 from Pavel Kuznetsov. Download here: http://www.lastjedioutpost.cgtalk.ru/Plug-ins/common/Download.htm?8 1. Setup a particle system. Since this tutorial is about the look of sparks, the particle system setup is not discussed here. Just some tips: For testing purpose you can setup a superspray particle system with fast moving and short living particles, also try to bind it to gravity and drag space warps. The drag space warp slows down the particle speed. The lifetime can be about 15 - 20 and some particles could spawn on death, characteristicly for metal sparks. Remember to deactivate any shape display, you can even disable "Renderable" in the Render Control und Properties. The Trails will be rendered anyway. 2. When your particle system is setup, add the Rendering Effect called Ky_Trail. 3. Under "Emitters" add your particle system to the Emitters List. 4. Under "Trail Parameters" set the "Trail Life Duration" to 1 and the "Particle Quantity" to about 50. We don't need that much particles to get a usable trail.. helps to keep rendering time short. 5. Under "Particles Life" leave defalut settings, "Lock to Trail" and "Particle Life Duration Depends on Emitter Speed" enabled. 6. Under "Particles Visualize" you'll see two parameter blocks, that defines the look of the trail at the beginning ("Initial") and at the end ("Final"). These settings blend together to form the trail. Set the Radius to 1 in both blocks. Later on, when you make first testrenderings, you might vary these values. The radius value is world scale, so the more distance the perspective view (e.g. camera) have in your scene, the smaller the trails will look. 7. Set the Color in the "Initial" block to white and the "Final" block to a yellow-orange tone (e.g. R:252 G:182 B:92). 8. Enable Alpha and set it to 255 in the "Initial" block and 0 in the "Final" block. 9. The Multiplier value is the important feature to this effects plugin, cause high values let's even the smallest particle shine bright, which is want we want to achieve. Set it to 500 in the "Initial" block and 500 in the "Final" block. 10. The "In/Out Balance" value seems to define the blending values of both parameter blocks. Set it both to 1. 11. The "Initial/Final Balance" slider defines where on the overall trail length the blending takes place. Keep it under 0.5 to let them mostly shine bright, but with a touch of color involved. 12. Under "Apply" leave the default setting "Additive". 13. Render test pictures, where your particles are right in the middle of motion and vary the settings further more. To shorten the Trail Lines, decrease the "If Speed More Than Range" value under "Particles Life". 14. Setup the Glow from Lens Effects, that depends on the overall brightness of the picture, so the sparks particle system get a slightly, subtile glow. If there are any problems with this Tutorial, let me know. This tutorial is completely written by myself. All Copyrights reserved. Do not copy or reuse (even only parts of) it without my permission. Thank you.