New Year's Animation in 3ds Max and Corona renderer
Have a great holiday season, everyone!
On the occasion of Christmas and the New Year let's create a simple animation with greetings.
Everything will be done simply and quickly inside 3ds Max and in one evening. Let's write here how to build a simple Christmas animation in 3ds Max using the tyFlow plugin.
So, let's get started.
What we have - a nine second video where a little firefly flies around a Christmas tree and breaks into small confetti from a firecracker.
The first stage - the flight of the firefly - is a simple movement of the object on the spline.
Let's create a sphere and assign CoronaLightMtl material to it. The material settings are shown below. The Falloff map creates a slight gradient to the edges of the firefly, but this effect is actually almost invisible.
Now you need to create a spline (standard Helix tool). This is the spiral, along which the firefly will circle. Slightly adjust our spline trajectory, so that it does not touch the objects of the scene and as if it flew into our room. After that in the toolbar find animation - constraints - path constraint. Point the appeared line on the created by us spline trajectory. Now you can see that the firefly can move only along this spline.
*Note that at this time you need to select the firefly, and then go to the animation tab and specify the path that the firefly will move.
We need to edit the animation keys. The program automatically assigns the maximum number of animation frames (for example, 100), so you need to put the slider to the value of 60 frames - for this time the firefly flies into the room, passes around the Christmas tree and reaches the top point, which will be the explosion of the firecracker.
The time configuration settings must be left at their defaults.
Note that the whole scene is currently illuminated only by CoronaSky.
And now begins the second stage of the animation - the explosion of the confetti cannon. This stage is in no way connected with the previous one, you just need to hide the firefly for the next calculation.
To create the firecracker we need the tyFlow plugin. It's not built into max by default, but it's freely available for download at http://docs.tyflow.com/download/.
So, first of all, let's talk about the firecracker.
The first thing you need to do is create a tyFlow object (you can find this object in the Standard primitives). Open Open Editor, here you need to select the first Birth node. It is important that the firefly stops at 60 frames. Therefore we set values 60-61 in parameters Start and End, and in parameter Total 500. So, the first two parameters are responsible for the interval of time for which the new particles will be created, while the second specifies the number of particles. That is, for the time interval from 60 to 61 the frame will appear 500 confetti.
After that, find the tool tyIcon in the Helpers panel. Here you need to set about this size and place it over the Christmas tree at about the place where our firefly stopped.
Go back to the Open Editor and create a new Position Icon node. Select the previously created tyIcon with Pick.
Next, drag and drop the new Speed node. In the Direction drop-down list select Object Center Out (you can also leave Random 3d, but the explosion is interesting in the initial moment in this mode). Now change the parameter Magnitude, you can pick up the values yourself or put the same as on the picture. From the name it is clear that this is the force of the particle expulsion. Do not forget to add an icon. Also change the value of parameter Divergence somewhere on 40-60.
After this add a Force node.
First, here you have to set gravity in Build-in Gravity.
Then change the values in the first and second Noise Layer. In the first one select Perlin, and in the second one select Turb. The latter parameters give you the opportunity to make the particles fall more chaotically. The values can be adjusted "by eye", taking into account the application of subsequent nodes, so there are no specific correct values.
Add the Slow node. It will slow down the fall of confetti.
Right now you can see the following result
Let's add some variety and connect the Spin and Rotation nodes. You can leave them unchanged, or you can slightly change the values of the power of rotation of the distortion.
Then we create Collision node here, where we specify collision objects (i.e. those objects that will be perceived by particles as solids)
That is actually all solids have been added to this list.
After that we add a Cloth Bind node. Temporarily disable Display (so as not to disturb the extra points that have appeared), and reduce the parameter mass. Below the settings are responsible for the stiffness of the cloth. The confetti will bend more correctly now.
It remains to adjust the confetti material.
For example, you can use double-sided material - one side is foil, and the other side is colored cling film. The material is made with the CoronaFrontBack map. On one side is CoronaColor gray, and on the other side is CoronaMultimap in Mesh Element mode.
Back to tyFlow - applying the created material to the particles.
So, let's check - everything should work.
The last thing worth mentioning is the creation of twinkling lights. The animation of the lights is made with material. We have applied the CoronaLightMtl material to the luminous elements of the garland. On Opacity, connect the CoronaMultiMap and give it two colors - black and white. This is necessary to make the garlands flicker rather than completely off and on.
We see a number in front of each color, it shows how many percent of the effect of one color or another. First, set both numbers to 1 and press Auto Key, then move the animation slider and put 0 next to the black card, then move the animation slider and put 1 (you can set the step to five frames), and so repeat several times. As many times as your animation goes, for example, 250 frames.
For quality, sufficient for posting to the social networking site, you can put a resolution of 1000 pixels on the larger side. One frame can take about 5 minutes.
Now, after calculating each frame as a separate picture, the fastest step is their gluing. This can be done equally quickly and in DaVinci and After Effects and similar programs. You can get the sound for your Christmas card from https://wav-library.net/sounds-noises.
Have a good rendering!
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