1st. - Make the objects transparent/invisible in the materials, and "animate" them to visible once they are "visible".

2nd - I don't have a clue

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Morph targets using "morpher" in the modifier list.
The most direct way to do this is with morph targets. With this you could have it transform into several different things.


I would use particle flow for the flames and bullets. I rule with PF and will never go back to anything else that does particles in max, ever. All you need to learn is what each obj can do. Just research each one online.

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If you can get your hands on a nice explosion map doing the flames should be fairly easy using facing particles. I've never tried animating anything like that so I'm not really sure what would work. Isaacgs method sounds pretty good though.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

Yeah. Piece by piece, star off with what you need at the beggining, that would be your model.. after that, see what you can learn about creating particle effects that can contribute to your animation, then worry about how to create an animation of your model comming from nowhere, using spline animations, vertex deformers, morfers and more! There are options for everything, you just gotta find a way to apply it to your certain model... then I would worry about lighting, materials, and render passes for post produccion compositing so you dont render the scene for an eternity just to find out later that it's all messed up.. plus if you learn how to render in passes you can modify with ease that certain layer in your fav. editing software! hope that this brake down helps, and remember that if you want feedback in anything that you're doing, we're here to help out! GOOD LUCK!

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MuS@shiROth

Good post. I'll take it one step further: Play to your strengths. Like roth said, you can render in layers then edit in combustion or some other video editing software. If that's what you're good at, then plan the steps to render the objects separately so you can have ultimate control of the look. You can even do this in photoshop, by rendering to an flm file (not recommended for shots over 300 frames), or if you render to tga edit each frame (also not recommended over 300 frames unless you're crazy, in which case go for it...).

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Yeah particle flow is really the way to go most often times but sometimes for simple effects it can be quicker and less painfull to just do it with a superspray or p-array system. certainly the latter for exploding objects. If you hav'nt used particle flow I would suggest using a superspray particle system with facing particles. map the particle's opacity with a radial gradient ramp with noise turned on to fractal and use a particle age map in the diffuse. In the material's extended parameters rollout set advanced transparency to additive (so that the colours appear hot like fire) add some subtle gravity and or wind space warps and bind them to the superspray using bind to spacewarp. also add a few omni lights with attenuation turned on so there is light interacting with the guns and either animate them by hand or use a noise controller on the multiplier value of the light.

I whole heartedly agree with the idea of rendering out passes. In this case I would apply a matte shadow material to the flamethrower and then add glow etc.. In post.

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Aight, thanks people! Im going to try this out. Morphing I think is a good idea. And the flames, I see its good to do with PF and a nice map. I'll try it Thanks, guys. I Post when it doesnt works well or vice versa

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A bit about the animation, hope its not to late for you beagle.
but I wouldn't bother with morphing, most of that is simple rigid body animation.
the tube stuff is a cylinder, modified with path deform, and then animate the length of the cylinder.
your gonna need to toggle visibility tracks so that things only become visible just before they pop out. to do this turn on auto key right click object ->object properties and set visibility to 0(click ok), this will let you maintain material information and adjust visibility despite any transparency maps you may have set up.

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