1: open max, make a gizmo (create tab > "Helpers" button (tape measure) > "Atmospheric Apparatus" from scroll-down menu)
select the gizmo that best fits the needs of your fog (ie: do you need a whole room to be foggy, so you get the box gizmo, or do you need something for a chimney, so you use the cylinder gizmo, etc.). then, create it where you want it.
2: once you have it placed where you want it, go to "Rendering" > "Environment" (or just push the "8" button) and create some volumetric fog ("Atmosphere" tab, "Add..." button, "Volume Fog"). Once you made that, go down to the "Volume Fog Paramaters" tab and click "Pick Gizmo". Then just click the gizmo you want to apply the volume fog effect to!
(Note: you can apply the Volume Fog effect to multiple gizmos, just keep clicking the pick gizmo button, and select them. then use the pull-down menu to it's right to select which one to modify)
3: alright, now let's just render it as-is... (for you people with P1's... go get some popcorn, this could take a while, especially with bigger projects).
here's what i got:
well, it's just a first render, and we've yet to tweak the settings, so don't quit in disgust. besides, rotate the view a bit and take a new render. if u want to, animate a camera rotating around the fog, set the perspective view to it, and make an animation. (hehe, amaze yourself with rotating fog
)4: alright, time to tweak the fog, and get somethin a bit better than a little wisp.
i changed these settings to these values:
Fractal radio button checked
size set to 10.0
and here's what i got:
note: if you want to, go ahead and see what using Turbulence or invert does, so that you can compare what normal, fractal, and turbulence do to fog.
alright .. more detail
, but let's go for something other than steam/fog. how about a knock-off spore that we see in the final levels of Halo 2?here's my settings, and render:
color:
red = 93
green = 104
blue = 22
hue = 48
saturation = 201
value = 104
Turbulence radio button selected
Invert checkbox checked
render:
alright, not bad! looks like some mold spores you really don't want floating around your house! although it would look better if you used a sphere, so let's go ahead and make a sphere gizmo, and apply the volume fog effect to it that we've ben using.
made a sphere gizmo next to the box gizmo, applied the volume fog to it (via the "Pick gizmo" button) and rendered.
ok, so now we have 2 gizmos with volume fog applied that's upposed to make them look like spores from halo 2. but then again, it doesn't look like it right now. So here's what i did to get it one step closer to a halo 2 spore.
moved the perspective viewport to look at square gizmo, then put sphere gizmo inside square gizmo.
ok, not half bad! really looks like a spore! but if we remove the invertion from the sphere gizmo, i bet we'll have a halo 2 spore. all i had to do was make a new volume fog effect, copy the first one's color to it, and select turbulence, and set the size to 10. let's see how it is...
alright! now that's a pretty good spore! and along the way, now you know how to make fog.
hehe, try changing the sphere's color to a dark blue, gives it a more "I came from a mushroom" feel
