I am hoping for some pointers here. I started learning how to use 3ds Max 2018 - since Arnold is included out-of-the-box, I started to learn how to render with Arnold (the basics of it anyways). Now I want to learn how to render particles and I've been researching different solutions.
The issue I am having is I can't find ANYTHING that really supports Arnold when it comes to VFX. There are all of these cool solutions - FumeFX, Thinking Particles, Phoenix FD, all of which are great but I can't get any of them to work unless I use vRay or something else.
A lot of these companies tout that they have Arnold support, but as soon as I try to use them within Arnold either 3ds Max crashes or the render shows a blank output (black).
Why is this? How can Arnold be the default when you can't use any of the cool VFX tools out there in your project? Am I using the wrong product? Do I need to purely look for something like Adobe After Effects just to put a nice fire effect in my scene?
Something seems off. I've been at this for over a week now and I haven't gotten a single plugin to work with Arnold & 3ds Max 2018. I am using the latest updates for both Arnold MtoA and 3ds Max itself.
Please help... I want to be able to play with fire particles (using Arnold!) like in this image:
EDIT: Obviously I don't think I can make anything like this quality with my first test. At this point I'd be happy with a basic little puff cloud made with one of the tools mentioned above.
