ART and fire effect

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to create a fire effect using ART Renderer, but it doesn't render at all. It does render when I use Scanline, but I don't want Scanline for the scene. Do the Atmospheric effects not work with ART Renderer?!

Thanks for any help

[hagen.deloss]

Hi @Anonymous 

Thanks for bringing your question to the forums! It's interesting, I am not able to render Environment effects using ART either, but i can't find any documentation that says that the ART render engine cannot render atmospheric effects. I must be overlooking this documentation somewhere, neither ART or quicksilver works. 

What version of 3ds Max are you currently using?

I would say your best bet, if you are absolutely set on using the ART render Engine, would be to use a particle system to create a fire effect. I found a few different videos on folks doing this, here is an example.

I hope this helps!

[Anonymous]

Hi, 

Until last year I was using version 2017 and mental ray as renderer; since autodesk discontinued with this renderer, I updated to version 2018 and I'm trying to work with the ART renderer.

I did some work with particles and fire effect when using mental ray, but some maps I used aren't available for ART.

I'll take a look at the example you sent and work with Particle Flow. 

Thanks for your reply!

[hagen.deloss · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous 

Looks like Mental Ray still has a plugin for 3ds Max 2018 actually!! I was secretly hoping you would say 2018 hahah.

Mental Ray for Max 2018 plugin can be downloaded directly from the Nvidia forums here. Here is the corresponding support article on the topic. Please let me know if you have any issues getting this to work.

I already tested and those environment effects still render in mental ray 2018!

Best of luck with your project.

[Anonymous]

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

What would be your suggestion to make fire effect in max version 2018 or 2019? (Not necessarily with ART)

I tried the particle flow, but didn't quite like the result. 

[hagen.deloss]

@Anonymous 

It really depends how much control you need over the effect. I would suggest rendering in Arnold Max 2019 and working with an Arnold Volume, and download a .vdb file from here.

Here is a video tutorial for this process.

Here is some more information about Arnold volumes.

[Anonymous]

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

It is unfortunate that NVIDIA no longer offers Mental Ray downloads.  I'll keep searching for an updated solution.

[martinoT8XCR]

Yeah for me it was Active Shade Mode that solved it.