Beginner Question - Rendering a Fire Effect?

[daniel.huerta]

Hello,

I'm very new to 3DS Max 2017, so I'm having issues figuring out how to render a fire effect.

I was following a tutorial on how to make a fire effect. I did the following steps:

1. I chose Atmospheric Apparatus under Helpers.

2. Checked the AutoGrid button

3. Placed a spheregizmo on the end of the torch

4. Checked hemisphere for the gizmo, scaled it, rotated it.

5. Hit 8, added a fire effect, and picked the gizmo

6. Tried to Render the view.

The "torch" part shows up, but the fire effect does not. I tried zooming in and zooming out in the render to see if that made any difference, but I still only see the torch.

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks,
Daniel

[irishman_team_kilber]

have you aligned the fire gizmo to the end of the touch

1) make sure aligned the gizmo to the end of you're touch and hit 8 on you're keyboard, and then add you're fire and it appears in the environment & effects. use the handicon and slider down you will see the pick gizmo when you select the pick gizmo it will turn yellow pick it from you're scene or by hitting H on your keyboard and pick it from the select menu and choose pick

2) now render it if the flame is to dim you would need to increae you're flame size use the hand-icon and side down, to characteristics this is where you can change the characteristics (flame size, the type flame detail) etc use the spinners to increase or decrease the flame detail.

this is the old school way of doing it i don't know if there is a new school way of doing it because i only have max 9

best of luck to you i hope this helps

[irishman_team_kilber]

did this work? if not then it's you who are doing something wrong!

If you want with a fresh scene file and just make a fire effect and render it then it should render

if you add a your torch scene file maybe someone can have a look at it and add an image by using the attachment, 

here is a quick and dirty way i did my fire effect, and it worked for me

[daniel.huerta]

Hey, thanks for the tip!

I'm pretty sure I've done the alignment and "gizmo pick" part correctly. I wish I could show you, I made and uploaded a screencast, but I guess it didn't attach correctly.  Found it! (Link)

If you have a moment to see the screencast above, I'd appreciate it, I'll try to paste it below as well.

Let me know what I'm doing wrong in the screencast, maybe it's my render settings? I can upload a screencast tomorrow showing the settings if that will help.

Thanks,
Daniel

[irishman_team_kilber]

you have the default characteristics if you mess around with them, then you mite get a render something max will not render the flame because it's to small i'm not sure why you have an glow when you render your scene the stick seem have you add a material and set the self illumination up-to a 100?

what render engine are you using? Scanline,mental ray others if it's others i like vray or arnold plugins then i cannot help you.

[daniel.huerta]

Hmm, I might have changed the glow and illumination by accident, I'm not sure.

I'm using a target: "ActiveShade Mode"

Renderer:              "Scanline Renderer"

The screencast should be below, let me know if that helps.

Thanks,

Daniel

[irishman_team_kilber · Accepted solution]

Daniel

Active shade does not render the special effects i'm not sure why. it could be a bug in your scene which is likely,  have you created a fire in a new scene? and does it work then you can merge all you're models into that new scene file and align the fire to the torch!

and the Exposure Control only really meant to work with the daylight system. when you can to animate a scene from day to night i think i only know the basics of the daylight system and the Exposure Control

here are my settings if it does not work with these setting then you know it's a bug in your scene

[daniel.huerta]

I think you figured it out!

When I rendered, there are three options: Active Shade, Render Production, and Render Iterative. For some reason, I've been using Active Shade. Like you said, Active Shade doesn't render the fire.

I just changed it to another one (Render Production), and it looked fine.

Thanks for the help!

Just one last question, is the fire supposed to render in Active Shade?

[irishman_team_kilber]

I'm not sure because with the old version of 3ds max you could not render with active shade. i have asked  @Alfred.DeFlaminis will may know more then i do or one of his contacts at autodesk why active shade does not render special fx unless there is an option to render with active shade but i have not seen one with my 7 years experience with max

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @daniel.huerta and welcome to the community,

Atmospheric effects don't render in activeshade, it's just a limitation so no it's not supposed to.  Luckily the fire renders really fast anyways.  

Nice work in here @irishman_team_kilber.  This was very good.  

Best Regards,

[irishman_team_kilber]

If you want a realistic SFX software i would go for after effects or flumefx or look for some plug-in but this will cost you some credits (money)