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Section 2 - Texturing the Meteor
Now that you
have the meteor shaped to your liking, you will have to give it an appropriate
texture. You can create a rock texture easily in Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, or your
favourite alternative but, because I'm in a particularly nice mood, I will give you
this
texture to make your life a little easier. Please bear in mind that this texture was entirely created following the steps
of my
Pattern Maker Tutorial,
so take a peek over in that direction if you want to give yourself a more
rounded understanding of 3D texturing.
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Step 6: In the Materials Menu, click File > New
Material. Select the New Material and, in the Attributes Menu, unmark Specular (it's a rock!) and mark Bump (again, it's a rock!). |
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The Materials Editor |
The Material Attributes |
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Step 7: Select the Color tab and, in the "x Texture"
option, click and select the texture that you have just
downloaded/created. If it pops up a message saying "This image is not in the document search path. Do you want to
create a copy at the document location?", just click Yes. You can
edit the Search Paths at Edit > Preferences > Texture Paths
later. Do the same for the Bump tab. Since we are using a coloured,
basic, non-optimized texture to be a bump map, set the Strength to
100 or 110 (yes you can set the % beyond the slider). |
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The "Assigned Texture" Icon |
The Assigned Texture Attributes |
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Your result (if everything goes ok) |
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Section 3 - The Particle Emitter
Step 8:
We will now create a
Particle Emitter, which will emit particles of fire behind the meteor object. Go to
Objects > Particle > Emitter to add an emitter object. Adjust the
meteor to make it look like it is falling, and do the same with the Emitter object
that you just created. You might
need to rotate it 90 degrees in the Y direction depending on how you
created and modelled the sphere. Just to be safe, create a null object
(Objects > Null Object) and drag all objects in the Object Manager
into it. This will serve as a grouping method, and allow the meteor and
emitter to be rotated as one.
The Meteor and the Emitter Selected with Rotation Mode on
Set the Emitter size to 6.6m. Also, make sure the Blue Arrow (the Z Axis) is
aiming away from the falling nose of the meteor so that the particles are
sprayed in the correct direction. Now, select the Emitter, and take a look
of the options available in the Attributes Manager. Yep, there's
quite a few!
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 The
most important options are as follows:
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The Birthrate Editor and Birthrate Renderer
values control the birth rate of particles coming from the emitter. The
higher the number, the more particles that will created in a given
timeframe. The first option is the one that you will be seeing real-time in the
Editor, and the second one affects the number of particles you will see in the final
render. I usually set both to the same value, but if you want a
particularly large number of particles, you may want to reduce the
Birthrate Editor value a little to speed up your view ports.
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The Start Emission and Stop Emission
values state when the emission of particles will start and stop.
This is an incredibly important value for animations, and can even have
an impact on static
renders like ours.
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The Lifetime value controls how long each
single particle will live, after which they will fade into oblivion. You can add a variation
factor to randomize
this number.
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The fourth value, Speed, is one of the most
important variables in this section, and is the one you will spend most
of your time tweaking to your own personal tastes. Combined with
Lifetime, these variables control the flux of your
particles. That said, it's basic purpose is a bit obvious (it manages the speed of each
particle). You can also set a random variation.
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In the Emitter tab, we have the Emitter format
(Emitter Type) which can be either Pyramid or Cone. For round and
smoother results, we will use Cone. The X-Size and Y-Size we have
already set (6.6m). The angle dictates the angle
that the cone or pyramid will be "open". Since we are making a particle
effect which begins with the meteor (the fire growing in it's back) and
ends with smoke, this angle will have to be set so that the
particles can "open" and expand it's area.
 I
recommend you to play with these options. Really. Play. You can get great
results by experimenting with the different possibilities.
Before we proceed, increase the number of frames by selecting Edit > Project Settings
from the main menu and boost the Maximum value to 900 (which will
also allow you to set the Stop Emission value of the emitter to 900 too).
Now set the Emitter
Attributes to the values on the right. These give us a
decent particle birthrate, an appropriate speed, and a good flux. The
angle is
slightly open so the particles can expand themselves.
We're done here! Moving
on... |
- Tutorial written by Elentor
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