by Didik Wijaya
This tutorial needs you to understand basic use of 3dsmax.

I always love to watch movies created by Pixar. Cars, although it is not one of my favourite movie, but definitely it has a lot of interesting scene captured in my mind. One scene I loved was when crowd of cars filled the stadium, and they applaused the racer by creating audience wave, standing and turning the lights on. I wonder is it possible to recreate that scene with my PC and 3dsmax. The answer is YES (but of course in very minimized details :). Now, you can create it too by following this tutorials. You will create audience wave effect using Particle Flow.

I split this tutorial into two part, in Part 1 we are creating crowd of cars, and in Part 2 we are creating audience wave effect. Let's start the first part.

1. First, you must download the exercise file here (84kb, zipped, 3dsmax 8 format). When you open this file, you can see a simple scene, a bird view stadium. You have several objects, like stadium, grass, chair. The crowd will sit on this chair object.

2. Beside those three object, you also find small car object, named Car. This object already had simple animation created by moving vertices. The car can stand and turn the lights on. I made this car in low poly, because this tutorial is indeed need a huge computer resource.

3. In Command Panel, click Create tab. Make sure Geometry icon selected. Choose Particle System in drop-down list. Click PF Source. Click and drag in Top viewport to create Particle Flow icon. You may use any size, but create this icon in the middle of stadium. In rollout Emission, you may change Viewport Quantity Multiplier to 100%. This value will allow you to see all particle in viewport.

4. Press "6" in keyboard to open Particle View window. We will modify Particle Flow operator and action here. Select operator Birth 01 in Event 01. In rollout Birt 01, change Emit Start and Emit Stop to 0. You can see all particle appear from the beginning of animation. Also change Amount to 100. You may use higher number if your computer fast enough. But, whatever number you choose, you may change its value later. In this tutorial, I used 1000.

5. Select and hold Position Object operator in bottom pane, move it into Event 01, release it exactly over Position Icon row. This new operator will replace Position Icon operator. In rollout Position Object 01, click Add button and click chair object in viewport. Change Location to Vertices and activate Separation. Now, particle appear in vertices of chair object.

6. Use the same procedure to replace Shape 01 row with Shape Instance operator. In rollout Shape Instance 01, click button None under Particle Geometry Object. The, click Car object in viewport. Set Scale to 80%. You may add Variation to create different size of cars. After this, object Car is used as particle. But you can't see it now in viewport. Now select Display 01 row, change type to Geometry. Or, if you feel this display is consuming your computer performa, change its type to Bounding Boxes is enough. Now you can see cars scattered in stadium.

7. Next, we will fix particle's orientation. Select Speed 01 row. In rollout, change Direction to Icon Center Out. This will make particle move away from PF Source icon. Then, select Rotation 01 row, in rollout change Orientation Matrix to Speed Space Follow with Z axis= -90. Now, every car orient to the center court like image below.

8. Scrub slider to watch the animation. Cars moved far and far away from center, eventually you will have no audience in stadium. We don't want this to happen. We will make cars sit still. From bottom pane, select and drag Age Test operator into Event 01, place in at the most bottom row. Don't replace anything, now you add not replace. In rollout, insert Test Value=1, and Variation=0.

Select Speed 01 and Shape Instance 01 row. You can select two row together while hold Ctrl key. After both rows selected, right click and choose Copy. Move cursor outside any event and right click. This time choose Paste. Automaticly Event 02 created along with Speed 02, Shape Instance 02 and Display 02 row. Connect Age Test operator in Event 01 with Event 02. Select Speed 02 row in Event 02, change Speed to 0. You may change display type to Geometry or Bounding Boxes.

Explanation: We want to check with Age Test wether Particle Age is already reach 1 (=frame 1), if so we set its Speed to 0. The result is every car is stood still since frame 1. We add Shape Instance to change particle to Cars. Scrub slider, and after frame 1, every car is sit still. At this point, you may close Particle View.

End of Part 1
Click here to continue to Part 2

Any question or comments regarding this tutorial should be sent to:
Didik Wijaya, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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