Ever seen a movie that had sparks flying out of control panels?  Or maybe you’ve always wanted to have smoke coming out of your character’s ears when he’s mad?  Those are particle effects, and you’ll find that they’re a breeze in 3dsMax when you use the right tools.

Particles are what artists use when they need a lot of objects, but don’t want to model or animate them by hand.  Particle systems create, animate, and destroy objects according to a set of rules.  These rules can be very basic, like “create 10 spheres per frame, starting at frame 0″.  These are known as non-event-driven particle systems. 3dsMax particle systems can also be quite complex!  Take, for example, the motion of soap bubbles in the air.  They float quasi-randomly and if they touch, they stick together.  If they touch another object, they’ll pop, and sometimes they just pop for no reason at all. This might be considered an event-driven particle system since the bubbles are subject to a variety of possible events.