Creating an Nuclear explosion effect in 3ds MAX

After releasing the student short movie : Indigent, Julian VANHOENACKER received a lot
of questions about how he made the explosions. Here is a small tutorial to help you make
animated gas explosion effects in a few easy steps using 3D Studio Max 4 without any
plug-ins. The tutorial assumes you already have the necessary basic common knowledge
of 3D Studio Max, and doesn't enter into tedious explanation.

Julian VANHOENACKER is currently Senior Animator on Feature Films and Commercials

for Digital Magic (DM) in Bangkok.
Related links ...
www.omind.net The online portfolio of ::: Julian VANHOENACKER :::
email : kanex@omind.net

Creating the Mesh.

Create the Mesh that will define the shape of your explosion,
in this tutorial it is a nuclear explosion, though any shape can
do it. Don't add any sharp details to this mesh, must stay
simple.
 When it's ready, apply a mesh smooth on
it, iteration=1. This will round your mesh
and give it only one smoothing group. You
may also add a push modifier before the
meshsmooth with a small negative value
because of the displacement that will take
place in the next steps...

Finally Add the Disp Approx modifier &

keep the Low settings (click right)

Materials.
Now we will create the materials, which will give the full dimension of the
explosion. First assign a default standard material to your explosion
mesh. Name it XploYellow (or anything explicit) and set the diffuse color
to some orange yellow. Now comes the important part : Add some
Cellular map to the displacement channel of this this material, and set
the parameters like in the screenshot.

The Cellular map is very powerfull but also very expensive in

process time, especially if you raise the Iteration parameter
when fractal is active. Make sure you have the correct colors,
the grey's value is 75 in my example, and that the coordinate
Source is World XYZ. Then put the displacement value to 25
in the root rollout of your material. If you launch a render, you
should get something like this. If not, try to move a bit the
Displacement value, and the size value of the Cellular map.
When you're satisfied, copy the cellular map that was in displacement to
the diffuse slot of your material, and set the colors like this :

OrangeRed H:10 S:255 V:255

Yellow H:30 S:150 V:255
AlmostWhite H:35 S:35 V:255
Lower the Spread value to 0.4 and raise the Fractal iteration to 4.

(click right)

Finally Add a gradient map in the last color slot, select Planar
from Object XYZ in Mapping: and put exactly the same color
in the 3 color slot of your gradient map as in the third slot of
your cellular map (H:35 S:35 V:255) and then raise the Output
Amout of this gradient map to 1.5 (the output amount is in the
output rollout). Put the Self-Illum value of your material to 100.
Your explosion should now look like this ...

Your first material is ready, it will be the 'head' of your

explosion. Now we will copy this material into 2 other
materials. Name the second one XploRed and set its diffuse
color to some OrangeRed, and name the third material
XploGrey, and set its diffuse color to grey. Now set the colors
of the Diffuse Cellular Map of XploRed to :
Brown H:10 S:255 V:100
OrangeRed H:10 S:255 V:255
AlmostWhite H:35 S:35 V:255
Keep the Gradient Map in the third color. Raise the Spread
Value to 0.75. Now copy the Cellular Map that is in the Diffuse
Slot to the Self-Illumination Slot of your material. Assign it to
your explosion, you should have something like this ...
 The Explored material will be for the center of the explosion
while the XploGrey will be for the smoke around. In the
XploGrey material, change the colors of the diffuse Cellular
Map to :
LightGrey H:0 S:0 V:125
DarkGrey H:0 S:0 V:75
Dark Red H:10 S:255 V:165
Remove the Gradient Map in the third color. Raise the Spread
Value to 0.75. Copy the Cellular Map that is in the Diffuse Slot
to the Self-Illumination Slot of your material, and change its
colors to Black, Black and a H:0/S:0/V:175 Grey. Assign
XploGrey to your explosion, you should have something like
this ...

Mixing and Mapping

Since the Cellular Map is a procedural set to World XYZ, it doesn't need any UVW coordinates to be
applied correctly, though we will need some mapping for the correct mixing of the 3 materials. Select
your explosion mesh, click on "Editable Mesh" in the bottom of the stack (must now be yellow though)
and apply to it a cylindrical UVW Mapping that is oriented vertically. Then apply another UVW Mapping
but this time you have to change the Map Channel to 2, otherwise your first mapping will be lost. Set
this second UVW map to planar, oriented horizontally. These UVW Map should be between Edtiable
Mesh and MeshSmooth in the modifier stack, if not move them...

Now that the mapping is ready, lets prepare the Mixs. Assign a
non-used material to your explosion mesh, check Show Map
in Viewport and put a gradiant Ramp in the diffuse slot. If not
yet, put your viewport in shaded mode, you should have your
explosion mesh like a rainbow (except if you work with max 5).
Change the Gradient Type to radial, and change the colors to
white on the left, black on the right, and 2 more sliders in the
middle : white (left one) and black (right one). Now move the
middle sliders so you have something like in the screenshot.
 Do exactly as in step 11 above with a new non-used material,
but this time change the Map Channel to 2 and use a Linear
Gradient Type. Try to get something like in the screenshot
opposite ...

Now we will create the materials that will blend the XploYellow, XploRed and XploGrey.
First you'll have to click-drag the two last gradient ramps you made from the materials to
another non-used slot of your material editor so they can be accessible later (if it ask for
Copy or Instance, select any, it doesn't matter). You may want to display more than 3*2
material slots for this operation. (click right)

Select a non-used slot and click on Standard so you can

change the Material Type. Select Blend. Discard the old
material. Name this material BlendRed/Grey and click-drag
the XploGrey material in the first slot (select instance), the
XploRed in the second slot (instance as well) and the Radial
Gradient Map in the third slot (instance again). Apply this
material to your explosion mesh, you should have something
like this ...
 Create another Blend Material from a non-used slot and this
time click-drag XploYellow to the first slot, BlendRed/Grey to
the seconde slot, and the Linear Gradient Map to the last slot.
Assign this material to your explosion mesh, you should have
something like this ...

Animation
First of all, to be able to animate correctly, we will collapse the UVW info. To do so, verify that the 2
UVW Mapping Modifiers are below the MeshSmooth modifier, and then right-click on the upper one
and choose Collapse To, thus their info will be collapsed in the editable mesh, but will still remain.
Activate the Animation mode then select the lower state of the stack Editable mesh and go to sub-
object level Vertex. (click right)

Goto Frame 100,

check that Animate
is on and then
select the vertices
of the 'head' of the
explosion, and
upper them a bit.
Then select then
vertices of the
bottom of the
explosion, but not
the one at the
base of the central
cylinder, and scale
them on X and Y
axis, this will make
the smoke spread.
Then play, if the speed seems correct go on, if not, adjust...
(Click left)
Now that the mesh is animated, we will have to animate the fire materials. Since the cellular maps are
all set to World XYZ, they won't move as the mesh is deformed, so we have to animate it separately.
Go to frame 100 again, and check you're in Animate mode. Now go in your Material editor, and go into
each cellular map you have (for each fire/smoke materials you have) and put a value of -30 in Offset
Z: , once it's done for each map, make an render of your 100 frames, and look if the fire goes up as
fast as the mesh, for nice effect it has to go at least as fast. If not, lower the value in each map again
(still in Anim mode) until you've something ok.
Make a render, the Animation is done. (Click below)
The landscape and surroundings around the explosion are mainly up to you, what I can recommend is a worm
eye view and a wide fov for your camera, so the explosion looks bigger. The addition of particles is good, but
wide smoke particles tend to 'eat' image info and mess up the effects.
Effects are very important for objects like explosion, a glow is very handy to make something look
luminous. The effects I chose for this tutorial are :
glow, wide and red, only for the head of the explosion -
glow, sharp and almost white, only for unclamped colors -
blur radial 1% -
blur uniform 0.7 % -
Check the impact of these effects ...
That's it ! The tutorial is over, I hope you got something nice in the end and learned a few things...
Here is a video of what I got in the end. It's DivX 5.02