EMW

I am starting to hate particles more and more....

Any in "particular"?

Ya, What's the reason for hating particles? I love using them!

I hate the limitations of them. Like, they are nice in After Effects for motion graphics, but for special effects (water, fire, meteor, magic, etc), they are so limited. They are not 3D without looking fake, and they look fake even 2D. My frustration comes from me wanting to make some realistic fire or explosions with no luck using particle programs.

Take a particle vs. FumFX for instance. Its just FumeFX is around a thousand dollars....

Unless you try blender 3d you wont get any closer to the most realistic looking particles... I trhink blender might be even better then particle illusion sometimes.

Combustion has a phonominal particle system. I use it for fire and magic stuff all the time. Using particle flow in 3DS Max also works. You can create really good stuff if you know what your doing. Same with AE. You just need to break down the element into pieces and construct it back into reality. There is a really cool book called umm, something to do with elements but it's for creating realistic fire, water and atmosphere in 3ds without plugins.


Of course fume FX will make things look spectacular but a little artistry with a decent particle system makes up for most of the stuff you need.

P.S. What kind of shots are you trying to accomplish?

Oh yeah, and blender has an awesome fluid dynamics simulator. Some people even point cache their 3ds geometry, simulate in blender and then point cache back into MAX for the render.