3dsmax - Particles

Max particles can be rendered as procedural spheres. The radius of the spheres is computed based on an attribute of the particle node which varies from one particle node to another, in order to match the viewport preview of the particle system. The Max plugin supports the old particle systems as well as PFlow particles.

Some particle nodes have built in shapes that can be used to represent the particles. In order to support these systems, particle nodes have an extra Render Particle System as Mesh setting in the Object Properties -> Maxwell tab that tells the plugin to treat the system as a mesh.

Max particles are assigned a default material based on the wire color of the node. This does not offer much control over the rendered look and therefore It is recommended to assign a Maxwell material via drag & drop from MEdit, or by using the assign to selection button. In the following image, an iron material was applied on the particles:

Maxwell can render translation motion blur for particles (multi-step blur is not supported). The position at the end of the exposure interval is obtained by multiplying the velocity of each particle by the shutter time and adding to the original position.

If the particle system uses an instance node, Maxwell will render the geometry instances. In this case, multi-step blur can be used and there are no material restrictions.