creating multiple asteroids or an asteroid field?

[crazyjayloc2003]

hi guys, i usually dont have problems like this, but im creating a scene in 3ds max 9 that requires a planet to be close to the center of the solar system around a sun. the sun is nestled in an asteroid field and the planet is smack dab in the edge of the field with about 14 moons.

i have the moons and about 20 odd asteroids, but the requestor and i agree there needs to be more depth.

now i have created the current asteroids with using geometry from a primitive and giving them fractal noise, but for this i need lots more closer to the sun, sort of peppering the background between the sun and the planet. they also need to show up sort of eclipsing parts of the sun here and there.

one of the problems is im using glow around the object representing the sun. its a nice result and i would leave it alone if it werent for the asteroids, but im thinking of replacing that lense effect with the ray effect, because its not making the asteroids very visible.

but once that is finished i really need to create many more asteroids in a uniform pattern spreading out from the axis of the sun. im hoping its possible to do this and even if its just occupying space between the sun and the planet thats ok, because thats all i need visible, the rest can be deleted really.

also im using light rigger, and boy is that a nice add-on!

[L2K]

if your asteroids dont need to move > particule cloud. you make an object that will hold the volume for the particules, then pick it as the emiter.
for the asteroids themselves, in the particule shape, pick them as instance.

or, do it with PF, but its a bit more complex.

[Melak]

You could also try the "Scatter" Tool, you should be able to do the same with that.

Those 20 already modeled ones could serve as your "hero" asteroids, those the viewer will pay most attention to. Another couple of less distunguishable ones could easily be scattered all over the background to fill it.

[mJAstro]

You could also do a PArray using geometry of the shape of the area u need filled (such as a tube) as the emitter and you can get nice distribution with some parameter tweaks.

[crazyjayloc2003]

all very good ideas, i will definitely try out those options.

so far i got a decent effect by creating several cloned asteroids that were still in noise modifier mode. then i just adjusted the seed and rotated them individually scaling them at different angles. i merged that group with my current scene and heres the result.



not too bad. there is a few duplicate roids in there that i forgot to adjust, but i can handle that later. i also found that instead of trying to perfect each asteroid, i can just take the iterations down lower in the fractal noise adjutment. that keeps it from folding inside out. but even if it does one way to remedy that if you do get a cool asteroid is to just make that texture 2 sided. it will cleverly hide the backfacing.

i also kept the poly count down by using the"optimize" modifier on the roids as far as it would go. (helps enable the renders to be about 2 minutes instead of 5.) the larger asteroids were made before i made the smaller ones, so i may use mesh smooth on a few of them and keep just a few of them spikey to add some variation.

i will try a number of the methods mentioned above to fill in some of the dead space between that and the sun. i may also try to put a tight field really close to the sun with some rays shining out with a p array. this is pretty interesting an idea to play with.



EDIT: also i tried to use scatter and i found it to be a little limited. i may try spray master (plugin) i think i have it here somewhere. any one of these ideas is great though. im still toying with them, and since i need even more asteroids, i have plenty of time to test each one out.

EDIT 2: well i tried the particle system, and while it worked to create more asteroids, it really rendered the lightrigger null and void for some of the roids, and i had a problem with losing the glow effects i had setup in environment. that really killed the scene, so i opted to just clone and rotate the existing roids, delete the wonkier ones and now im working on the environment effects to fine tune it. it takes longer to render now, but its more satisfying overall

i may post a tutorial later on creating unique asteroids using the noise modifier and how to get the textures to show up right if you have backfacing showing, but for now im pretty busy getting this project done.