particles in 3d studio max 7

[eagle4]

hey, i was thinking of making a space battle kind of scene, i am new to particles, but i want to make my space ship fighters all spawn from one hanger and then basically fly arround shooting at enemy space ships. ok, i can make the space ships spawn from the hanger, but now the 2 tricky things, how to i make them randomly change course, and when they change course, if they get behind an enemy how can i get them to follow, or at least shoot?

i was thinking that a particle flow would be much easier than trying to keyframe this whole battle sequence... i may be wrong... any suggestions?

so... summing up, i want to know how to make particles change direction randomly, but rolling to turn, and how do i get them to shoot at enemy space crafts when they are infront of them?

i have tried setting up 2 particle flows which both spawn my crappy looking space ships, but i cant seem to get the "Find Target" test to find enemy space ships, i was going to get it to look for enemy space ships that are slower that themselves.

if this is totally hopeless, just tell me...
if you can help it would be appreciated...



eagle4
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[kieranbelkus]

hmm for this maybe look into Crowd simulation in character studio if you have it? Its more dynamic and you can then give attributes to each ship.

[eagle4]

do you know any really good crowd tutorials? i find the ones that came with max are good but not really helpfull for what i am after


eagle4