The Intergalactic Teapot - A part of Honki's helpful thread of uselessness.

[Honki]

Hi there kiddies. Let’s learn about volumetric lighting.
This tutorial will cover all of the steps required to reproduce an image similar to the one below.

Once you are comfortable with these techniques, feel free to adapt them to your own projects, and come up with some creative ideas of your own.

Volumetric lighting can be utilised in so many different applications, and whilst not often the focus of a scene, it adds a dramatic effect that can enhance even the most simple scenes.

Software: 3ds Max (Version 8 used in this demonstration, however may be done with any version that supports the Reactor physics engine).
Level: Beginner
Techniques Covered: Poly Modeling; Reactor; Lighting; Post Effects

[Honki]

Begin by creating a sphere with 32 segments.

[Honki]

Add an 'Edit Poly' modifier, and select the 'Poly' sub object level.

[Honki]

If you don't want to do the next couple of steps manually, you can download an awesome maxscript called 'QuickFrag', that I only learned about after writing the tutorial. Thanks for the tip bobi!
Download 'QuickFrag' Here.

If you want to do it manually, follow the next couple of steps.

Begin by selecting a cluster of polys. Try not to make them too big, or too small. 3 or 4 polys should be fine.

Detach these polys using the detach dialogue.
Make sure you uncheck the 'Detach as clone' checkbox. This will ensure that the cluster of selected polys are fully seperated from the sphere.

[Honki]

Continue detaching clusters of polys around the sphere. Be careful not to leave any 'stray' polys anywhere, else we will encounter funny goings on later.

Make sure your selections aren't regular.

I selected and detached the poly clusters almost in the same shapes as those from that old Tetris game.

[Honki]

And again...

[Honki]

Don't forget the top of the sphere. Try and maintain similar sized clusters to the ones already detached.

[Honki]

Continue detaching similar sized segments from the sphere until the entire sphere is broken up. I ended up with a total of 108 seperate segments. It took me about 10 mins to detach them all.

[Honki]

Select all the segments you have created and apply a 'shell' modifier to them all. Drop the outer amount to '0' and increase the inner amount to about 3. (It should be relative to the overall scale of your scene. Jusy make the inner amount enough to give your sphere segments some thickness).

[Honki]

Now create a teapot primitive (Or whatever object you like), and place it next to the sphere clusters.
Our scene is set up and ready to get stuck into reactor.

[Honki]

This section won't go too deeply into reactor, as the tutorial is focussing on lighting rather than the Reactor physics engine. There are plenty of tutorials on the internet that describe the in's and out's of reactor in a lot more detail.

Anyway, go into the reactor menu, and add a rigid body collection.

[Honki]

Under the Rigid Body properties, click 'add'.
A dialogue will open. Click the 'All' button, which will select all the geometry in your scene. Click 'Select' to close the dialogue.

[Honki]

Now our geometry is included into the Reactor calculations.
We need to keyframe an animation for Reactor to actually 'react' to.

Select your teapot, and click the 'Auto Key' button.

[Honki]

Drag the Frame Slider (The little bar with 1/100 written on it) all the way across to the 100th frame. (Make sure Auto Key is ON!)

Move your teapot from it's initial position, to inside the sphere, or even to the other side of the sphere as long as it goes through it, not past it.

[Honki]

Turn OFF Auto Key, and move the frame slider back to frame 0.
You will now see the teapot return to it's inital position.

You have now set up a basic animation.

I know it seems off topic, but it is necessary in order to get the effect we need.