First of all, we will use a basic scene and improve the rendering side of several environments items. We will add a nice fog, particles for the fireplace and improve the sun by adding a lens-flare effect.
The fog:
the basic fog allows to affect all the objects of the scene, because it is a scene effect (by opposition with the volumetric fog, which is an entity effect). Fogs are directly dependant of the environment settings of the cameras. For instance, the depth fog is quite accurate because it allows to improve the sensation of distance within the scene space. Open the file nammed "base.max" (for 3dsMax 2011 and sup) located inside
this archive. This is our initial file that we will improve gradually during all the parts of that tutorial. We suggest to uncompressed all the files to a easily accessible common directory.
Once this file is open, click on export in the NOVA export panel. Do not hesitate to overwrite the actual House.mxb file. Open the exported scene in NOVA Studio. Here we are with the very basic rendering options. Leave NOVA open and go back to 3dsMAX.
Open the Render menu of 3sdmax and select the environment tool. Please notice the default ambiant color of the scene which multiply every ambiant channels of the materials of your scene. In the ATmosphere tab, celect the fog item and navigate this panel to choose the color you desire (a light one should be ok, smoothly blue should be perfect).Your fog is now active. To set it up properly, please select the camera in the 3dsMax viewport and go to its properties, in the environment range tab. Ste the near range value to 0 and the far range value to 3000. Export the scene again and switch to NOVA. Eventually, reload the scene. You should see the fog in the NOVA rendering space. If you want to grab the right value for your fog, click on the Design mode button, in the NOVA ribbon. Then select the camera with the suitable button and click on the "plane" icon. In the fill the "Far" field" with the value 200. The fog shall thicken in a very expressive way ! Choose 900 as the far plane value and 100 for the near plane value. That will be our final values.
Go back to 3dsmax and report these values to the camera properties.
The problem is that the skydome object is foggy too and is hard to see now. To avoid that, select the skydome, right click on it and open its Max properties panel. Uncheck the apply atmospheric checkbox. Close the panel, export once again the scene, switch to NOVA Studio, reload the scene and see how the fog is displayed.
You can now save the file (BaseBrouillard.max, for example).
The smoke (exiting the fireplace)We will now create a particle system in order to simulate the smoke that exit the fireplace conduct. Fist of all, create a plane object (3mx3m) and namme it "Parts". Place this plane in the fireplace conduct of the house and open its 3dsMax Properties, then uncheck the "renderable" function. That done, the object is still taken into account by NOVA, but is no more rendered. Export that scene and load it again in NOVA. Switch to the Design mode, choose the object mode in the edition ribbon and select "Parts" in the object list. Once "Parts" is selected, click on "Particles systems" to open the Particles editor.
The particles editor opens with a by default particles system. The first tthing to do is to is to affect a texture to the particles. In the right panel (properties panel), find the texture fileneme entry and aim to the texture nammed "parts.dds", which shall be in the scene directory. As that texture contains an alpha channel, you have to change the rendering mode to ARGB. Then, we change the blending mode by swtching the texture to the standard mode. Your particles are now displayed with little cloud on them. Notice that those particles are by default white, because they take their color values from the color 1 and color 2 entries, in the properties panel. Change those values to tune your smoke. However, set up the dead color to white. Notice that you can, at any moment, click on the OK button to validate the rendering options inside NOVA Studio. You may be have notice also that the particles fiel does not match the entire surface of our plane. Let's improve that point: Use the white handlers in the viewport to properly scale the emitter field. It shall cover completly the blue plane.
Once this done, you can figure that the particles are way too small. In the viewport, you have a slider to correct that point(particles size). Eventually, you can notice that this slider is linked to a value in the properties panel. CHange that value to 8.Then, indicate 20 as Maxlifetime. That option allows our particles to "live" a little more. Change the update speed value to 0,02. The particles will be update more frequently.
Your particle system is set up. You only need to save your preset. AIm to the Preset tab ans save that specific particle configration into the .mxb file directory with the name Part.nvp. Get back to 3dsMax, select the plane object and this time, load the Part.nvp file. Click on the "Apply to selection" button to close the particle editor, export the scene, and reload it in the NOVA STudio tool. You should see, this time, a white smoke getting out of the fireplace conduct. But the speed of the particles is a bit to much. This is because the scene is not synchonized to the display frequency. Turn back to 3dsMax, click in a empty part of the viewport to open the Nova Scene Properties and look for the "Wait VBL" entry (Renderer Tab). Check that checkbox, export and have a glance at the scene in NOVA Studio. The smoke should be fine now.
You can save the file with a new name : HouseLF.max.
The lens-flare effectTO close this chapter, let's add a lens flare in our scene, whel the user looks directly to the sun. In Nova, the lens flare is always generated by a light source. Select the light in 3dsMax, open the NOVA menu, and click on the Lens Flare editor button.Teh editors open, but there is nothing to see yet. Click on the new system button (on the left side of the editor). This create a new lens flare effect for the choosen light. Click on the "Add Flare" button to add a flare effect into the system. A new white square appears. If uou select that flare inside the viewport of the editor, you can change the flare's properties (on the right side of the editor). Leave the color to white, adjust the position setting to 1 (in order to keep the flare near the light source), set up the size of the flare to 5000 and choose Flare.dds as the texture of the flare. Choose "Apply to selection", export the scene and go to the NOVA Studio program to control the display. Turn your camera to the light source. You should now face a big dazzling sun. Note that if you go near a tree, the tree cut the lens flare effect.
You can save your work (HouseLF.max).