Putting a Light Inside the Asteroid

Your Ad Here

Creating fiery explosions with mapping techniques is effective, but it doesn’t actually illuminate your scene. Adding a light inside the exploding asteroid illuminates its fragments and creates a more dramatic effect.

Setup:

Continue working with the previous file or open exploding_asteroid_with_motionblur.max.

Put a light inside the asteroid:

Move the time slider to frame 10.

This puts the asteroid in the center of the frame.
Go to Create panel > Lights > Object Type rollout, and click Omni.
Activate the Top viewport, then click the center of the asteroid to create an Omni light.

Because the asteroid is positioned at the center of the scene, the light appears inside the asteroid.
Change the name of the light you just created to inside asteroid light.
Go to the Modify panel and click the white color swatch in the Intensity/Color/Attenuation rollout.

The Color Selector is displayed.
Change the color to orange (R: 255, G: 111, B:56). Then close the Color Selector.
Set the Multiplier to 4.0.

Note: You don't need to animate the light. It will illuminate only the particles, and they appear when the explosion begins.
On the toolbar, turn on Select And Link. Then press the H key to select the parent object. Choose Sphere01 from the list, and then click Link.

Now the light will move along with the animated asteroid.
On the toolbar, click the Select button to turn off Select And Link.
Save your work as myexplosion_w_light.max.

Adding Render Effects to the Laser Blast

Putting a Light Inside the Asteroid

Next