Creating a Fire Material in 3d Studio Max

Categories: Featured, Materials
Written By: Chris

This tutorial explains how to create a fire texture to be applied to particles in order to create a realistic fire effect. If you are trying to create a fire effect in 3ds Max, please visit Realistic Fire Effect tutorial after creating your fire material. If you have a good understanding of particles, you probably won’t need to go through the other tutorial.

Start by creating a new Standard material. Under Shader Basic Parameters, choose Blinn. Choose an orange color for Ambient/Diffuse Color. I chose an RBG of
Red: 255
Green: 120
Blue: 0
Hue: 20
Sat: 255
Value: 255

Check the self illumination box and select a slighter brighter orange color. I chose
Red: 255
Green: 174
Blue: 0
Hue: 29
Sat: 255
Value: 255

So far your material should look like this.

fire material

Under maps, choose diffuse color. Pick Particle Age and hit ok.
For Color #1 choose a red color, and for Age #1 type in 20%.
For Color #2 choose an orange color and Age# 2 type in 50%
Color # pick white and Age# 3 make 100%

Go back up to the parent level by clicking on the go to parent button. Make sure the diffuse amount for the diffuse map is 100. Click on the self illumination map and choose Smoke. Under Smoke Parameters choose size: 40 and make color 1 an orange color and color 2 a yellow color.

Go back to the parent level. Under the opacity map choose Smoke. Under Smoke Parameters choose size: 40 and make the two colors pure white and pure black. Your material should look like this.

fire material

Once you have a material that looks like this you are ready to move on to particle creation and how to apply the material to the particles. If you have a strong understanding of particles, then you should be able to have a lot of fun with this material.

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22 Responses to “Creating a Fire Material in 3d Studio Max”

  1. Alex Best Says:

    Nice tutorial, having a lot of fun making flamethrowers with this material.

  2. DKAIL Says:

    can i use this in parray

  3. Chris Says:

    Yes just apply the material to your particles and use instanced geometry for your particle type

  4. rajat bindal Says:

    hi. in final in your material and in my material there is a difference. how can i add black effect as you have shown in final image?

  5. Abtab Says:

    The black effect is created by the smoke map.

    “Under the opacity map choose Smoke. Under Smoke Parameters choose size: 40 and make the two colors pure white and pure black”

    If you follow that step then the material should have a black ’smoke like’ effect.

  6. suranja sampath Says:

    good

  7. nerosink Says:

    good work ! thanks for the help

  8. tovicz Says:

    great tutorial!

    best one I saw about fire so far!

    thanks dude!

  9. GalComT Says:

    Very good tutorial,…made some very good looking egine flame effects for a spacecraft useing this (changed some atributes to match)

    Thanks a lot m8

  10. danny Says:

    This was simple, fun and excellent.
    Thank you

  11. pacman Says:

    if i choose size 40 for selfillums and 40 for opacity i get not
    such material as on last picture because the black opacity color locates right on orange color of selfillumination/ for getting this picture the size of opacity
    should be smaller/ Or i do wrong?

  12. pinkianimator Says:

    really its fantastic its very useful for me thanks for thi s tutorial and always send these type of tutoials on my id thanku

  13. soham chatterjee Says:

    Thanks a lot sir…its been a great help….

  14. Jonathan Says:

    Hi, thanks very much for the tutorial, got it right second time round :)
    A suggestion: include more pictures of the material as we go along the steps, that way it is easier to see if you’ve missed something or dine something wrong.

  15. asshole Says:

    thank You
    Verry Dummy

  16. Ann Says:

    Thank you for this. Explained so well that I not only got the desired effect, but I understood WHY I was getting the right effect.

  17. alan Says:

    hey nice man

  18. ABCsimen Says:

    Nice tutorial.

    Ok, my material just got totally red with a few small black areas. I might be stupid here but I don’t understand where to fix the color after you said “Check the self illumination box and select a slighter brighter orange color”. Is it in the Ambient/Diffuse color?

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  21. sasha Says:

    I’ve made this fire material and the particle system for fire and all that
    I put in the same values and made a fire using PF Source
    so I can adjust it more.
    And assigned it to a shape of a letter
    Do you know how to animate it so it looks like the letter
    burns from bottom to top?
    (How to give an opacity map to the whole particle system?)
    Any help would be appreciated
    Thanks
    :D

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