Setting Up the Birth Texture

We are going to use a plane in conjunction with the birth texture operator to spawn the crows from the animated bright parts of the material of the plane. First, let’s set up the plane!

Place a plane at the precise location where you want the crows to be spawned. In my case, I want the crows to be spawned where Celina is standing, at the end of the pier. Make sure the plane faces the camera straight on and fits over the viewport precisely. This ensures that our image sequence for the birth texture matches the base footage we set up as the viewport background.

Next, we need to assign the white swipe image sequence we exported from After Effects to this plane. For this, go to the material editor (shortcut ‘m’) and create a new basic material. Open the diffuse slot and select the first image of the swipe animation image sequence. Ensure that the ‘Sequence’ check box is ticked and that the number of frames matches the length of your animation.

When assigning any animated texture to an object in 3dsMax, make sure you set up the end condition of the texture correctly. For this effect, we want the animation to hold the last frame once it’s done playing so ensure you tick the ‘Hold’ option on the texture.

If you now maximise the camera viewport and play back the animation, you should see the material animate as expected and a white strip should move from bottom to top across the screen in time with when you want the crows to be spawned. It can be helpful to enable the plane’s see-through property so you can ensure the material animation matches up with the footage of your actor.

Now let’s get to the scary stuff and jump into Particle Flow!