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Application Used: Autodesk 3ds max
Author: Antti Lehtinen

This tutorial is designed for beginners who have little experience with 3DS MAX. In this tutorial I cover the creation of a simple tornado with standard 3DS MAX tools. This tutorial is very fast and very simple. The tornado is created by forcing particles to follow a path.

Creating the Path

First create a path for the particles to follow. Create a Helix Shape in the top view. Use the following settings in the Helix:
Radius 1: 20
Radius 2: 5
Height: 300
Turns: 22

Rotate the Helix 180 degrees according to the picture below.

[Helix Shape]

Creating the Particle System

Create a Snow Particle System with the following settings:
Particles: Render Count: 10000
Particles: Flake Size 8,0
Particles: Ticks
Render: Triangle
Timing: Start: 0
Timing: Life: 91
Emitter: Width: 40
Emitter: Length: 40

The speed of the particles won’t have any effect in the final system and orientation of the Snow emitter has only very little effect.

[Snow Particle System]

Create the Space Warp

Create a Path Follow Space Warp (Create > Space Warps > Forces > Path Follow) with the following settings:
Current Path: Object: Helix01 (the Helix shape that you just created)
Motion Timing: Travel Time: 100
Motion Timing: Variation: 10
Motion Timing: Last Frame: 400 (the last frame of your animation)
Particle Motion: Stream Swirl: 0,02
Particle Motion: Stream Swirl: Variation: 100
Particle Motion: Stream Swirl: Bidirectional

The Particle Motion parameters just create some chaos to the flow of the particles. Now Bind the the Snow Particle System to the Path Follow Space Warp.

[Binding the Path Follow Space Warp to the Snow Particle System]

Test your animation. Now the particles should follow the Helix. It takes 100 frames for the first particles to hit the ground.



[Particles following the helix shape]

Add the Wave Modifier

At the moment the tornado is very boring. Let’s add a Wave modifier to the Helix to make the tornado more alive. Use the following settings in the Wave modifier (you might have to rotate the Gizmo of the Wave modifier 90 degrees):
Amplitude 1: 80
Amplitude 2: 80
Wave Lenght: 300
Phase: (Animate from 0 to 2 during 400 frames)

Now the tornade should look like in the picture below. (If you are going to render an animation I suggest animating two Wave modifiers with 90 degree separation.)

[Particle tornado]

Create the Material

Create a material for the tornado according to picture below.


[Tornado material]

Render a test image. The tornado should now look like in the picture below. (go to the frame 100 or beyond before rendering)


[Tornado rendering]

Apply Motion Blur

Right click on the Snow Particle System and select ‘Object Properties…’ from the menu. Enable Object Motion Blur.

Go to the render settings and Apply Object Motion Blur with the following settings:
Samples: 32
Duration: 8
Duration Subdivisions: 32

Render the image again. Now the rendering takes a few minutes because of the motion blur. The rendered image should look like in the picture below.

[Tornado with motion blur]

At the moment the edges of the tornado are little jagged. You could increase the quality by taking the following steps:

1. Increase the number of turns in the Helix
2. Increase the travel time in the Path Follow Space Warp to maintain the speed
3. Increase the number of Particles in the Snow Particle System

You could also try the tornado with other Particle Systems to get different results. The Snow is just an one option.