Animating Paint Strokes in a combustion Map

You can animate Paint strokes in a combustion map.

To animate combustion Paint strokes:

1. Create a combustion map.
2. In combustion, set the timescale to start at frame number 0. Choose File | Preferences, then select the General category. Set Display Time As to Frames (From 0), and then click OK.
3. In the 3ds max Material Editor, enable Track Time in the Live Edit group of the combustion Parameters rollout.

Now the time slider in 3ds max controls the Timeline indicator in combustion.

4. In 3ds max, move the time slider to a frame and create a Paint object.

The Paint object appears on that frame in both combustion and 3ds max.

5. Move to another frame and use combustion to modify the Paint object. combustion uses interpolation to determine the appearance of the Paint object between keyframes. If you add a new Paint object, that object appears on the frame where you created it.
6. Continue advancing in the clip, adding and modifying Paint strokes and effects to create your animated material. For more information on animating objects in combustion, refer to Keyframing, in the combustion User's Guide.

You can add Paint strokes in either program, but to modify them you must use combustion.

Note: Remember, combustion tracks the time slider in 3ds max, but 3ds max does not track the Timeline indicator in combustion. If the 3ds max viewport does not appear to be updating as you paint in combustion, you might be painting on a different frame than the one displayed in 3ds max. To find your Paint objects, move to the correct frame in 3ds max.