HOW can I create a meteor shower?
Well, you can start by getting a doctorate in theoretical physics and getting a grant to fund your research. Then you can invent a time machine, go forward in time to when humans are advanced enough to control the paths of meteors and space debris and hurl some of that towards Earth.
However, if you’re not an evil genius and merely want to make a 3D meteor shower for a scene or project, might I suggest a less deadly approach. You can very easily render a photorealistic meteor shower in any 3D design application. I’m going to be working with 3ds Max and Sitni Sati’s Fumefx. It’s a fairly simple process. On page 48, you’ll find an article about rendering a car explosion that has a lot of information about the basics of Fumefx. This should tell you about the primary concepts required to create a meteor shower and get around in Fumefx.
Once you’ve got the basics, get some rocks together. Start by creating some spheres and applying some displacement maps to them. In 3ds Max, there’s a modifier that can do that really nicely, there’s also some really cool noise generation modifiers. I also found a free script for 3ds Max called Rock Generator online that does the same thing.
As soon as meteors enter the atmosphere, they start burning, so the front of the meteor becomes smoother than the back over time, thanks to friction, so if you want to be really accurate, smooth the front with the Smooth Sculpting Brush. Once you have the rocks set up, animate them to go on your desired path. Try and keep the path straight because the trail of fire and smoke will take the shape of the path and a straight path is more realistic.
The next step is to set up a Fumefx container. Then, set up an Object Source, add that to the container and start the simulation. We’ll go over this in detail in the steps that follow.
Starting the simulation is easy, but you have to keep on tweaking in order to get the right look. Settings like Burn Rate and Turbulence really affect the overall look of the simulation. Keep tweaking these settings to get the right look for your simulation and simulate after every tweak to make sure nothing goes bonkers and ruins your simulation.