Step by Step Simulating A Meteor Shower

01Start Create Some ROCKS

by creating some rocks. You can get a sphere and apply some noise to it, or you can find a free script online called Rock Generator, it’s really good. You can also sculpt your rocks, it’s not very important to get it exactly right because it will be on fire, so a low-poly version will be fine. You just need to have something to burn in the scene.

02 Animate the ROCKS

Animate the rocks to go on the path you want them to follow. I find that animating them diagonally doesn’t work since the Fumefx container gets too big and that requires a lot of processing power, so instead just animate them going from a high altitude to a path straight down. This will make the container smaller and speed up the simulation.

03 Set up the Simulation

Set up a Fumefx container (go to Create> geometry> fumefx >fumefx) and an Object Source (go to Create> Helpers> fumefx> object Src). Addt he rocks to the Object Source. Go to the Fumefx container and open the Fumefx UI. Under the obj/src tab, add the Object Source and you’re good to go. Click the Play button to start.

04 Render Settings

Once the simulation is done, go to the Fumefx UI and under the Rend tab, edit the colours and textures of the simulation. Under the Fire group, go to Color, right-click the colour swatch and click Keyless Mode. Now, you can set up a gradient. From left to right, the colour of the particles is set. I find that going from dark brown to black works best.