AfterBurn is a production-proven volumetric effects plugin that has been used in cinematic productions such as Flight of the Phoenix, K-19: The Widowmaker, Armageddon, Dracula 2000, various IMAX movies and games such as Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Sin and many others.
It is a particle based volumetric solution, where AfterBurn builds a volumetric effect around each particle center. With numerous controls, user can add more or less detail to the volume, change color, rendering method and more. Most of the parameters can be animated over the particle age (or some other property) by using AFC and Interpolation Controller.
AfterBurn pioneered many unique features to 3ds max atmospherics, such as intuitive user interface layout, AFC controllers, HyperSolids rendering engine, metaballs, AfterBurn Daemons, support for Rendering Effects and more.
This all-in-one solution enables rendering of ultra realistic effects ranging from clouds, pyroclastic smoke, dust, superb explosions effects, liquid metals and various procedurally defined "hard" objects.
With constant innovations and improvements, it is clear why AfterBurn has become a standard when it comes for volumetric effects in many studios worldwide.
One of the AfterBurn's many unique features is the ability to assign glows, and even depth-of-field to different parts of the volumetric effect. This is possible since AfterBurn lets the user create their own channels for Z-Buffer, ID-Channel Buffer, and Age Buffer. These channels can be transferred to 3ds max standard buffers through FusionWorks for use of other (non-AfterBurn) Rendering Effects. AfterBurn even has its own Glow filter, which is capable of glowing AfterBurn volumetric output - with glow color, strength and size varying with the age of the volumetric particle.
With AfterBurn's intuitive user interface and three preview windows, exacting complex effects can be created quickly. Like 3ds max, nearly every parameter is animatable. As an aid to animating parameters based on particle age, AfterBurn features optional spline-based graphic control (AFC) of almost each parameter
Effects like fire turning into a smoke are easily created with just one particle emitter, and one AfterBurn entry.
