Realistic Fire with 3D Studio Max - Tutorial

Making realistic fire in max is quite easy. You don't need any 3^rd party tools to create realistic flames.All the tools you will ever need are included.
The secret is texturing.

First we need a particle system. I go for pArray to get more volume for my fire.

The next step is to set the particle system.Don't use facing polygons since their results seem very fake especially when you move your camera. Instead prefer spheres. I'll show you why. Copy these values to your particle system.
 

Create a wind force to give it a random move. Use the values I give you. Bind it to your pAray.
 

After all the setting up is done lets go into texturing. Open the material editor. Select a standard material. Give it a material id 15.

 

This is the most important bit in this tutorial. In the opacity tab put a particle age. On map1 select falloff and give it the following values. The noise map values are show here (its turbulence with a 0,3 high value). 
 

On the second particle age tab copy the falloff we created earlier and change the size the high value and the phase a little bit (especially the size value)
 

Now go back to the diffuse tab. Give it a particle age. Create noise maps with the colors you choose (green , red, yellow whatever) the map3 tab leave it blank and give it a black color.
 

Open the self Illumination tab. Again select particle age.
Put nose maps here with your preferred colors (I made it yellow to red to blalck) make sure the map3
tab is left black and its on 60%.
 

Your fire is almost ready. Just add a lens effect glow  with material id 15. Give it Intensity 80 , size 2 and use source color 100%.
 

And you are ready to burn your scene to the ground.

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