Particle Systems

References
Definition: Particle System - Wikipedia
Snow: Snowball Warfare , Newton's Snow, Javascript Snow, BBS Snow
Fire: Newton's Fire.

Additive Blending

see:

http://www.noisecrime.com/develop/tutorials/additiveblend/index.html

IK Animation

"IK isn't supported. You need to limit bone sets to FK. Just
Use the biped in Max 3 and then attach it to the mesh with
The physique modifier - this should work without any problems." - ap

Light Map

The problem with director lighting is that it goes right through things. You can add a second texture layer that has bright and dark spots generated from a top-view render from 3dsmax. Usually we use this to add shadows so it's really more often a darkmap than a lightmap. (But everyone knows it as a "lightmap").

Note that the light/dark map image is grayscale (not black with alpha areas).

Hello World

This is the posting template for a Shockwave 3D testbed.