I got an E-Mail from a fella the other day, he was having a little trouble with SPACEWARPS (Dun, Dun, Daaaar!). I thought to myself, Hmmmm? I can see that people might have some trouble with this new alien concept of Spacewarps, and as Ive got the bomb2 plugin on my site, well. So here it is, a quick exploding thing that also introduces the basics of all the spacewarps. If it is of any benefit, write and let me know and Ill put some more basic run throughs of Max concepts.

Aye canney do it capin I just dooont have the poooer!

Spacewarps hey, what are they? where do they come from? And are they friendly? Well spacewarps are a new thing for Max, Basically they are non rendering geometry that modifies mesh objects and particle systems. After youve bound an object to a warp, altering the warp alters your object. They are handy because trying to model the effects they create easily would be very hard. Also it is possible to layer lots and lots of warps in all different configurations on the same object. An object could be exploding, waving, rippling and deforming along a path all at the same time. (but why would you want to do this?)
In this beginners tutorial Ill take you through the basic use of the bomb2 spacewarp. If you dont have this plugin, yet it can be found in my plugins section.

Three steps to love......

First we need an object to destroy. So lets create a sphere. Goto the create tab and select sphere, click in the front viewport and drag out a medium sized sphere (the actual size doesnt matter)

Triggertastic!....

Now we need to drop in our bomb2 warp. Goto the spacewarp tab under the create menu. Where it reads "DEFAULT" click, and select jonny ow from the drop down list. Bomb2 is now visible. Click in the front viewport just underneath the sphere. A small triangle should appear. This is the graphic representation of the warp, it does not shoe up in your renders.

Linkin' (Log)......

For the warp to effect your sphere you need to "BIND" it to it. On the top row of icons find the "BIND TO SPACEWARP" icon, it looks like this.....

Now place the cursor over your warp, the cursor should change in to a small box with tree wavey lines. CLick and drag over to your sphere....

When you are properly over the sphere, the cursor changes to green, release. The sphere is now bound to the spacewarp.

Wibble your particulars.....

Make sure the spacewarp is selected and goto the modify tab. Here all the options for bomb2 are kept. Fill them in so they look like this.....

Now was that hard?......

Slide the time bar up and down and witness your destructive power!
Go back to the modify tab and play with all the settings, find the effect that you like best, moving the warp around also effects the outcome. Now the more observant among you will have noticed that some of the chunks of object seem to disappear, this is because their "FACE NORMAL" is pointing away from you. Face normals are the side of the object that carries texture info, all objects, by default, have normals that point outward, so you can see the texture. But when you see the side opposite to the face normal the object appears transparent. To fix this we need to specify a 2 sided texture (one that shows up on the face normal side AND it opposite). Select the sphere and call up the materials panel. Click any material and check the 2 sided option......
Then assign this to the sphere. The colour now shows on both sides of the object and the pieces no longer disappearing.

I feel I could take on the WORLD!.....

This basic procedures applies to all spacewarps. (although most do not need their texture making 2 sided) You can apply lots of warps to one object or, one warp to lots of objects.