Dust
 

Alright, my team is totally new to this (we don't have any of the animation team members from last year returning) and we have no mentors who have any experience with MAX, so it's pretty much just tutorials for us. Anyways, I was wondering if anyone could direct me as to how I could make dust... I've made plenty of particle systems, smoke looking things, etc, but nothing with the soft edge of dust and I can't seem to find anything on google. I know your time is important but go figure, all you great animators out there probably have to start rendering today :)

Re: Dust
 

What kind of dust are you refering to? Like small dust particles flowing in the air, or just dust on top of some objects? For second case, a texture would do, but im guessing you are talking about particles flowing in the air.

For a good start - look at max6 tutorial about making boat splashes with Particle Flow system. They describe how to make water mist, which is very similar to dust.

About soft edges - have spherical particles with falloff map asigned to opacity channel of particle material- this should work.

Good luck.