[Thomas]

First part: Creation of the particles generator and shader.

In the Assembly room, insert a Particle Generator (Drag the icon in the scene) The parameters of the particles open in the modeling room:

Now, change some settings for the particles: 1 - Change the particles type: choose Facing camera. It means that when the particles are rendered they face the camera. It's perfect for special effects. 2 - Change the Emitter emission surface. Enter a value like 2x2x2. 3 - Change the Lifetime variation to a higher value, to create a more natural particle generation. 4 - Increase the particle size and variation of size. You can change the other parameters too, but don't change or reduce the dispersion angle parameters. 5 - Edit the curve of particle size, as explained in the next part.

The Particle size editor is a kind of curve editor, which allows you to edit its size and life: 1 - Check the smooth button. 2 - Edit the two handles to change the curve itself. When done, click OK to exit the editor.

It's time to edit some advanced parameters: 1 - Click on the Advanced tab. 2 - Set all values to 0. A fire doesn’t bounce and doesn’t have air friction, etc. 3 - Set 0 for the gravity value.

Now, switch to an image editor such as Photoshop and create a fire map on a transparency layer, like the example below. This map is included in the archive at the end of this tutorial. Save it in PNG 24 format. The transparency channel will be saved, like this:

Go back to Carrara 5 and edit the particle shader: 1 - Add the map made in the image editor in the Color channel. 2 - Copy it (CTRL/Command+Drag) to the Glow channel to create a brighter fire.

In the Assembly room, move the time slider to display some particles and do a test render. You should have something like the image below: