Particle flow systems and gravity

When creating the necron destroyers I was very eager to get smoke coming out of the exhausts, I did some searching on u tube and read about particle flow systems.

Particle flow systems are precreated systems that dissipate particles in various forms and settings you can have particles shot out of a hose or moving within a box or faling down to the grond like rain and snow.

These systems generate and  move a large number of very small objects which rendered under the right setting can be made to look like smoke,water,snow, toxic fumes and etc.

As I mentioned they come predesigned  and with many good presets. For my need of toxic fumes I found that the bubles preset worked better than the smoke setting. You have great control over these paricle flow systems, you can set the speed,distance,volume,angle, size and duration that the particles travel. you can also set the start and end time within the scene. I found that the most important part of particle systems is to create a good material for its use, if you dont it will look like a bad computer effect.

Once I got the affect desired I cloned it for the other exhausts.
 But I wanted more, I wanted the smoke to shoot out of the exhaust ant then drop due to gravity before it desolves.
For this I used a gravity space warp. A gravity space wark is created like a camera, so it is wise to make the gravity space warp in top view so that it points towards the bottom. 
One gravity space warp can be linked to many particle flow systems,  or we can have multiple gravity space to set diffrent directions.
I also think if you have 2 objects and change their physics the heavier in matter object will fall faster, but I have not looked in to that yet.
I selected the space warp link and draged from the particle system to the gravity  pointer.
Now when I played the animation the particles were moving too fast down. So I  selected the  gravity space warp then editor and reduced its strength to get my desired effect.

Conclusion

Effects such as fumes, snow, smoke or water can be achieved  with the particle flow generators. They have many usefull presets and many settings and they can also be changed in the timeline animation. Other ways for achieving these effects would be  after effects but thats seems more tiresome. Finaly a 3rd party plug in for 3ds max; fumes fx is a very popular and effective tool that seems to give you even more control over the shape of the smoke or fire.

The gravity space warp will be usefull in my project for the fumes and in the future when animating motion of chains items droping  like the screws from the dreadnought.