   Free or cheap visual fx creator and renderer
  Can you recommend me some? I need it mainly for creating fxs like explosions, muzzle flashes, trails, dust, clouds, fog... and it's going to be for a 2D game. It would be good that app is standalone program, but if it's plugin it has to work in 3ds max.thank you   
  3ds max can do that for you ;)   ;  yes, I know but the result is usually too cheesy, if I create stuff from scratch using particle systems in 3dsmax. What I'm looking for is premade stuff/presets, which look pretty good but can be nicely tweaked, so I'm not boxed so much. This is what I have found so far, it's what's I need and it's cheap. http://www.crystalpictures.eu/particlegen/en/If you have anything better in mind, tell.;  http://cg.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/autodesk-3ds-max/place to start :) has some affects tutorials   