Sunday, January 20, 2013

Maya SoftBody Surface Particles by Nathaniel Adam Briggs

** AUTHORED IN 1999-2000 **
The following concept tutorial will be covering Surface Emitted Particles on SoftBody tenticles to create a spiraling array particle system for futuristic gun blasts or whatever.

Anatomy of Concept:

A central control object drives the vector and twist of the softbody goals.
Particles are emitted from the surface of the softbody objects.

 



Steps for Creation:

Create | Orient | Parent:

1 poly cube, slightly flattened (scale.y).
1 nurb cylinder with 20+ spans & scale.y to elongate it.
1 locator positioned at the top of the cylinder.
Parent the locator to the cylinder.
Duplicate the loc|cyl so one meets each face of the cube.

 


SoftBody | Springs:

Make each cylinder a softBody.
Duplicate, Make Copy Soft | Hide Non-Soft Object | Make Non-Soft a Goal
Select the particles of the new softBody and create Springs
Hide the Springs.

 


GoalPP Weights:

RMB select 75% of the particles starting from the bottom.
Using the Component Editor, Particles | goalPP , change the column to 0.000

 


Quick Test:

Keyframe the control poly cube rot.y over 50 frames and play the timeslider (free playback speed).
Your softBody particles should be deforming according to the rotation.

 


Particle Emission:

Select the SoftBody cylinder and then Particles | Emit from Object.
Emitter Type SURFACE and use 500 or so.

 


Adjust Particle Emission:

Edit the particleShape node with the following adjustments.
.85 Conserve
LifeSpan Mode | Random Range | .85 | .35
* PLAY TIME - EXPIRIMENT HEAVILY!!!

 


Finishing Up:

Keyframe a rotation of the control box (rot.y) and translation (trans.y) among 100 keyframes or so
A Gravity and Radial field to pull down and push out from the central axis on the particles.
Hardware renderable MultiStreak | 7.4 Tail Size was used with a gradient in rgbPP



Final Comp | Closing:

Toy around with different settings, fields, particles etc.
Below is a post use of the particles.

HAVE FUN AND EXPIRIMENT!!
 


Scene file available at n8Dog.com

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