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