Particles and Dynamics

# 1 18-07-2008 , 08:24 PM

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Hi everyone,

I'm not very experienced at all in using MAYA, and I happened to want to make a fountain, and animate it. I thought that particles would be good for the water, but I don't know how I can get this to work. I figured, I'd create an emitter at the locations where the water would be spit out by the fountain. This has sort of been working, but I think the methods that I'm using for accomplishing this are not completely effective.

For example, I wanted water to be shot straight up, at the top of the fountain, but setting the emitter to directional only made a straight line of particles. So, I set it to Omni, and then I made a gravity field to affect it, and pull all the particles towards the sky. I also set the particles lifespan so that they wouldn't live too long, and just keep hurlting upwards.

I know thats not effective at all, the problem is I don't know what the basic attributes of particles I can edit. I tried the MAYA 8.5 PLE help, but it just said to edit the attributes. Great help to me, if I don't know what the attributes do... -.-

Anyways.. a couple questions are:

1) can I get particles to follow a curve?
2) How do I get the particles to look like a jet of water, instead of dots?
3) I hear there are some constraints I can use to keep the particles from spreading out too much? Can anyone elaborate?

Thanks much for any responses I get,
Bluethunder

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# 2 19-07-2008 , 03:23 AM

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go to the scene with the directional emitter and select you particles.., go to 'fields ' in your menu and select 'gravity'

that will help them to 'go down' user added image

use blobbys.., mess with the thresh hold (press render attributes' in the AE particle shape node attributes ( the AE).., render and mess with the thresh hold until you get a watery look.., if thats too much.., stick with the default particles (points)

constraints for particles?? beats me.., just mess with the fields.., look at the options you have in the channel box for the emitter., spread, speed, evt

take it easy and life will be easy

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# 3 21-07-2008 , 05:31 PM

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Alright.. well, I've changed stuff like threshold and radius, etc, and used gravity. It's interesting... I will attach a snapshot of the fountain soon..

Note that the fountain mesh itself is very very bare, and it's just the basic stuff that I could create in 15 minutes.. I'm mostly making this because I wanted to learn about particles.

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# 4 21-07-2008 , 05:57 PM

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Ok.. Here is the snapshot of a rendered (not yet colored or textured or lighted..) but a very !basic! outcome of my fountain..

Any advice? Is there any way to make the Blobby surface look like water with textures or something? Is it possible to texture particles?

Attached Thumbnails

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Name: fountain snapshot.jpg
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Size: 22.0 KB
ID: 39582

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# 5 21-07-2008 , 08:16 PM

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Yeah, you could slap a transparent and refractive blinn on that and tweak til you get what you want.

- Genny
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# 6 21-07-2008 , 10:04 PM

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Hey there Bluethunder, welcome to SM!

Just fyi, I moved this thread to the correct area for your question, so make a mental note of where it is now, so your questions will be answered better and faster in the future user added image

Simply Maya User Community > Effects > Dynamics & Special Effects > Particles and Dynamics

Regarding your texturing of your blobby particle render type, it looks like mirek and gect have answered your questions perfectly. (thanks guys!)

To give any object a "look" of a given surface, you would need to apply a shader to it.
In your case GecT mentioned a Blinn shader with some transparency and refraction value changes to the shader attributes.

Keep in mind however, different shaders react differently based on a number of environmental things such as, light, the absence of light, things to reflect, and more importantly the renderer you choose. (Software Raytrace, or Mental Ray, etc.)

For more about both, and everything we just talked about, check the help under RENDERING and there should be prime examples of settings and their uses to simulate different surfaces and looks.

Also, if you are less conserned with the shading aspect of your scene, and you just want it to look great at the moment, check our own Free Download area for a few shaders you can add to your own shader library, as well as spend a few hours browsing the largest Maya shader archive at: www.highend3d.com

Once there, just go and browse the many pages of free shaders made over the years and make sure to read the readme files for any specific instructions, etc.

Keep your dynamics and effects questions coming and we'll do our best to answer them for you as quick as we can, and as simple as possible user added image

Welcome!

ragecg
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Israel "Izzy" Long
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izzylong.com

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# 7 21-07-2008 , 10:21 PM

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looks good.., i gotta ask how many emitters did you use??

looks like you may have set collision with the object and particles but not sure??

if you really want something quick.., try an ocean shader

take it easy and life will be easy

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# 8 21-07-2008 , 11:12 PM

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I used.. 9 emitters (directional) for the areas where the water came out. I also set the 8 emitters (all of them excluding the top one) to collide with the base, then I set it somehow to kill the particles when they collide with the base of the fountain.

Thank you everyone for your help! I will check out that link tomorrow.

Glad to be here at SM with you all. Thanks again!

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# 9 21-07-2008 , 11:18 PM

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wow.., well done..,

look for a tut on making a fountain on that link or do a google search.., there are other ways to do it too.., everything you ever need to know is on u tube these days also.., beginners to pro

interesting you used the word 'kill' thats a REALFLOW word and that does this sort of thing very well.

good work

mirek user added image

take it easy and life will be easy

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# 10 22-07-2008 , 08:13 AM

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Thank you everyone for your help. Here is what I got by applying a water shader to some parts of the scene... It's not proffesional, but I learned alot by doing this scene...

by the way, the areas where there is like a 'pool' of water, I couldn't figure out how to get that effect, so I made a poly cylinder, scaled it so that it would be like the surface of the water, then applied the shader to that...

I don't know if that would have been the best way to go about it, since I know that it's not going to move at all when the particles hit it (like real water, which would ripple)

Anyways, the image is attached. What else should I do? (other than making the fountain mesh look nicer user added image

)

Attached Thumbnails

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Name: fountain.jpg
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Size: 27.8 KB
ID: 39591

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# 11 22-07-2008 , 08:29 PM

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Final -- Rendered!

Hello everyone! I've finished my fountain, lighted it with a very basic lighting, and rendered it.. I attached a zip file with the .avi in it.

Any criticisms? Everything anyone says is an enormous help. Thanks!

EDIT: I can't attach the zip! I'm going to upload it somewhere else I guess!
EDIT 2: OK, I uploaded the .avi to mediafire.. Ehm.. Here is the link: Water Fountain.avi

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# 12 24-07-2008 , 02:46 AM

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if i was you id experiment with either

a blinn with a transparency up (so you can see through the particles and a spot light aimed from a ways off (so you get an effect similar to a directional light) with a sky blue colour on it.

or add an ocean shader and look for the translucence and/or transparency attributes and throw that on the particles (leave the rest at the defaults for now)

looks good

take it easy and life will be easy

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# 13 24-07-2008 , 06:33 AM

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The picture there is actually showing an ocean shader (I think it was an ocean shader anyways... It said "antarctic water" or something like that) and there is a little bit of transparancy in it...

If I aimed a spotlight colored sky blue at the fountain, wouldn't that just make the water a different color blue than the shader? Please elaborate.

Thank you for comments though! user added image

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Particles and Dynamics

Final -- Rendered!

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