By popular request from members, this course explores the world of effects in Maya.

course syllabus

Introduction and course overview. We look at Maya Particle Dynamics, Maya Fluids Dynamics and Maya Particle-Fluids Integration.

We discuss Fluid/Particle Density and Velocity emission. We understand fluids: voxels, density, velocity, temperature, fuel. Then we explore particles: per-object vs per-particle and particle-velocity, per-particle. We set custom per-particle attributes to drive fluid dynamics. Work with conditional Per-Particle Expressions and Parameter Reference Per-Particle Expressions. Then we set the particles as fluid density and velocity emitters and control a fluid simulation driven with particles.

We fine tune our Fluid dynamics. We discuss external fields and understand the dynamic fields and their differences when used with Fluids. We use fields to control a fluid simulation. We look at caching particles and fluids and work with retiming the cache. Finally, we well render the fluids.

We finish up our fluid project.

Python Writing in Maya. We work with Mel and/or Python and introduce the basic programming concepts. We look at practical code writing.

Practical implementation of Python programming in production. We discuss custom tool writing with Python and PyQt.

Continuing the exercise of custom tool writing, writing up a GUI for the tool to be used within Maya.

Practical high resolution simulation with fluids and particles. We set up the scene and build particles simulations. We discuss fluid particle integration, caching, rendering and compositing.

Finish practical high resolution simulation with fluids and particles.

We build stylized fluids/particles and show step by step practical approach and implementation.