Week 9: Dynamics_Particle Emitters

We started the last and final week with a bang: dynamics. More specifically we focused on particles and forces and ways to control them with scripting expressions. Emitters are the way particles are born into the scene( rate of emission, inital velocity...). Just like geometry objects, emitters can be placed on motion paths for effects like the one above.

Particles are what are emitted and they are a few types for different looks (dots, spheres, streaks...). Certain types can be rendered with the Maya software renderer, but most are done with hardware rendering, which takes advantage of the hardware on your video card (if you have a decent one). It's must faster than software rendering and with some motion blur and some post work, can look pretty great.

Forces are ways to control particles once they emit, such as gravity, wind, drag, vortex. In the above example i have gravity on the sparks so they tend to fall dowward but an upward directional force on the smoke to make it drift upward, as well as some turbulence to make it swirl a bit.

I would have loved to make it explode at the end, but we dont have that kind of time..on to the next lesson! : )