Maya Tutorials:basics of particle

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Three important nodes of particle control
Maya controles particle with tree nodes.
Emitter - the source where particle is generated
Partile - particle itself
Fields - the forces to influence particle

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Emit prticle from object

Make NURBS or Polygon object and select it,
In Dynamics Menu Set, Particles > Emit From Object

Move the Time Slider, then you will see partciles are generated as above.


Emitter and particle are made, and emitter is the child of the object.


Open the Attribute Editor, selsect emitter tab, change Emitter Type Omni to Surface
Then you will see the particles are uniformly generated from surface.

Rate　number where particles are generated in one second
Speed　speed of particle
Speed Random　 randomness of speed
Tangent Speed　the magnitude of the tangent component of emission speed for surface.
The default value is 0. If you enter a value greater than 0, particles are emitted randomly for surface.
Normal Speed　the magnitude of the normal component of emission speed for surface.



click the particleShape tab

Max Count　number where particles are generated in maximum. -1 is no limit.

Lifespan Mode	Live Forever	particles don't disappear
	Constant	particles disappear
	Random range	particles disappear randomly

setting particle attribute(continued)

Particle Render Type　
If you render with Maya Software,you should select the one of tree render type,
Blobby Surface,Cloud or Tube.

render type	suitable expression	material
Blobby Surface	Drop of water, mud	Rambert,Blinn etc	Threshold sets blending of the particles
Cloud	smoke, cloud, fog	Particle Cloud
Tube	fire works, spark, splash	Particle Cloud	Radius0 - radius of tail、Radius1 - radius of head、Tail - length

If you select the partilce render type, you should click Current Render Type button,
then suitable attributes are displayed.

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Setting the Particle Cloud material
If you select the Cloud or Tube render type, you should creat Particle Cloud material with Hypershade
Create > Volumetric Materials > Particle Cloud
and assign it to the particle.


You should connect the Texture Mappings to Life Color, Life Transparency, Life Incandescence.
You should not connect them to Color, Transparency, Incandescence.


In the above, Ramp Texture is connected to Life Color,
and also connected automatically to Color.


In the above, the particles are rendered with Ramp Texture connected.

The Texture is mapped to the time axis
(from the time a particle generated - to the time a particle disappears)
so you should select Constant or Random range
in the Lifespan mode attribute.

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fields

Select particle
Fields > Field Name
then the particle is cennected to the field,
and is influenced by the field.

If you want to connect another field to the particle,
select the particle again and
Fields > (another)Field Name

The types of fields are below

Air	air,wind
Drag	friction,brake
Gravity	gravity
Newton	gravitation
Radial	pushes or pulls like a magnet
Turbulance	turbulance
Uniform	pushes objects in a uniform direction
Vortex	vortex

The attributes are different according to the fields,
but Magnitude and Attenuation are common.

Magnitude　strength of field
Attenuation sets how much the strength of the field diminishes as distance
to the affected object increases.If it is 0, the force remains constant over distance.


Window > Relationship Editors > Dynamic Relationships
The Dynamic Relationships window appears.
If you select particle in the left column, then the connected fields are highlighted.
If you turn off highlighting, it is not connected to the particle.