Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/335006
47 JUL-AUG 14 / CINEMONTAGE 47 JUL-AUG 14 / CINEMONTAGE TECH TIPS goes on to use Paint Effects again, only this time to paint fire and smoke into the scene using pre-sets that were designed for those purposes. For the Fire pre-sets, there are controls to vary the dynamics of the fire. For example, you can change the turbulence and frequency as well as the gaps of the flames, along with many other parameters for both the fire and the smoke. In chapter 2 of Creating Visual Effects with Maya, Lanier goes on to demonstrate Maya's Fur to not only create fur, but grass as well. For longer flowing hair, Maya's nHair system is used; it was introduced in Maya in 2013. We start out by growing fur on the cavewoman's garment, and proceed to adjust its attributes, getting it to work with Mental Ray and to paint fur maps, which can be used to control the length of the fur in various places. We're also shown how to use the Fur system to generate grass in the scene, and to use noise to make the grass appear more random and to generate shadows. To create the cavewoman's long hair, Lanier uses Maya's nHair system, which was specifically designed for this task; it benefits from the dynamics and physical simulations built into it. Creating hair styles in a 3D program is not an easy task, therefore the nHair attributes need to be altered to get just the right look and style so things like scale, width and curl of the hair clumps are adjusted. Information about rendering and lightening the hair is also covered. At the end of the chapter, nHair is also used to generate some electrical arcs (like the kind you might see emanating from a Van de Graaff generator). It's a nice effect — although the addition of electrical arcs in a scene with a cavewoman is an unusual juxtaposition. In the next chapter, we leave the cavewoman scene to learn about ways to create water, smoke and sparks with Maya's nParticles. Particle systems are used extensively in 3D animation and visual effects for a variety of elements from snow and rain to smoke and water (or smoke on the water if that is what the scene calls for). We begin by creating a waterfall that cascades over a staircase by selecting an nParticle water pre-set and then customizing its surface, applying a watery material to it. The rest of the chapter sees us attaching an nParticle emitter to the top of a unique-looking character's rig to emit puffy smoke as well as sparks from the center of the character. Chapter 3 takes a look at using expressions and Maya's MEL scripting language to control the generation of nParticles to create swarms and bubble masses. Basically, the difference between expressions and MEL is that an expression is a mathematical relationship between an object's animatable attributes that constantly updates at every frame, whereas a MEL script is run at a particular time, such as to set things up just before a set of particles are generated. In this chapter, Lanier gives a little overview on the syntax of expressions, which he uses to control the look of bubbles. An introduction to MEL syntax is also given in this chapter. MEL is used here to further add nParticle variety. The tutorial scene of the cavewoman that is provided with the book Creating Visual Effects in Maya. CineMontage_Jul-Aug_14-4a.indd 47 6/19/14 1:58 PM