Velocity in component editor doesn't appear...

[maiahnny]

When selecting particles in component mode for changing velocity in component editor, velocity doesn't appear in Maya 2014 and 2013. When I choose under Layout >show all columns, it quick appears, but just for half a second.

Anyone has an idea why?

[agraham]

Hmm, this doesn't appear to be an issue in 2015 (see attached).

I'll see if this was a known bug.

[agraham]

I also tried this in vanilla Maya 2014 and it seemed fine (both particles and nParticles).

What's your workflow to reproduce? Try deleting your prefs before launching Maya, see if that clears it up.

[maiahnny]

Thank you a lot Adrian Graham for your answer.

Maya 2015 I still didn't download.

I also asked today the support and he also coudn't reproduce my difficulties even he has the same system on OSX. He asked me to do a Factory Reset, I did, but it didn't help.

My prozess is:: with particle tool making some points, then changing the points in spheres, going to component mode, choosing the particles, they will be yellow and opening the component editor. Only the 5 first colomns are shown.

I suited en exemple from the book of wilkins and kazmier about mel and expressions in Maya (2003)

It's not something very urgent, but it's  irritating me, when even simple things doesn't work for me.

Maia Hänny

[maiahnny]

Just tried with an emitter as in your exemple and it works for me too! 🙂

So the defect is limited to the particle tool.

[Florian.Coenen · Accepted solution]

Hello,

when creating just a Particle with the Particle Tool (Main Menu > Particles > Particle Tool) by clicking into the viewport (one click is one particle), the particles will actually have no velocity, as the particle is not connected to any Force that is driving or influencing the Particle ( Main Menu > Fields).

As soon as you are selecting the particles and go to i.e. Fields > Gravity and play the animation, you will see, that the particles are falling down. So there is a Force connected to them. Now you can open the Component Editor and select one or more particles and you will see the Velocity within the Component Editor of each Particle.

Best Regards,

[maiahnny]

Thanks a lot Florian for the solution of my little problem! 🙂

Now I am curious, if in Maya7 it works differently, as Wilkin/Kazmier explain things really good, and in this example they first changed velocity of the particles and then added a newtonfield.

[agraham]

You are indeed correct: when particles are generated with the particle tool, there is no velocity attribute listed.

As was mentioned, if you add a field or per-particle expression, the velocityX/Y/Z and Mass columns show up.

I'm looking into this to see if it's intended or a bug.

In other news, you're doing a tutorial that uses MAYA VERSION 7?!

[agraham]

Yeah, so there's a menuitem in the Component Editor under Options > Hide Zero Columns.

If you uncheck this item, you will see velocityX/Y/Z column on particles created with the Particle Tool.

Goes to show you how much I've used the Component Editor in my 18+ years of using Maya.

[maiahnny]

That's great, thank you alot!!!

And for the old tutorial:

The Book "MEL Scripting for Maya Animators Mark Wilkins; Chris  Kazmier" (2003) is classic, isn't it?

Do you know another book, which explains melscripting and expressions in a comprehensible way? I began 8 years ago, but let it be again. Now I'm trying again, as I want to use perparticles, I began to read "Maya Visual Effects" from Eric Keller, and I want to understand expressions a bit better.

[agraham]

Well, I don't like to toot my own horn, but there is a DVD that I did back in 2000 called Particles for Visual Effects that explained a ton about per-particle expressions.

These DVDs aren't currently available, so we decided that it's high time we posted them for all to see:

https://www.youtube.com/user/kolektivDevelopment/videos

Note that even though I did these DVDs with Daniel Roizman 14 years ago, the expression language hasn't changed, and the functionality is still there to perform all these tutorials.

[maiahnny]

That's great! 😄

Thank you alot for make accessible for public this serie of Particle tutorials! I surely will learn a lot with it.