topic Re: Particles don't fall in Maya Dynamics Forum

Particles don't fall

maeyoshi — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 18:14:55 GMT

Hi, I have a quick question.
I created an emitter (nParticle > Create Emitter), and 3 nodes got created, emitter, nParticle, nucleus. But particles don't fall, even though it is connected to nucleus which has gravity of 9.8 and Gravity Direction of Y -1.
nParticleShape > Dynamic Properties > "Forces in World" is turned on. I'm using Maya 2023.2.
I've attached a playblast of what it looks like. Can anyone help me with this?

(view in My Videos)

Re: Particles don't fall

J-Fry — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 21:36:27 GMT

This probably isn't it, but considering nobody else is chiming in, I thought I'd at least give you something to try.

I remember a while back I had some weirdness that was fixed by switching my animation evaluation mode to "DG".

Re: Particles don't fall

maeyoshi — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 00:44:00 GMT

Thank you. I tried that, but it didn't solve the problem.

Re: Particles don't fall

J-Fry — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 15:00:51 GMT

Yeah. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with your specific issue, I'm just trying to give some suggestions since this board tends to be a bit stingy with replies depending on the question. (I still haven't heard any sort of reply to either of my last two questions).

I know this sounds weird, but I do remember a little while back having issues with nParticles calculating when the hypershade window was open (don't remember what Maya version it was). If I remember correctly, they didn't calculate at all and since yours are at least emitting, that probably isn't it either, but it's easy to check. So if your hypershade is open, I would close it down and see if that helps anything.

In order to replicate what happens in your video, I would need to check "Ignore Solver Gravity" on the particle object and then cut the "Away From Center" on the emitter down to zero. So if it is happening to you without doing those things, I assume it is some sort of bug? (Hence the "weird" suggestions I gave) So perhaps updating Maya (if possible) could solve it?

I'm sorry I'm not more help. Hopefully somebody smarter than I am responds to you.

Good luck! I hope you can figure it out.

Re: Particles don't fall

sepu6 — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 19:11:34 GMT

I mean is difficult to help without a repro scene - If I do the same on my computer it works fine. Another thing that I can think of is that you are playing your timeline in "realtime" instead of "play every frame"

Post a file if you need more help

Re: Particles don't fall

sepu6 — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 19:15:17 GMT

This is also because most of the FX stuff has moved to Bifrost (graph), which is a much better platform to work with than the old systems

Re: Particles don't fall

maeyoshi — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 19:53:36 GMT

Thank you so much for the help and info, @Anonymous and @J-Fry !
It looks like my time slider started at 1000, instead of 1. When I set it to 1, particles started to fall down properly.
I hope this would be a lesson for begginers like me.

Re: Particles don't fall

abrow272 — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 01:41:39 GMT

you are a lifesaver!!! tysm!!!!!!!!!