I haven't done particles in 10 years, what's new?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I went through the Maya 5 Dynamics book 10 years ago to do some particle stuff, but I mostly have stayed away from Dynamics since then. I looked on Amazon to see if there were newer books on Maya Dynamics, but it seems the last book that was published specifically on this subject is for Maya 6. Also there's something called nDynamics now, which I wouldn't even know where to start with.

My plan now is to go over the Maya 5 Dynamics book again, then try to figure out as much nDynamics through the Maya documentation and self-experimentation.

Does anyone know of a better approach to relearning Maya Dynamics?

[Anonymous]

There is a fair bit of work done since Maya 5.

In terms of user process nParticles are similar to regular particles but with a lot of useful added stuff. Jump directly into using them...as far as I know any documentation you have about the old particle system will still apply to nParticles.
You also have nucleus nodes which allow you to make some nifty global adjustments shared between your particle shapes. You can have multiple nucleus nodes or just one for several nParticleShapes. The nucleus is worth some investigation, it's like an environment control.

There are a some demo scenes with notations in the visor, really worth a look.

Duncan's blog (on this site) has a lot of good stuff on it, lots of example files.
Also if you get comfortable, have a look at Peter Shipkov's free Soup plugin. It is full of particle controlling magic.

http://www.soup-dev.com/

I've not tried Sparta but it looks incredible:

http://www.cgchannel.com/2012/09/meet-sparta-its-like-zbrush-but-for-particles/

Do a google for "pinp my pipeline". Two of the videos are presented by Duncan Brinsmead, in the second one he runs through a lot of different techniques for particles and fluids.

Good luck,

Ryan