VIDEO TUTORIAL - Making of Tornado Project - Part one: Layout
What you’ll need for the tutorial (optional)
Here is my layout scene for the tornado. 6MB, Maya 7.0 and upwards. In the zipped folder you will find a bg image aswell, in the source images folder. Just copy that to your project also. (edited 28/03/2008)
The tutorial itself is here: (you will need to login in to the secure area)
Thats all you need to get going, its pretty straight forward, however I’ll leave some more info on this page if you would like to know how to rig the tornado with joints and a spline IK (with set driven keys).
Basicaly I take the center path that I extruded the tornado funnel along and add joints to each cv. I then use the same curve as a spline IK handle, by turning off auto create curve in the options.
The next step which is necessary for the rig to change length and keep its Y height is a set driven key to the scale of each joint. The key to doing this is to use the arc measure tool, and set a key for the scale for each joint for when the line is straight and then do a maximum deformed (crazy) mod to the curve and scale the joints along the curve direction until it reaches the end point again, then key that value too… all within the set driven key window ofcourse.
If you are doing it this way then you might need this script.
I couldn’t find the bonus tools script for joints along a curve so I made one myself here:
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