VIDEO TUTORIAL - Basic Particle Expressions: Part 2: Level - Easy - mid

This tutorial follows on from basic expressions part 1. It covers more essential particle techniques while using a missile trail as an example.

This movie requires Flash Player 8

Topics covered include:

  • custom attributes
  • ramps
  • more runtime expressions
  • maya software cloud
  • particle sampler info node
  • userscalarPP attribute

Here is the link

basicExpressions2

Now, i forgot to add one thing in the tutorial and that is that for the volumeNoise, I set the node to ‘local’ which is under the effects rollout.

Also, the last technique i mentioned in the video: using the radial field to multiply the shader transparency, requires a bit more tweaking. The settings I chose in the tute gave me some particles flickering on and off in the render, so Ive disconnected it in the example scene. If you were to put it back you would simply have to give it a bigger range, so that the render doesnt look like particles are switching on and off. You’ll understand once you do the tute.

Here is the example .ma scene (7.0 and upwards):

missile.ma