Using Advanced Particles to Create Fireworks in Maya
In this series of tutorials, we will go beyond the usual basics of emitting bursts or trails of particles and create full-blown fireworks.
What you'll learn
In this series of tutorials, we will go beyond the usual basics of emitting bursts or trails of particles and create full-blown fireworks. We will start by using the 'emit' command to give us extra control over how particles are emitted. We will see how it is possible to use both ramps and expressions to achieve certain effects, like sparkling or flashing particles. We will make extensive use of particle expressions, including some basic vector math and the 'rot()' function, to achieve complex behaviors such as ring-shaped emission and tightly-spiralling motion. By the end of this course, you will have everything you need to create complex, exciting, and dynamic fireworks.
Table of contents
- Setting up the Ring Fireworks 12m
- Killing Off the Ring Shells 12m
- Emitting the Burst 10m
- Burst Emission and Behavior 10m
- Coloring the Bursts 11m
- Emitting Particles for the Ring 10m
- Creating the Ring Pattern 10m
- Understanding the Cross Product 12m
- Finalizing the Ring Pattern 12m
- Adding a Trail to the Ring 13m
- Tweaking the Trail Emission 7m
- Adding Sparkle with Expressions 8m
- Adding Sparkle with Ramps 10m
- Tapering the Trails 10m
- Setting up the Spiral Fireworks 12m
- The Burst and the Spiral Particles 13m
- About Spiral Motion 10m
- Making the Particles Spiral 12m
- Tweaking the Spiral Motion 13m
- Falling Behavior and Color 14m
- Caching the Simulation 10m
- Rendering the Scene 7m
- Creating the Comp 10m
About the author
Stephen Sayer is a visual effects artist from Toronto, Canada. He works in the dynamics department at Soho VFX, a studio specializing in photo-realistic visual effects for film and television. Before joining the team at Soho, he worked on contract for various other studios in the city, and for his own CG animation and illustration company. Though he originally studied Classical Animation at Sheridan College, Steve always knew his future was in 3D. He learned Maya independently while working as a... more