General?
 

Hiya,

Could anybody tell me why when i use dynamics in maya whatever effect i use seems to grow in strength over time, my example is that of a candle flame i've made using softbodies, springs and tubulance, the flame starts of looking good but as the time counter reaches the end of my frames the effect has scaled beyond what i want, it ends up looking more like a wind sock than a flame? Any ideas. :)

well if your using a softbody with the original hiden and a goal. maybe your goal is set to low.. a Higher setting will keep it from drifting.. although you might need to tern up the turbulance some, to compensait.. its a real pain trying to get a balince.

Good one Pony, also, if you are using springs along with Softys, you'll wanna keep that in check as well.

So things to check in order are:

1. Goal weight values (too high, or too low)
2. Field values (i.e. is magnitude too strong?)
3. Spring stiffness (too loose? or too tight?)

Good luck!

Thanks guy's, i'll check that out :)

Also, just fyi, you can use more than one set of springs on the same set of particles/clusters etc.

This helps to add stiffness, and overall controll.

One often forgotten setting with particles (including soft-bodies) is the Conserve attribute. In my experience it is best to kept somewhere between 0.9 - 0.98... under 1.0 in any case...