Floating Dollar Signs that Fade
 

I am a newbie. I got Maya 2009 for work and was asked to do what seems to be a simple animation:

Dollar signs that float up from one source in a random order and individually fade away or fade to black (black is the background color).

I’ve heard a particle emitter might be the best route, but can’t figure out how to change particles to dollar signs.

Any info would help. Thanks.

instance it!

model the geometry and then i forget which menu its in but select the object and then the emiter and click on instace or make instance or whatever it is. then all you have to do is create and expression for the lifespan or something.
hope that wasnt too vague!

hammer.horror is correct.

One would use the particle instancer for this issue in combination with ramps and/or expressions to fade each particle over time as needed.


My larger worry for you, is that your employer "Got you" Maya without knowing if they had qualified artists/animators there to use it properly?

As you said yourself, you are new at Maya, so are they offering you qualified training from the VAR?

Maya is not like Poser or some "simple" tool with a set of presets that one can just click a "make it cool" button and expect Jurrassic Park, lol.

So if your employer did not get you training, then your best bet would be to read the help, OR worst-case, do a google search for "Maya Particle Instancer".

Good luck.

When you instance something, aren’t the particles associated with the original particle only able to mimic. I need dollar signs kinda shooting up and dissolving (or blending to black) but individually and in a seemingly random way...like slow fireworks or sparks rising from a campfire.

I successfully animated a group of dollar signs floating up without an emitter (I created text dollars and simply keyed a start and end), but didn’t know how to fade them.

Hammer and Rage are right. The best way to do it is with a particle instancer. You can randomize attributes like the speed, lifespan, size, etc that way. Then you can use a ramp or an equation to fade out each particle and use the particle sampler node in the hypershade to transfer that data to your shader so each dollar sign will fade out independently.

The thing is, it sounds like all if this is a bit beyond your skill set. (I apologize if I am mistaken). The simplest solution for you may be to animation each object by hand, duplicate your shader for each object, and then animate the transparency for each shader.

Either way, good luck.