Maya and Particle Illusion
 

I am sharing this link to my first Maya animation. It's rather simple. I just animated a spotlight across the surface of text geometry. I then imported the sequence into Particle Illusion (v3), added some particle effects and rendered from there.

Right-click and Save Target As:
Dark Matter Prod

I'm still new to Maya so when I get better I will be sure to create some particle effects withing Maya. I created this for a client so I used Particle Illusion for the time constraints.

Me and Maya >>:bgreen:

I have a couple of crits but you'll have to forgive my complete lack of knowledge when it comes to Particle Illusion:

* The light effect across the front of the text is good. The problem is that there doesnt seem to be any connection that effect and the subsequent "explosion". It's as if the blue light hovers, disappears and then there is an explosion. Maybe the start of the explosion needs to have the same shape, colors, textures, and size as the light.

* The texture you have used on the model has quite a high specularity but the explosion and the flying stars dont create any specular reflections.

Other than that, I like it :)

Hi Huxley,
Yea, most of that was due to the fact that I created the particles in a separate program and simply relied on the animated spotlight within Maya to do the rest.

This is just a preliminary version to show the client and get them to sign off on. Once they say they like it, then I will fine tune it so the explosion matches the blue blob and the explosion has its own light effect on the geometry.

Good point on the Specular highlights. I will definitely tone those down. As I get better at Maya I will create the particles within Maya, then the effects will work together more.

Thanks for the feedback. :)

ok. your geo could be more anti-aliased.

looks cool - you could really add alot of life by moving the camera slightly and adding some fill lights.

I guess I should mention that this is intended to be a splash page graphic for a web site. Since my first post, the client has signed off on it.

Now I will fine tune it, which includes the anti-aliasing as Pony suggested. Eventually it will be converted to Flash for the internet. I am currently trying to figure out how to animate the light attributes through another post.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions, etc. The beauty of getting outside suggestions is that often times others will see things I may miss.

Maya rocks :bgreen: