Star Trek Voyager Solar Flare?

[alexx]

you best do that one in post using a radial blur and the mask of the ship to drive it..
at least we did it that way here when doing a sci-fi pilot all the time.

cheers

alexx

[anthonymcgrath]

I created a bunch of particles using bigfatmelons (do you have any idea how cumbersome it is trying to type that name!!! ) cigarette smoke method. I then pulled it into Afx and used the twist deformer keyframing the twist origin/position slightly to get varying results. worked a treat as its only a subtle effect I want.
(I'm animating a foetus forming from cigarette smoke for a nhs campaign and I needed some extra spot effects on the edges...solar flare like fx seemed to work a treat)

anyway, blah blah...if anyone has any good methods on doing this in maya, let us know.

ant
newcastle
uk

[Kabab]

Have you tried the new fuilds stuff ?? you can get crazy results out if it.

[alexx]

sticked together some particles for the cig smoke.

have a look:


hope you can use it.

for the fetus-forming effect, go for goal attributes.
i would:

- have a goalPP value, that you raise, when particles have a certain age or height in the scene.

good luck

cheers

alexx

[anthonymcgrath]

hey that goalPP value sounds really cool that your talking about. could you perhaps elaborate on that. I'm not too good with expressions at the moment. (I'm guessing this is how it would work?)

I read in the help that I can get the particles to goal to the actual mesh/curve of the nurb model as opposed to the cv's using an expression but then, in its really helpful manner, the manual neglected to illustrate how. you wouldn't happen to know how this done also would you?

thanks
ant
newcastle
uk

[alexx]

actually i do happen to know, but i am really short on time..

maybe i can give you some clues on where to hunt for the ideas:

- you can select a particle system and then an object and make the object a goal for the particles.
then they will go to the CVs/vertices.
-> i suggest you to have your foetus as a poly object with high tesselation and as evenly distributed vertices as possible

- when you do it without any expressions it will look strange since particles are moving evenly in speed to their according vertices (particle 0 goes to vtx 0, 10 to 10, and imagine the object having 1000 vertices -> particle 1001 will go to vertex 0 again).. so count your particles :)

- using goalPP for the particles randomizes the particle goal speed
- i would suggest having a ramp that scales the particle goal PP by their age.. so the older they get, the more goal they have.

- also randomize the max goalPP values with an expression, to still have randomness when they get very old.

- dont make the goal value (the one in the particleShape) too high. otherwise particles will move too fast and stick on their position.

- be sure to have the particles conserve value way below 1, otherwise the will go back and forth at the goal position..

- use an animated turbulence field to move the particles when they are at goal position..

THAT will be a hell of a lot of tweaking. be sure :)

hope it helps

cheers

alexx

[anthonymcgrath]

yeah, thats some good stuff there man. I'm pretty sure I can work most of them out as I've tweaked them at some point or another. didn't know you could use a ramp in the goalPP to make the age of the particle have a stronger goal influence. that ones particularly helpful!

thanks for your help there alexx. hope this becomes helpful to anyone else reading.

ant
newcastle
uk

[alexx]

with that topic of the thread i dont think so.. :)

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.