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SGR
08-11-2009, 02:46 PM
Hey everyone,

I will try and keep my self brief yet cover all the aspect of my current situation - I've been asked to produce flames for a collaborative project - and while I've been a fair bit around Maya, fluids is not one of my strong sides.

So the project is a creature which has fire burning around one of his feet and running down one of his arms plus his hammer/staff's ornament has flames coming out of it's eyes.

I have spend the past 2 days reading the help files and experimenting with the fluid settings - but have now run into some issues which I've not been able to solve from just reading the help files and playing around on my own.

1. The hammer/staff's flames seems to be the easiest part - as I am planing on extracting the geometry from where the flames should derive from and use the other geometry as a hold out matte for when it will be composited.

2. the arm and leg situation is similar in my mind so I was planing on dealing with them as such.

The big issue for me is to control the flow of the flames as I want the flames to ignite in a pattern deriving from his tattoos - this I could gather is possible by using particles but I am not clear on weather or not it's possible to get the same quality flames as in fluids.

It would be ideal if I could create a animated map which controls the animation of the fluid flames.

I was reading about the SimpleFluidEmitter which seams to do the trick but I've have absolutely no experience compiling plugins and all the reference talks about Windows Compiling and I am on mac os x.

I am wondering if anyone agrees with the workflow and if they have any solutions to the flames on the body parts.

if you need me to clarify anything just let me know - and any feedback would gladly be appreciated... :thumbsup:

Sofus
Duncan
08-11-2009, 08:46 PM
If you could create either some simple geometry or curves on the surface that matches the tattoo then you could emit into the fluid from that (fluid-> emit from curve/object)

Convert: "texture to geometry" might be useful here.

Duncan
nfrancisj
08-11-2009, 10:11 PM
Try this also... This guy already complied the plugin

http://www.brianalvarez.tv/2009/07/31/simplefluidemitter/
Aikiman
08-11-2009, 10:25 PM
If you are on a mac you can use Xcode to compile the plugin. Just grab the header and cpp files and put them on a folder on your desktop, compile it and throw the compiled bundle back into your plugins folder, go into your plugins manager and start the plugin.

I have described in detail how to use the emitter in one of the threads on Max/maya fluids, this would work well for what you need I think.
SGR
08-12-2009, 07:43 AM
Hey Gents,
First off thanks for the speedy replies - much appreciated.

@Duncan: this was also one of my initial ideas but as the tattoo is of a complex shape and animated at the same time I think it will be hard. - But something I will use for future project.

@Nfrancisj: Awesome - will make life easier - but first I will give the compiling stage a try my self as Aikiman said - I might end up learning something he he.

@Aikiman: I found you post with the info on using the plugin - so much appreciated you hinted to it.

When I have compiled the plugin and got a rough working example running I will post it here in case anyone else is going down this path.
RingoStar
08-12-2009, 10:20 AM
This plugin should get you along. You can connect a 2d texture to the textureRate input and control the emission with a texture this way. Or you can connect the emitter to a particle system (set to omni emission mode) and emit from particles. This should really be in Maya by default !
SGR
08-12-2009, 10:35 AM
Indeed - I just finished playing around with the plugin which works just the way I imagined I would do it - But I think before I lock my self to one path I will test out the other options which was mentioned here - I have a feeling I will need to do a hybrid of it all to get the level of detail and control over the effects.

But as I said I will upload some images and video when I got a more working example - currently rigging a arm to test it out on.
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