Questions about Maya Particles, Mental Ray and Maya 2009

#1

Hey all!

I hope this is the right forum for this! So I have Maya Particles on one layer in Maya and then I put the turbine on a second layer and rendered both… (1800 frames fyi)

The issue I’m having is that I brought both into After Effects and in order to get the illusion that the particles are passing through the turbine and around the fins I would need to use a reverse mask in After Effects?? Is there a simpler way?

So then I thought well… maybe instead i can render the turbine and the particles together (on one layer instead)… with Mental Ray… I was able to apply a Mental Ray shader to the particles but is there any way copy the attributes i setup with Maya Hardware so that as the particles move they change color from red to yellow?

Turbine
&
Particles

#2

I could really use the insight all!! anyone??

:banghead:

#3

Anyone I could really use the help please!

:cry:

#4

Sorry~ I’m not getting how you’re not getting how you transcribe this. lol. First of all how did you set up the color change. Was it simply an age based ramp?

#5

I haven’t touched Maya in roughly a year now. So if my terminology is off, you’ll have to figure out what I’m talking about. lol :cool:

I’m assuming if you have it set to something along the lines of the per particle color or something, its basically there’s a red to yellow ramp that the particle basically picks it’s phase of color depending on the particle’s age. So I guess from the particle you could try to isolate this ramp, and instance it into the mental ray shader’s main diffuse color. Or~ you could try and write a basic expression. You’d basically make the same ramp in the mental ray shader, and then set it’s off set to an expression that would be like " diffuseOffset = particleShape.age "
I don’t remember the naming conventions correctly. Getting it to work per particle, I’m not sure though. This might end up as an over all clump kind of fix. I don’t remember if this was one of those mental ray doesn’t work with per particle things.

#6

The easiest way is always to do in post work, and honnestly I don’t understand what you’re not able to do in AE. Maybe rendering a mask of your turbine only would help.

you won’t be able to render a MR shader in hardware. Harware renderer produces very basic images, fastly.

Sushirom is right, an expression based on particle age is the way to go. You could also render two different versions (two colors) of the particles, in maya or in post and comp them as you want.

If you want to be effective in 3D, you should really try to master the 2D comping aspects, as 50% of the job is usually done after the 3D is rendered. I believe one should be able to do everything in 3D, but in real-life it might be different and more effective to do a lot in post.

#7

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.