Maya NParticles Basics Tutorial

hey what's up everyone welcome to effects maniac this is Sayed Mohammed Amiri and welcome to the Maya nparticles basics tutorial and in this tutorial and particles or the particle system inside of Maya the basics and we'll do some examples and if you stick till the end I'm gonna be showing you guys how to create this really cool effect using the particle systems it's basically an image but you can render a video also so this is going to be our final product for this tutorial and yeah after we do the basics and before we get started I just wanted to take the time and thank you everyone and say thank you to everyone who basically commented and like appreciated this last tutorial and it's got like 1k view which for me is of course a milestone and I'm so grateful for it so yeah we'll get started on this and I promise to do a lot more so okay first things first I am going to assume that you know the basics of Maya okay and I'm also going to assume that you have zero knowledge about nparticles and this is going to be a complete beginner tutorial so first things first if you want to get into the particle or the dynamic section of Maya you have to go click here in the modeling sub menu and click on effects and here you'll get the end particles in cloth in hair and all these things so we're gonna be taking a look at the end particles and as you can see in this menu there's a lot of different options but the thing that we're gonna be taking a look at is first create an emitter and the other thing is we have two types of particles we have the legacy particles which are kind of old from the old version of Maya and we have the end particles which is the new one so we're going to be taking a look at the end particles which is more advanced so first thing if I create on this create emitter like the box the right side of it we can name it like any name you want like particles or whatever and the solver of course you want to create a new solver because we don't have it or if you have a previous solver you can just click and select it and this new particle will also act according to that solver which we'll get into in a moment so and here's the type of the particles you can create an omnidirectional and a volume which we can change later so for now I'm going to choose Omni and how many particles per second you want so I'm just gonna change it to like six hundred particles per second and you can change the speed and all later also so this could hit create and as you can see if I hit play the particles will just start to you know fall down because of the gravity so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go to the outliner and here is the particle to which we named it which is the emitter so I can just move it up and in order to see the changes every time you have to go to the first frame and then play so then you'll see the changes that's happening to the particles we can also rename them to like emitter or whatever you want so yeah and the other thing is if I select these particles and I hit control a to go to the attribute editor we can see that if I select the particles in the end particle shape one we have a lot of settings okay which we're gonna be taking a look at the most important ones and if you wanted to like some specific things we can take a take a look at that in a different tutorial but for now basically these particles are falling down because of gravity and gravity is in this nucleus solver okay it's 9.8 and because of that the particles are falling down if I set this to zero there won't be any gravity and the particles will just be moving by their own speed okay so I'm gonna set it back to 9.8 and I'm gonna go back to the particle here's the particle system and here is the emitter which is basically the settings that we created is there the amount and then we have directional particles which you can specify to a direction like I can just set the direction to maybe X 1 and if you increase the speed the particles will basically shoot out in that direction right and the other thing is you get this kind of warning if I go to the time settings make sure every time that you're using the particle system this playback speed is set to play every frame because it needs to calculate all those especially when the simulation gets heavy so you need to basically set this to play every frame so that it gets that right time to calculate all the all the things that are happening to the particles if it is 24 frames per second of course it'll play in real-time but sometimes it is gonna skip while trying to you know play it in real time so make sure it's on play every frame and save and I want now to be omni and these other options we're gonna be taking a look at but for now I'm going to set it to omni so it's gonna generate in this sort of a fashion but the speed is a bit too much so I'm gonna drag it down back to like 1.8 now you can see the particles are there so this is a very basic particle system and what if I wanted to change the shape of the particle so I'm gonna go into the end particle 1 and here in the shading tab now they're set to points so I'm gonna change it to red these different shapes Multi Street we have numerix and we have these other options but mostly we're gonna be using the point and the spheres the spheres are basically these sphere objects that we can use and yeah now the shape is going to be the sphere and we can change the size using the particle size but the problem is right now these particles are not colliding with each other in other words there's no such thing as inter particle collision which we can set if we go into this collisions tab there's this thing called collide which is basically colliding with other objects and this self collide is basically setting the particles to collide with themselves so I'm gonna go back to the first frame I'm gonna start playing and now you can see that the particles are basically colliding with each other too so this is it and now I want the particles to collide with this floor also you can you can create an object maybe like plane and scale it up or any other object and set it as a passive collider now the particles will basically collide with that object but once they get off of that they'll still go down so what I'm gonna do is delete this and I'm gonna go into the nucleus and I'm going to this option called ground plane and use plane so now this grid is basically act as it's going to act as a inflict as an infinite plane so if you play it the particles will just get like you know keep you know moving and colliding with each other until like the time finishes so basically this is how the self collision and the crowd collision works inside these particles and now what I'm gonna do is maybe I want to randomize the size of this particle so I'm going to go back to the in particle 1 going to the particle size here we can change the size make it smaller big but there's no option as like randomness so what we can do is here is the radius scale and we have a graph like we can change it so I can do like this or maybe I can add like different points to it and maybe one up one down basically like this kind of like this graph but still if I play this back there you see no changes because we need to set the radius scale input to randomized ID so now you can see some particles are really small some of them are really big and if I just play this back you can see that they're still colliding but there is a variation in to the particles so if I change them you can see that you know there are some certain variations in these particles ok so that's it now how about if we want to change the color so I'm gonna go back to the shading tab and I'm going to click I'm going to go down and here is the color so same thing I can add multiple colors or I can just go with one color maybe like blue right but what if I want it to be different colors so I added by clicking here you can add a color palette and double click or just click here and pick a maybe like an orange color and then the next one too I'll just delete this control set just click on this little X and it will just remove the color palette and I'll just click here and maybe make this like green and this one too like maybe any other color any color that you want so now we've changed the color but we don't see the changes and basically we need to change this color input to randomize ID and now you see we have all these different color particles which are right which are really looking kind of cool you know so yeah these are the basic settings for the particle system now what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to there's a lot of different settings okay if you wanted to I can do another separate tutorial for it but for now we're gonna go and will experience what some forces I'm gonna select this particle system and here we have the fields and solvers which are like the external forces that is going to affect the particles so I'm gonna add a turbulence like this now you can see it's not it hasn't it doesn't have a lot of effect because it's less so I'm going to increase it now if I see you can see that the particles are kind of moving in a turbulent sort of motion if I increase this like 300 now we're gonna see the effect very clearly like this and we have some other forces too like if I if I select this make sure you select the you're selecting the particle system and then going to add the force because otherwise won't work so I'm gonna go to the vortex and increase it like hundred now you can see that the particles are like moving in a vortex way and the other thing is now we need like if you want to you can go to emitter and increase the number of particles to maybe like five thousand and now if I play this back you can see that we have this huge maybe it's a little too much so I'll go for like 2000 huge simulation of particles which are just doing a bunch of wild stuff and it's looking pretty cool alright so yeah that's that's basically how you use forces and all these things and if you want the particles to die at a certain age you can just go into the lifespan and here is like live forever because it's just gonna live forever so we can change it to constant or random range constants isn't basically like if we set one one here it's going to be like 24 frames so if I play this back after 24 frames the particles are gonna die because one second is necessarily 24 frames here right if if you see here and the other thing is like if I change this to random we can change it to be like two seconds but still one-second randomness so it's going to be not they're not gonna die at the same time necessarily some some will die soon sometime later okay so yeah this is this is also very useful because you don't want the particles to go too far and still get calculated it's gonna make the system a bit more you know a bit more fast and effective so yeah this is it basically so now I'm gonna give you a very small example so I'm going to create a new scene and in this scene I'm just gonna go and create a new sphere so like this and by the way to create a sphere just hold down shift and right click here's the sphere so I just did it quickly so yeah delete it and then just create a new one and I'm just going to go and right-click on the faces I'm gonna go into maybe one of the side views and I'm going to select half of the shape and I'm going to delete it and in order to give it thickness I'm just going to hit ctrl e to go to poly extrude and just give it a bit of a thickness maybe this much and I want the particles to fill this shape okay so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go through n particles and you can emit particles off of an object - okay so I'm gonna create a new sphere and I'm going to basically move it up and scale it down and I want the particle stream it from this object so I'm gonna go into n particles emit from object there is Omni and there's going to be surface so Omni is basically gonna select like emit particles from the whole volume of the object and surface is going to be emitting particles from the surface okay and this curve option I think we have covered it in this tutorial and the portal effect which we necessarily emit particles from a circle which is a curve so you can check this tutorial out for more info but for now we're gonna set it to surface and 600 for now and create so now as you can see these particles are coming down and we need to set this object as a Collider so I'm gonna select the object I'm gonna go in to the N cloth and I'm going to set it to passive collider so now the particles are basically gonna collide with this object and we need to change the shape of these two spheres so I'm gonna go to shading and I'm gonna go to spheres and we need to turn on the self collide so that they collide with each other and now you can see that they're there so I basically want to fill this up this shape up and once it's filled I don't want any more particles so what I'm gonna do is change this to maybe like 300 frames and I'm gonna increase this time slider and let's see maybe here I just want no more particles to be born so I'm just gonna go into the emitter here and here's the particles per second so I'm gonna go right click set key and I'm going to move a few frames forward and I'm gonna set it to zero and I'm gonna right-click again set key so now if I play this back you can see that there's no more particles born a few of them just go down which we don't want to so we may as well want these keyframes hold down shift and select them move them a bit back so that we don't get a lot of particles not necessarily that they overflow which they still do so maybe maybe a bit more and this time I think they're not gonna open the flow because they're simply maybe oh one more so I'm just gonna move it away and yeah this time for sure they're not gonna pull the flow right yeah okay so what I want is these particles to settle down and to a state where they're like you know not moving or barely moving maybe here and I want this to be the initial state of these particles like if we even reset they're gonna be like this they're going to start from here so what I'm gonna do is slow these particles go into the fields and solvers and I'm there is an option called initial state so I'm gonna set was selected now if I go back you can see that the particles start from that state but there's still new particles to be born right we don't want that so I'm gonna select this particle this one and I'm going to delete it because we don't need it okay so now we just lift with these particles and I want to animate this this pot or whatever it is so first off we need the anchor point to be in the middle so I'm gonna go into modify and center pivot and I'm just gonna go like maybe from 70 frames I'm just gonna go to the sphere like if I select it and go here and for the translate I'm gonna set a key and for the rotate I'm I set a key so I'm gonna go like till 104 frames I'm going to select this move it up and rotate it like this and then we'll go back and we'll set a key again we haven't set the key it's all set I'm gonna go control a to the channel editor and I'm going to give him all these key selected and I'm gonna go to like 40 frames and I'm going to move this up controls set because this something happened we chained the anchor point right so yeah that's what happened so I'm gonna go with modify center pivot and I'm gonna go back now you can see that the particles are there so from like 90 frame I'm going to keep him all of these right-click key selected go to like a hundred and thirty frames and move this up and just rotate it like this like wild and then when I click set key again or a key selected and then I'm gonna go back and I'm going to rotate the second like this side and maybe move it up and this much right and I'm going to set key or key selected again so now let's see what's gonna happen I'm going to zoom out a bit and play this back so they're all fine and then from a hundred frame they just get like you know dropped off which is which is good but the thing is the particles are going through the floor which we don't want that because they're gonna go like forever to eternity so we want them to touch this floor and like stay on the floor so as we did before going to the nucleus control a to the attribute editor and I'm gonna go use plane so now as you can see they are just on the floor they're colliding with each other and they create this like they react to the movement of the object okay so yeah this is a basic a very basic example but you can do a lot of things with and I'm sure you got the basic idea of how to work with it so now I think is the time for this example that we've done so here is basically the raw render that we have done okay and I'm going to recreate this in nparticles and I'm going to do it quick because we've already covered the basics and it is going to be very long if we do that again so I'm gonna try to do is a bit quicker okay so let's get started I'm gonna create a new scene and what I did to MIT the particles I basically emitted the particles from a sphere so I'm going to create a sphere and scale it up maybe a bit less and I'll move it up and I want the particles to be born from the sphere so I'm gonna go into n particles emit from object and surface maybe I want 1500 particles for now which will definitely increase in like later for now it's fine I don't want the gravity to affect the particles so instead of going and like zeroing out the gravity there is an option in the end particle settings in the dynamic properties which is called ignore solver gravity which they will no longer be affected by the solvers gravity okay so that's it and now I'm going to select these particles and I'm going to add one turbulence field and we can change this name to like turbulence okay and I'm going to set the magnitude to like 150 so that we can see how crazy it this is like this much but I think it's a bit too crazy okay so I'm gonna increase the attenuation to like three and let's see what happens now they're not that crazy right now and I want these particles to be affected in a very specific area okay so I'm gonna go into the volume controls and I want it to be a sphere so if I hit like select the sphere and hit H to hide it so it creates a spherical sort of field which I can scale it up and only that area is going to be that area of the particles if the particles are within that area is going to be affected if not then they're not going to be affected right you can see that so what I'm gonna do is just make sure that the areas that we want are basically affected by that and I may want to increase the magnitude to like 350 so that they get a bit like crazy sort of emotion and the other thing is I'm just going to select the particles again and I'm going to add a vortex and I'll increase that also to like 100 which is a bit too much and I mean I'm gonna increase the attenuation for this one to like two three like this and I definitely want a lot more particles so I'm gonna go into the emitter here and I'm gonna make it like five thousand per second and let's see here yeah so now this is basically our simulation here the scene now it's all about getting this look in this yellow and orange and the shape so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to create a new plane and I'm gonna increase the size of this and I want to make sure that the particles collide with this I'm gonna go to ncloth and create a passive collider and which is not a good idea so I'm just gonna take this sphere hit H again and allene like move it up a bit and then the spherical field - because if it is too close to the ground then they're gonna like bounce off so we don't need that we basically want like this and I need to create some lights okay some Arnold lights so I'm gonna hide this again so I'm gonna go Arnold lights area light it's seven and increase the shape the size of this and it's from this side so I may rotate this and add it from this side maybe increase the intensity to like 10 and the exposure to 6 and I'll move this up again like this I'll turn the color to orange which is basically in the example not too much of an Orangeman this leg this much but now if you render this using the Arnold render view you can see that the particles are there but they're very small right so what I'm gonna do is I'll go into the end particle and in the Arnold tab here is the the radius so I can just increase this like four and I can play this back so now you can see that we got like four times more bigger particles in the usual and they're looking pretty cool actually you know we we may want to increase the intensity of our light maybe it's like eight but the thing is they're looking already pretty cool and the other thing is I just need to duplicate this light and to this side and change the color so I'm gonna go into the area light control D and just I want to like flip it right so I'll just rotate this to like this maybe and I'll change the color to like blue not too much of a vibrant blue but like this and I need to zoom in and go check it out one more time or an old render view and as you can see it's already looking pretty cool and we just need to like give it a bit of time just to look a bit more better but I think this blue is a bit too bluish so I'm gonna reduce it tomorrow like white and the other thing is that in this scene we have a lot of if I show you the raw render so you can see it clearly is the thing is that we have motion blur too so or maybe we need to increase the size of the particles to a bit so I'm going to go into the particles and I'm going to go into the Arnold maybe point maybe five and I'm going to increase this one more time which is looking pretty cool yeah and I may need to zoom out a bit so we can see everything in the frame like this and what I'll do is I will go to this light and maybe I'll increase this even more to like ten so it's a bit more bright not necessarily that much maybe nine it's all about like testing it and then if you want the shadow quality like these noise to be gone you can you can just go to the samples of the shadow make it like three and I'll select the first light also and I'll make it three and the other thing is that we need to turn on motion blur okay so I'm gonna go into the render settings and I'll go into the Arnold and I'm going to the motion blur enable it and I'm gonna set the lens to one because I want this to have like a very good motion blur and I'm gonna set the camera AAA to four and the diffuse to three again this is not a lighting tutorial so I'm just putting some random numbers and I'm gonna change the size to maybe HD 720p and I'm gonna click render so let's see how this will look so as you can see the render is done it took like 44 seconds for this frame which is really fast and it's already looking pretty cool you know just the the detail and the these different levels of colors and we can just do some basic like color correction inside this so what I'm gonna do is just give it a bit of a contrast which is already looking pretty cool so yeah this is basically the effect and what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take another render of this and I'm gonna show you guys how to composite it inside of After Effects so what I'm going to do is I may want to increase this intensity for the first light a bit more to like 9 and increase the shadow samples on the second light or the first light - - like for in this one - 4 and I may I may want to go and pick a different frame maybe this one and I'm gonna go take a 1080p render and yeah and I'll just click on render and I'll be back when it's done all right so our render is done it took like 2 minutes and 7 seconds but as you can see it is definitely worth it and it's looking really cool and I just want to save it now so I'm gonna go to file and before clicking on the save I'm good just gonna go to the box and make sure this color managed image is checked and apply and close now I'm just gonna click on this and I'm gonna save this here - maybe like particles render and if you want a PNG you can save it as a PNG but in this case I'm just gonna save it as a JPEG and save and I'm gonna go into After Effects so in After Effects I'm just gonna double click and bring this articles render import and I'm just gonna create a new composition out of this which is this one first I want to give it a bit of a contrast so going to color correction curves and I'm just gonna make it like great an s-curve like this and the second thing is I want to give it a glow so I'm just gonna go stylize and low and maybe I don't want all the areas to have glow so I'm just gonna increase this threshold so that we have a glow on some very bright areas but still it's looking pretty cool and in this example we've I've used an optical flare and I've used a trapcode shine on top of it so I can just like copy this or I can just create a new adjustment layer and use the RG trap code shine which if you don't have it it's completely fine you can change the color to maybe like electric and decrease the rail length and even the shine opacity you know which may be a bit too much Nandi Saurus opacity shine opacity like this and yeah this is the end result and I I know this tutto was a bit long but I just wanted to cover like everything that we've said and I know we're barely scratching the surface of n particles and yeah it's all upon you just follow up with the tutorial and if you have any questions or you wanted me to do another tutorial touching on some other areas of n particles you can just go to the channel and by the way here's the channel right and here is my Instagram account effects what's a yet which you can basically click on this little Instagram account and it'll just take you here you can check my works you can this is me by the way if you haven't seen you can comment here you can if you have any suggestions any questions any thing you want for the next tutorial you can just comment here or in the channel or any questions you have you can just comment them here and yeah as always I really appreciate you guys you know watching these tutorials and commenting on them and it matters a lot to me and that's what motivates me to keep going okay so yeah I keep doing it and as always until next time enjoy working

Channel: FX Maniac

Views: 48,184

Keywords: Particles, NParticles, Autodesk Maya, Maya, Maya Tutorial, Maya NParticles Tutorial, Maya Particles Tutorial, Autodesk Maya Tutorials, Particles in Maya, VFX tutorials, Arnold For Maya, Arnold Tutorials, Arnold Lighting Tutorials, Compositing, After Effects Tutorials, Abstract Particles, Particles Tutorials, VFX, Sayed Mahmood Amery, FXManiac, Maya 2018, Maya 2018 Tutorial, Maya Basics, Maya Basics tutorial

Id: bPoHHRSN61U

Length: 30min 25sec (1825 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2019