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Introduction to Rigid Bodies
This lesson explores how to use rigid body simulations in your projects. |
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Initial Velocity and Impulse Attributes
We will teach you how to use the rigid body attributes to control the
objects' behaviors under simulation. |
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Mass,
Friction, Damping and Collision Layers
These attributes will control the overall feel of how the objects react
with other objects. |
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Integrating Particles with Rigid Body Simulations
The rigid body node has a built-in feature that will allow particles to
move rigid body objects. This will allow you to create things like water
wheels. |
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Nail
Constraint
This is the first of five constraints we will cover. The nail constraint
is great for objects that need to swing or stay in place. |
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Pin
Constraint
This lesson will teach you how to use the pin constraint to create an
object hanging from a character's necklace. We will also teach you how
to create a collision object from a skinned character. |
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Hinge
Constraint
Hinges can be used for doors or trailers that are pulled on trucks. They
are also great for wrecking balls! |
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Spring
Constraint
The great thing about springs in Maya is that they react and act just
like springs in the real world. This is the first part of a two part
lesson to create a launch pad that sends a rigid body up into the air. |
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Bonus:
Creating Rails for the Launch Pad
To control how the springs react with the launch pad that we built the
previous step, we will build guides for the launch pad to move against. |
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Barrier Constraints
Barriers can save you lots of time when working with collisions,
especially when you have collisions going on in the background. |
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Keying
Active / Passive Attributes
Sometimes you need to control when a rigid body is acting as an active
or a passive body. You can key the attribute or you can use the pull
down menu included in the Rigid / Soft Body menu. |
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Solvers (part 1)
The rigid body solver is the heart of the simulation system in Maya.
This lesson will cover how to set initial states, step sizes, collision
tolerance and start times. |
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Solvers (part 2)
There are different methods you can use to solve your simulations, as
well as globally turn on/off solver states. This lesson will cover how
to get started using the attributes in the solver node. |
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Creating New Rigid Body Solvers
One of the fastest ways to increase the simulation time is to divide up
the simulated objects into different rigid solvers. We include a MEL
command to speed up switching to a new solver. |
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Baking
Simulations
To use motion blur or render on a render farm, you will need to remove
all of the simulation data from the scene. To make the system a bit more
efficient, bake the simulations into keyframes. |
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Introduction to Soft Bodies
Learning how to use soft bodies is a balancing act. You will need to
know how particles and simulations work to take a full advantage of this
incredible feature. |
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Using
Goals and Soft Bodies
To hold the shape of a soft body object when it is simulated, we can
leverage the power of goals as the ?memory? for a soft object to revert
to as it is simulated. |
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Using
the Paint Weight Tools
Thanks to the Artisan integration, we can use the paint tools to paint
the goal weight information directly onto the surface. We will show you
how to make an accurate view by using min/max values. |
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Using
Springs and Over-sampling
Springs will give your soft bodies the ability to move neighboring
particles when one moves. This will create smooth rippling effects in
your objects. |
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Using
Lattices in Soft Body Simulations
Often times your objects are too dense or complex to become soft bodies.
In that case you can use lattices to deform the surfaces and make the
lattice a soft body. |
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Adding
Soft Bodies to Rigged Characters
We'll teach you how to add secondary soft body simulations to a rigged
and animated character. This is often the workflow to add the secondary
movement. |
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Caching the Soft Body Particles
Just like for rigid bodies, you will need to prepare your files to be
rendered if you are using a render farm or if you want to use motion
blur. |
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Using
Fluids to Move Rigid Bodies
This bonus lesson requires Maya Unlimited and will show you how to use a
2D fluid container to move a rigid object. |
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Using
a 3D Container to Move Soft Bodies
This bonus lesson requires Maya Unlimited and will show you how to move
a soft body surface using the fluids emitted from a 3D emitter. |
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Snow
(part 1): Working with Soft Surfaces Like Snow
In this lesson we will throw a snow ball to the ground and push it in
the snow. This would be a similar technique for sand, mud or any other
soft surface. |
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Snow
(part 2): Making the Roof Snow Soft
To pull off this effect, we can turn the snow on the roof into a soft
surface, so when the large snow ball rolls off the roof it leaves a
trail. |
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Snow
(part 3): Adding Tire Tracks
If you can't simulate the object hitting the snow, you can always hand
animate it, much like a character walking in the snow. This lesson will
teach you how to create hand animated tire tracks. |
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Shatter Effect Overview
Using the shatter effect to break up the objects can save you lots of
time. Instead of breaking apart an object by hand, you can automate the
process with a built-in script. |
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Using
Dynamics to Shatter a Glass
We will use shatter to break apart a glass, but we will use some of the
added features to connect it to a rigid body solver. |
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Creating a Domino Simulation
This lesson will cover the process of setting up domino pieces and
getting them ready for animation. We will then adjust properties to make
a realistic simulation of falling dominos. |
