Maya Particles.. My thoughts. 2005-05-05 - By Bradley R. Gabe
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The impression I've been getting is that if you are non technical, you can
get further with XSI particles, mainly due to the ability to treat each
point of the cloud as a typical vertex point.
However, if you are technically savvy, you can get much further with Maya
particles due to the openness of the system to standard expressions. And
the reality is, particles and effects dynamics are often so need specific,
they require constant customization. Thus the continued popularity of Maya
over XSI for effects work.
I'm pretty scripting savvy, and I've had a tough time dealing with XSI
particles and trying to access the cloud to influence forces and particle
attributes. Though at this point, I doubt Softimage needs to hear any more
complaints about the particles. Seems as though we all have different ideas
and suggestions on what can be done to improve them, the barrage of which
must seem like an awful lot of noise. It may be more constructive for the
XSI community to come to some kind of consensus on what we'd like to have
particle-wise so they don't just keep patching on band aids to the current
system.
-Brad
>Let's not forget that apart from forces, what makes Maya's particles
>"work" is the sampling, which is way ahead of XSI.
>
>Also, from a scripting/SDK standpoint, Maya's particles are considerably
>more open.
>
>AD
>
>-- --Original Message-- --
>From: owner-xsi@(protected) [mailto:owner-xsi@(protected)] On Behalf
>Of Matt Hollingsworth
>Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 12:26 PM
>To: XSI@(protected)
>Subject: Re: Maya Particles.. My thoughts.
>
>Hey,
>
>I've been doing particles for the Fantastic Four film here at Stan
>Winston, using XSI, and doing Maya particles at home, so doing both at
>the same time. So, some thoughts on this as well:
>
>There actually are a few things that XSI can do that Maya cannot;
>delete individual points in the cloud, deform clusters of points, use
>shape animation on clouds if they live forever. Maya can deform the
>entire cloud, but not a section of the cloud. No shape anim. No inter
>particle collision without trickery. But, yes, Maya's Fields (same as
>Forces) are way way better. XSI's turbulence is directional and is
>really wind. Maya's is actually just a noise function, but it works
>really well. Expressions are indeed needed, but they are very easy to
>
>use. For instance, on a turbulence field, youc an animate the movement
>of the turbulence in the PhaseX, PhaseY channel. Like: PhaseX = 3.3 *
>time; Simple. Also, it makes it easy to script individual particles
>attributes suing other attributes. So, say you want the mass of an
>individual particle to increase with it's age, jsut write "mass = age;"
>
>Pretty straight forward. And, using ramps (grads) to define the opacity
>
>and color of an individual particle based on it's age is pretty cool.
>Most of this stuff you can do in XSI, but the fact is that there just
>isn't quite as much power or control over forces in XSI, and that ends
>up hurting a lot. In Maya you can apply a "Newton" field to a particle
>cloud, and have it repel or attrach another cloud, ona per particle
>basis if you wanna wait around for it to compute.
>
>Anybody ever play around with Houdini?
>
>Now, don't attack me. I am one of those fairly rare individuals who is
>
>neutrel in this whole XSI versus Maya debate. I jsut like both for it's
>
>own strengths.
>
>Eric, share any other experiences you may have.
>
>cheers,
>
>-M
>
>Eric Lampi wrote:
>
> >So I've been working for a couple of days in Maya,
> >trying to figure out it's particle system.
> >
> >In a nutshell, it sucks. There are some nice things
> >about it. The playback is super fast, since it mostly
> >operates in what we would call "live" mode. Their's
> >actually works, where as in XSI, well, rarely works
> >well if at all, and when it does it's not much faster
> >anyway.
> >
> >They also have some issues with shaders, some things
> >need to be rendered in Hardware.. or software.. It's
> >not all that clear to me.
> >
> >The forces at first seem to work quite well right
> >away. Often in XSI you apply a force, and it doesn't
> >do much, or the results are not very good.
> >
> >I was amused to see that in order to add variance to
> >any value, you need to add it as an expression, which
> >is an incredible waste of time. In general you seem
> >to have to have a decent scripting background even for
> >the most basic functions. Overall it's been a
> >frustrating experience, and Maya in general seems to
> >be kind of messy. Navigating your emitters forces etc
> >is much easier. For example, it's simply a matter of
> >highlighting a force in the list to apply it to an
> >emitter.
> >
> >It's nice that you can script functions and
> >attributes, but I think it's pretty lame to make it
> >necessary for really basic functions. Which seems to
> >be the theme in Maya.
> >
> >So in general, XSI simply needs to improve workflow,
> >speed, and forces. There are some additonal things I
> >would address, but those are the biggest as far as I
> >can see.
> >
> >I was pretty impressed with the ability to select an
> >object, add a turbulence force, press play and watch
> >it drift away. Which is probably the only thing I can
> >manage to do in 3 clicks in Maya!
> >
> >E
> >
> >Freelance 3-D Animator, F/X Artist, Particle Man
> >---
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> >
> >
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