What's New in Dynamics and nDynamics

nHair

The nHair hair generation system has been added to the Nucleus dynamic simulation framework. As part of a Nucleus system, dynamic nHair curves can self-collide and interact with other Nucleus objects, including nParticle, nCloth, and passive collision objects.

nHair has many advantages over the previous hair system including:

Performance improvements especially for hair systems with a large number of follicles.
Nucleus-based solving for collisions and self-collisions that provide better collision accuracy and control.
nConstraints that let you create constraints between Nucleus object components.
nCaching for saving and playing back hair simulations.

You can create and modify nHair systems from the nHair menu located in the nDynamics menu set.

MayaBullet physics simulation plug-in

Maya now includes the MayaBullet physics simulation plug-in. Built from the Bullet physics library, the plug-in lets you use the Bullet physics engine to create large-scale, highly-realistic dynamic and kinematic simulations. MayaBullet simulations can include interacting soft body and rigid body objects, as well as constrained collision objects, all contained in a single dynamic system within Maya.

MayaBullet automatically installs with Maya on Windows 64-bit, Mac OS, and Linux systems. MayaBullet is not available for Windows 32-bit systems.

For documentation on MayaBullet, see http://www.autodesk.com/mayabullet-docs.

Fluid nCaching improvements

The Create Fluid Cache Options window now includes a One file per geometry option, which lets you can select multiple fluid objects in your scene and create individual fluid nCache files for each object.

Fluid nCache > Create New Cache

nParticle Post Cache Ramp Evaluation

A new Post Cache Ramp Evaluation attribute lets you determine how ramp attribute data is evaluated. When on, the ramp output is re-evaluated using the cached input attribute rather than the cached data. This attribute is off by default.

Post Cache Ramp Evaluation

Particle count heads-up display

A new Particle Count heads-up display option lets you display the total number of particles and the number of selected particles (including nParticles and classic particles).

To turn on Particle Count, select Display > Heads Up Display > Particle Count.

Display > Heads Up Display