Create Smoke
 
 
 

Prepare to use the Smoke effect

Before you use the Smoke effect, be aware of these issues:

To use the Smoke effect

  1. To use smoke images supplied with Maya, copy the images Smoke.0 through Smoke.50 from the following directory on the Maya DVD to the /sourceimages directory of your current project:
    ExploreMe/particles/
    

    To use your own images, put them in the /sourceimages directory of your current project.

  2. Do one of the following:
    • Select the object or CVs, edit points, vertices, or particles that you want to emit smoke.
    • To create a positional emitter, deselect all objects.
  3. Select Effects > Create Smoke > .
  4. Set attributes in the Create Smoke Effect Options window (see Edit attributes of the Smoke effect) and click Create.

    The Smoke effect creates an emitter, emitted particle object, expressions, turbulence field, and other fields needed to make the smoke.

  5. Play the animation.

    Emitted particles appear as squares in the workspace because the particles are displayed as the Sprite render type.

    Here’s an example with Shading > Smooth Shade All turned on.

  6. Hardware render the scene to see the smoke.

    See Rendering for details.

Edit attributes of the Smoke effect

The following pages explain attributes for tuning the Smoke effect. The Smoke effect creates several custom attributes in the emitted particle object it creates. The custom attributes control a combination of field and emitter attributes to lessen the settings you would otherwise need to make to tune the smoke.

Attributes in the Create Smoke Effect Options window

The following attributes appear in the Create Smoke Effect Options window when you select Effects > Create Smoke > . Changes you make to the options window affect smoke you create after you make the changes.

You can edit most of these attributes after you use the Smoke effect by selecting the emitted particle object and opening the Extra Attributes section of the Attribute Editor.

Additional tips

You can do the following additional steps to tune the smoke’s appearance:

  • Change the size and orientation of the smoke by altering the Scale and Rotate values of the emitted particle object.
  • Key a change in the value of Scale Y to make the particles appear to move faster or slower.
  • Edit attributes of the sprites. See Sprites.
  • Edit any expressions created by the Smoke effect. To learn which expressions are created by the effect, apply Smoke to an object in an otherwise empty scene. Use the Expression Editor to see the additions.
  • Turn off the turbulence field by disconnecting it using the Dynamics Relationship Editor.
  • Animate the emitter to move the smoke in your scene.