Particle Effects in Maya

Maya has many different ways in which you can create particle effects but the one that has become my favourite is the one where I can use particles to create the illusion that an object is dissolving away bit by bit. This technique is done by emitting particles from a texture on the object using ramp shaders, now I have explained this in another blog post so I won't explain it again.

This technique has build up my abilities in Maya and has taught me new skill with in the software, this will give me more on an impression when other people look at my work because of the fact that I'm not just an 3D artist who can just do character animation but who also can do effects with in Maya. It's also made me more interested in particle effects and want to explore more in this technique and effect. There has been a book that I've been meaning to get from amazon which is Lee lanier's Creating Visual Effects In Maya, where it goes through how to create Fire, Water, Debris and Destruction. The book has combined the latest studio techniques with  multi-chapter,hands-on project sand professionally-vetted workflows to bolster my CG toolkit.

  I've produced a lot of water effects in Maya but it would be great to learn other particle effects and use the instancer effect to create debris in an efficient way and produce asteroid fields using the dynamics in Maya.