Visual Effects 2: Final Project - Maya Fluids (Project 1)

Earlier this week, I created a post showing the WIP of the project that I was currently working on in my visual effects class - Maya Fluids. After fixing up certain areas and adding more visual appeal, I feel like my project is finally complete. Honestly, I loved this project so much that I could have worked on it for hours on end - adjusting attributes and applying more visual appeal. After my first WIP, I added in quite a bit to the project. I added in textures and bump maps on the wooden pallets as well as the ground plane, added in particles that mimc the effect of umbers emerging from a fire, adjusted the speed of the fire, and added expressions to the lights to create a "flicker" that creates the effect of a real fire.

I learned a great deal of things while doing this project. With a bit of troubleshooting and abundant research, I learned how to add a random expression to a physical lights intensity to add a flicker from the light. Each light (five lights total - one ambient light, and four area lights) contains its own light intensity expression, meaning that each lights intensity will change at different rates and change at different times. For example: areaLightShape2 = rand(-1,1). There are infinite options as to what expressions one could apply to a light for a specific look.

Also, I learned how to work with particles once again (more of a refresher) and I mainly, I also learned how to work with fluids. Fluids are fantastic at obtaining any kind of fire that you are looking to achieve for your given scene - campfire, lighter, torch, grass fire, chemical fire, grill, exhaust, ect. In order to achieve the specific goals for your chosen fire, adjusting the fluids attributes will create a successful fluid project.

The main issue that I ran into was the render time of the particles and the fluids separately. The particles (used to create the umbers of the fire) took significantly more time to render with Maya Hardware (2-3 hours) as fluids only took about half of the time (1-2 hours) with Maya Software. The rest of my minor troubleshooting errors were easily taken care of through thorough research and the "trial and error" process.

Finally, here in my Final project! I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did creating it. Thank you!