Particles status

[hellobard]

Good morning!

I was just wondering what the current status of the support for the particle system in Maya is, and what the future plans are? Is it high on the priority list? And will Phoenix come to Maya later on?

I know there's a particle instancer and that some forms of particles will render, but stuff like clouds/smoke/fire isn't working yet right? Also, is there any documentation on how the particle instancer works?

[vladimir.nedev]

You can currently render sphere and sprite particles with V-Ray. I'll try to add support for the point and multipoint particles later this week. Rendering clouds and fire will require implementing the particleCloud shader and the cloud particle render type. I'm not sure when we'll get to that. But if you do need it, this definitely gets it higher in the priority list. We'll be implementing rendering for Maya fluids in V-Ray in the coming weeks. Fire, smoke and clouds can be achieved with them as well. I'm not sure how well will that go until we've tried implementing it though.

As for the particle instancer, you can read the Maya documentation on it. We've just added support for rendering it with V-Ray, it is a Maya feature to begin with, not something V-Ray specific.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[hellobard]

Thank you for the great reply, Vladimir!

That sounds great, and I'm excited to hear these features are coming closer!
Particles and fluids are things that are very useful to have available for us Maya users, especially for those of us who do motion graphics and VFX. If we can achieve clouds/fire/smoke with Maya Fluids, then that will probably be sufficient before the particleShader is done I will have a look at the particle instancer in the Maya Help files in the mean time to see what I can do with it in the meantime.

[timdog]

mmmm Fluids, sounds great! Will that mean that well also get the volumtric stuff available in max? (Where youre able to render clouds and so on)

[vladimir.nedev]

Well, there is already the VRayEnvironmentFog like in 3ds Max. If you can't achieve something with it, that's possible in the 3ds Max one, please report this as a bug. The Maya fluids will be implemented on top of the VRayEnvironmentFog actually.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Reaversword]

I'll try to add support for the point and multipoint particles later this week.

Great!, the next work I have been responsible its about a bronze statue that take life, I'm gonna need this point and multipoint particles for render the bronze particles brusting away, unfocused using beautiful bokeh effects in some zones, or at least this is the idea, but:

Vladimir, this implementation, gonna be in the official Vray for Maya 2011 release, or in the nighty builds?. Man, Vray for Max, VrayRt, Vray for Maya, gpu render through open cl, and now Phoenix... Its crazy!. Better that you be at least like in the film, 300.

[vladimir.nedev]

I'm not sure the point particles will get into the official service pack. They may be left out for the nightly builds.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Reaversword]

Ok then. When the time comes, I'll know where to search.

[mattwilsonVelatura]

GHASP... fluids in Vray!! that would be a dream come true. Let me know if you need any heavy fluid scenes to test with!

[aweidenhammer]

Yup. I would love to see MayaFluids rendering in vray. Count me as another request!

[bradon]

we second that request we need vray fluid rendering in maya asap... were working on something right now that we need to render in the next 2 weeks.

thanks,
Bradon

[vladimir.nedev]

You can try point/multipoint particle rendering in the latest builds. These also include an initial version of Maya fluid rendering. I still need to add support for the built-in procedural noise texture and the drop-off shapes. But you should be able to render at least some of the example fluids ( smoke, fire, wind-tunnel for example). Also you can send me your examples to test with.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[pechart]

Sounds great! Short question: Does vray support perParticle attributes passed through to the maya-instancer? That would be REALLY nice. I know finalRender supports this, mentalray doesn't.

[paulDryzen]

Fluids? cool! Anything else we should now?

[vladimir.nedev]

What do you mean by "through the Maya instancer" ? May be using a particle sampler node in a shading network assigned to an instancer ? We still need to add support for the particle sampler.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev