Duncan's Corner
Paper Airplanes using nCloth
Here is a scene file that lets you launch and fly 5 different paper airplane designs.
Volume displacement method for clouds using fluids
I was recently asked how to convert a cloud displacement map to bring it into Maya fluids. Displacement is rather incomplete for clouds.. even if one assumes the cloud bottom is flat, however it can look good in some cases.
Ink in water using maya fluids
Here are a couple of example Maya files that show using Maya Fluids to handle ink in water. Generally speaking one simply creates a very high resolution fluid with "high detail solve" enabled, self shadowing on the fluid and very low transparency.
Sliding Curtain Rail
With nCloth it is easy to make curtains that are attached to sliding curtain hooks. The basic trick is to use a slide on surface constraint with a long skinny surface for the rail.
Making an ocean from a simple fractal texture
Creating an ocean is relatively easy in Maya Unlimited. However if you only have Maya Complete you can still get a workable ocean using an animated fractal displacement map with the right settings.
Editing the Path Curve of Paint Effects On Poly
If paint effects is assigned to a 3d curve then it will follow the curve normal( which is based on the local curvature and is poorly defined... unless "useNormal" is on, in which case the normal is simply a constant direction ). It needs a curve on surface to understand a surface orientation.
nCloth Vertex Editor (mel script)
Here is a mel script that will allow you to easily edit per vertex nCloth values by selecting vertices and editing values directly with a slider, rather than by using the paint tool.
Parent to Surface script
Here is a script for sticking objects onto a deforming surface. This mel command allows one to attach selected objects to a selected mesh or nurbs surface. The objects will follow any deformation or transformation of the surface.
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