Duncan's Corner
Animating a Book with nCloth
With nCloth it is relatively simple to create a fully dynamic book where one can flip pages naturally. It would be almost impossible to capture the subtle motion of twisting pages this provides if one instead used deformers or other non-dynamic techniques.
Dynamic Follow MEL Script
Here is a script that allows you to easily have one object follow the position of another, but with damping and a lag. I find it is very useful when you wish to have a camera follow an object automatically without following too closely or in too jerky a fashion. Note how in the example avi the camera follows the general motion of the sphere but not so closely as to bounce up and down with the sphere.
Light Glow occlusion
There is a common confusion with lightglow occlusion in Maya(not to be confused with light fog).
Simple moving fireball with Maya Fluids
Here is a simple file with a moving emitter in a fluid. The detail depends on the fluid resolution in this case and no texturing was used. I created the file in a few minutes starting with a default 3d fluid and emitter. The emitter was parented to an animated sphere, and thus gets the motion of the sphere. The emitter settings are otherwise at the defaults.
It's Slinky, it's Slinky!
Here is how to do the "fun and the best of the toys" using Maya nCloth. The slinky is a special type of near zero tension spring. It is constructed with a flat ribbon of metal that resists shear and bend in the ribbon plane but easily bends down the axis of the spring. We can simulate it with nCloth by constructing a long spiral cloth ribbon and giving it similar properties.
Topology Independant nCloth Constraints
Often times one will set up an nCloth constraint and then wish to edit the topogy of the input mesh, for example to increase the number of faces. The indices of the faces and vertices may be changed and so it may require reselecting the constraint components and doing "nConstraint: Replace Members", which can be tedious.
The "g" key
One of my favorite things in Maya is the humble "g" key, which repeats the last maya command. Most Maya users are likely familiar with it, but I often seen people going back and forth to menus in a slow lumbering fashion where the "g" key would have made quick work out of it. They just didn't think to use the "g" key. When in doubt just try it, you can always undo if didn't do what you wanted.
Basic cloth on character setup
When creating cloth on a character one typically has the problem of getting the cloth into the correct starting pose for the simulation. This is frequently done by creating a little runup animation moving to the start pose, although this is rather tedious. Here is a somewhat easier to use setup.
Confetti and Streamers with nCloth
It's party time! Paper confetti and streamers can be created with nCloth using an efficient and simple technique. The falling bits of paper interact with the air in a natural fashion colliding with objects in the scene and even self colliding. Only one shader is required to create a full range of confetti colors and only one cloth node is required.
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