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Software Discussion
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Maya
River of lava
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mitm2002 68 posts15 Mar 2008Any advice on the best way to create a slow-moving river of lava? -
mahmoudnahmad 1,159 posts15 Mar 2008never tried it my self but i would suggest (forgot the name of the AE plugin) there is an AE plug in that creates realistic water add fractule noise with Glass effects and using curves and hue and saturation to give the color and flare then for some more realism get some masked out rocks and add lava particles using particluer getting splashed of the rock (best view for this is having the river flowing towards you as in the person looking at the screen) -
Will J 215 posts15 Mar 2008Hey
, I may be mistaken but I think there is a lava fluid example if you're running maya unlimited. It's under Fluids > Get fluid example. Again I may be wrong, I haven't got maya to hand right now.
If it is there, in the notes section of the attribute editor is a fairly good description of how itr works and how to put it all together. You could mess around with it and see if you can make it work for you, or start from scratch. Good luck, show us the final, your work has been great so far 
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16 Mar 2008yeah, fluids is the best way to go, but be prepared for long renders, and a headache or two.. I mean, you're using maya after all. There is an example of how to make a fluid collide with objects, and it's very lava-like, so that file may be a great start.
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16 Mar 2008yeah as everyone is saying, maya fluids if you don't have maya unlimited you can probably get some sort of result with soft bodies (dynamics). i would model a simple cube-type geo in the shape of the lava flow, add divisions (you are going to have to experiment with how many -- just remember, the geo is going to be displaced so its going to have to be a lot), turn into soft bodies (w/ goal weights). have a ground plane that's passive for the soft body to travel along. maybe some rocks that are also passive to collide with. add gravity and another field (maybe air) to control the flow and direction. tweak and adjust conserve and goal weights to taste.
obviously it won't be as good as fluids and will require more tweaking. so, depending on your shot, this could work for you if you don't have access to unlimited.
edit: if you also want to displace the ground, just make two ground planes on top of each other. one passive body and the other a soft body. this way the lava flows along the passive while (slightly) displacing the top plane. -
mitm2002 68 posts16 Mar 2008RIght now I'm leaning towards doing the lava in Real Flow. But I want to import my volcano and ground objects into Real Flow - in which case I need to convert my Quads to Triangles. Is there a button for that in Maya (he asked hopefully)?
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Will J 215 posts16 Mar 2008Mesh > Triangulate
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Or Polygons > Triangulate in earlier versions of our lovely maya. -
mitm2002 68 posts17 Mar 2008THANKS, Will J!
One last little problem - ha ha... I don't seem to have the plugin to import a Real Flow mesh into Maya. I don't see it at Real Flow's website or at Autodesk's. Am I blind?!
*EDIT: Oh wait, never mind - I'm using the free trial version - I guess you need a license to get the plugins. Anybody wanna loan me a couple thousand dollars? Ha ha. -
18 Mar 2008if you're really in a bind, the trick i see often times in games is they'll just move the UV map along the surface to make it look like the lava texture is 'flowing' down the line.
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18 Mar 2008maybe this can help you
its for max actually but you can use the idea of it in maya i guess
http://nasash.com/cgblog/2008/01/23/qui ... ial-3dsmax -
18 Mar 2008thats a really cool tutorial diemacht, thanks for sharing it. i kinda wanna make something with lava now!
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mitm2002 68 posts23 Mar 2008THANKS for all the advice and tips, everybody!
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Will J 215 posts23 Mar 2008Wow that is a smart tutorial! I suppose an FFD box is something like a maya lattice deformer? Its amazing what you can do without all the funky new fluid plugins and whtnot out there today. The render times will be much smaller too.
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24 Mar 2008yes the lattice deformer would be exactly what to use, i only wish maya had the array of deformers that 3ds max did tho
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Will J 215 posts24 Mar 2008I aggree, max does have an impressive selection, but maya has all the ones that you really need. Still, I'd love the noise deformer.
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25 Mar 2008what i really like about max and it's deformers is the ability to turn them on and off in layers.
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25 Mar 2008shame that it doesnt work the same way in maya :S
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26 Mar 2008it is quite a shame, i wish they would just merge since they're now both owned by autodesk.
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mahmoudnahmad 1,159 posts26 Mar 2008i think my friend once told me one of them got an add on that gives one or the other UI
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26 Mar 2008There are scripts for max to set the hotkeys as close to default maya as possible, but I've never seen a plugin for the UI. I've looked a lot. =P
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