Particle System Process

This Page will go over how to create a particle system in Maya and in Unity.

Simple Maya Particle System
How to create and customize a particle emitter in Maya. This will go over one way you can customize a particle system in Maya to create a small firework sprinkler effect. You can experiement with any of the settings to create different and more complex results.

What You Need: You, Maya, Small Star Texture

1. In Maya, lengthen the animation timeline so there is enough time to see how your particle system animates.

2. Change the workspace to Dynamics.

3. Go to Particles > Emitter and click the box to look at the settings.

4. Let's make an "Omni" emitter with default settings. Click "Create".

5. Check out the outliner by going to Window > Outliner and click on particle1, which was made when you created the emitter and check out the Attribute Editor panel and click the particleShape1 tab.

6. Scroll down a little to see the "Lifespan Attributes" and change the "Lifespan Mode" from "Live Forever" to "Random Range". This will allow the star particles disappear over time. For this example, set "Lifespan" to 0.250 and "Lifespan Random" to 1.00.

7. Scroll down farther to find "Render Attributes". You want to select "Depth Sort" so that the particles would be rendered starting from the back to the front. This would prevent weird graphics artifacts that could happen when rendering the particles in the front before rendering particles layered behind them.

8. Change the "Particle Render Type" to "Sprites".

9. Click play to have the sprite particle boxes show up on the screen.

10. Right click on one of the particles and apply a new Lambert material. Assign your star texture to that material and your particles will now look like stars. If you want your star particles to blend in with each other, you want to have a transparent texture with an alpha channel.

11. Go to the Outliner, click on the emitter, and check out the attribute editor. Change the settings so that under "Basic Emitter Attributes" you have "Scale Rate By Speed" checked.

12. Under "Basic Emission Speed Attributes", change "Speed" to 3.000 and "Speed Random" to 1.000.

13. Click play in the animation timeline and you should now have something that resembles firework sparks.

Rendering Maya Particle Systems
How you want to render particle systems in Maya depends on the type of particles you are working with. For this example, we will be rendering the sprite particle system described in the previous section.

The quickest way to test is to just render out a frame and see if your particles show up.

Click on the Render tab on the shortcut shelf and click on the icon for "Render Current Frame". For sprite particles, rendering using "Maya Hardware" should work.

Creating a Unity Particle System
Will be creating a Smoke particle system and with this can be expanded into creating other systems

Start with creating a basic particle system by going to GameObject; Create other; particle System



Will then go and change settings in the particle system drop down menu

Start Time = 5.4 (How long particles will last in seconds)

Start Speed = 5.5 ( How fast the Particle travel)

Start Size = 14.4 (how Large or small the particles will be)

Start Rotation = 19.1 (What direction the particles move, in degrees)

Start Color = White (color of the particles)



The next thing to change will be under the Emission tab

Rate = 10.76



The Shape tab will be next and there will be a few things that will needed to be changed

Shape = Cone

Angle = .04

Radius = 1.88

Emit From = Base



The next thing to check is Color Over Lifetime, and will have to work with the Graditor editor and it will have to look like the photo



Will then have to check Size over lifetime, this one you will have to change the curve editor and have the curve look like the photo



Now go down and check Size by Speed, this two is also a Curve editor and should look like the Photo.



The next one is Rotation Over Lifetime, You will have to then pick the Random Between Two Curves and have it look like the Photo.



ast is Renderer and there is two things to change

Render mode = BillBoard

Material = Smoke Material ( that will have to be created)



Create Smoke Material
1) Find Smoke Texture (CGTexture.com)

2) Take Smoke into PhotoShop and and remove smoke that is touching edges

3) Bring new Smoke photo into unity. (Drag and drop into the assets in Unity)

4) Create a new Material in unity

5) In Material go to Shader and in the drop down, go to Particles and then Additive (soft). Then drag and drop the material image into the selection area.

Now you can add it to the Particle System