by : Tomer Elgrably
This Tutrial will Teach you how to create The Bullet Effect Like In The Matrix in Maya, u will expirience The maya intenser, and some mel scripting.
Start by Making a Nurbs sphere, and move it to the side of the scene, rotate his Z axis by -90(for later when we texture it) adjust it to look kinda like this:
Figure 1.
After It go to Dyamics, Particles > Create Emitter, Emitter Type - Directional, Rate - 20.0, like this:
Now in the Outliner.. select particle1, Edit his attributes, under Add Dynamic Attributes Press On General, In Attribute Name write : "TheScale" and under Attribute Type Select Per Particle(Array) and then press on add.
Press on Add Dynamic Attributes Press > General again, In Attribute Name write : "sinos" and under Attribute Type Select Scalar and then press on add.
Next, Select The nurbsSphere1, and in Particles > Instancer(Replacement), in General Options > Scale Choose TheScale that we made earlier, select create, If u'll try to play the animation u wont see anything because the scale of the objects is not configured yet, now we will get to the place which made me a huge headic when I did it - Programming with MEL(Maya Embended Language).
Next, In The Outliner select particle1, Edit its Attributes, in Per Particle(Array) Attributes > TheScale Press right mouse button(RMB) and select Creation Expression.. In the Expression: write this:
if (sin(particleShape1.Sinos)<0.2){
>particleShape1.TheScale=0.2;
particleShape1.Sinos = particleShape1.Sinos+ 1;
}else
particleShape1.TheScale=sin(particleShape1.Sinos);
Next, Edit its Attributes, in Per Particle(Array) Attributes > TheScale Press right mouse button(RMB) and select Runtime Expression.. In the Expression: write this:
if (frame == 1) particleShape1.Sinos =0.3;
if (particleShape1.Sinos>0.9)
particleShape1.Sinos = 0.3;
particleShape1.Sinos=particleShape1.Sinos+0.002;
Playback the animation, u'll get sometime that looks like the effect in matrix, all that we need to do now is keyframe the emitter and add material to the nurbSphere1, make a new blinn material, and assign it to the nurbSphere1, in the color of the material change it to some blue shade as u which(this doesnt have so much effection because the material will almost be fully transparence, now add new ramp to the transparency channel, and adjust it to look like this:
This Will make the object be almost fully transparence, now change the Specular Shading > Essentricity - 0.2, Specular Roll off - 1.0, Reflectivity - 0.0, specular color - RBG = R - 0.796, G - 0.924, B - 1.0. Raytrace Options > Select the Refractions, Refractive Index - 1.010. and we done with the material.
Next, Select The Emitter1, Set Key, And then go to frame 150, change the Emitter1 Translate X = -7.656 and Set Key.
You are Now ready to Add lights, change the animation as u like, And Render, Download The Scene here. If u have any comments send them to my E:Mail : TomerEp@yahoo.com. I hope this Tutorial Has been helpful for you people:)