Maya - Warcraft style particle effects

Torch

Hey all, I was hoping to get some information on adding some simple particle effects in the style of Warcraft to a couple of character animations and wondered how to do something similar in Maya. I'm not an expert with particle systems by any means, but I'm guessing that the effects in game are done with Sprites?

Have been looking around for some good links on the subject but so far haven't had much luck, would love any help on the subject Thanks!

Paunescu.Daniel

not an expert either but i assume the particles in Warcraft and WoW as well, like smoke or enchants on weapons and such are some self illuminated planes with an alpha map in the opacity, and a diffuse ofc, i guess this technique is used in most games today, not only in Warcraft, hope i'm not wrong.

Justin Meisse

yeah, it's done with sprites, I'm not sure how it's done in Maya, and I'm no FX expert but you just want some sort of simple particle emitter spraying out sprites. Typically the texture is black & white and is set to additive (if it's glowing).

If you can't find any game specific Maya fx tutorials it's best to keep things simple, maybe look into some UDK cascade tutorials to get an idea for the limitations of in game particle systems.

throttlekitty

http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2011help/index.html?url=./files/Particles.htm,topicNumber=d0e398822

Most games have some manner of particle system, and as far as I can tell, they're all pretty much the same. I think the biggest limitation is games tend to use primitive emitter types.

Torch

Hey guys, thanks a lot for the advice! I'm going to have a look at that link and see what I can learn from it After some searching on google, I also found this:-

http://lesterbanks.com/2011/01/simple-method-for-maya-particle-sprites-using-expressions/

Might be useful for some Maya users

Mark Dygert

If particles gets to complicated you can animate simple planes yourself. For something like a growing/shrinking glowing circle of runes on the ground you really don't need a particle emitter. But if you're showering the scene in sparks an emitter is very helpful.

.morph3us

the warcraft 3 particles where all made with a pretty simple particle emitter...
use less and bigger ones, preferrably the same texturing style as blizz

Torch

Thanks for all the replies guys, I heard there was an actual 'Blizzard Particle Creator' but I can't imagine it would be too hard to replicate sprite effects in Maya...will look into it and see what I can come up with

bugo

only complication of particles in maya is using expressions. All the basic stuff you can handle. You could export your model to Unity 3d and their particle editing is SUPER easy.