INSTANCING PARTICLE Geometry

01 Create An emitter

In Maya, change the module to FX. You’ll notice the menu bar changing. Go to nparticles. Roughly halfway across the drop-down menu, you’ll find a Create Emitter button. By default, the emitter generates colourful balls. They’re the only type of built-in geometry that Arnold can render at the moment. Play with the particles in the nparticleshape node.

02 Customising the PARTICLES

By default, Maya generates three nodes: Emitter (which is the emitter node), nparticleshape (which is the shape node for the particles), Nucleus (which is the physics node of sorts). You can set up a ground plane, which is infinite in size in any axis you set it, using the Nucleus node. You can also play with the physics of the world, such as gravity and wind.

03 instancing

When you’re happy with your particles and the physics of the world, go back to the nparticles menu. Before that, though, select the replacement custom geometry you want and then select the nparticle node. The order of selection is very important. Then, go to the nparticles menu and click Instancer. You’ll find that everything will still be as the selected particle shape was, simulation-wise.

04 Adding geometry

A new node called Instancer has been generated. It has the geometry you added for replacement plus the rotation order and other settings. You may encounter some issues, for instance, you will notice that your simulation is still set to the object shape you originally simulated. Keep the particle shape as close as possible to the object you’ll be replacing it with to avoid this.