Chapter 18. Dynamics

As you build your scenes in Maya, you'll likely encounter effects or situations that would be difficult to create or animate using traditional keyframing. Leaves blowing across the landscape, for example, or a glass shattering as it hits the ground can take hours to animate by handand the scene still may not end up looking realistic.

You can use Maya's Dynamics menus to simplify these tasks by simulating the motion of an object being affected by different physical forces (Figure 18.1). For example, with just a few mouse clicks (and without setting a single keyframe), you can make a leaf appear to be pushed along by the wind as it simultaneously collides with and rolls along the ground.

Figure 18.1. Rocket trails created using particle effects.

While using the Dynamics menu set can be fun, it can also be frustrating: Hundreds of options are available for most dynamic simulations. In this chapter, we'll concentrate on the basics so that you can get up and running quickly.