So far this week, I have been reading 'In Silico', and working through the tutorials provided. I had previously completed a lot of work within Maya, so the majority of material covered was not new to me... until I reached the section on dynamics, something I haven't worked with before.
As part of this new material, I created a simple dynamics system - a cylinder filled with tiny little spheres, which would 'float' around and collide with the cylinder and each other. This was created using a particle emitter, and although somewhat basic, has already opened my eyes to the benefits of using the dynamic system. The ability to create a fully animated scene by simply just setting up some object properties is amazing. Certainly much easier than trying to animate each object individually (there were 200 spheres) and far more realistic!
In addition to realising the potential of using dynamics, I was also introduced to my first piece of MEL scripting. MEL stands for Maya Embedded Language and is a scripting language within Maya. I used MEL to apply colour to each of the spheres based on their proximity to other spheres. They are normally black, and become more red as they get closer to other spheres, becoming fully red upon collision. Using colour made the simulation clearer - something which will be very important in later work that I undertake.
Finally, I created a quick playblast of the simulation. Nothing fancy, or complicated, but it shows the start of my research into using dynamics and scripting within Maya.
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