Understanding Particles and Dynamics in Maya—Part 11

Preview:

1. Creating Chain Base with Plane

Step 1

Open Maya.

Step 2

Go to Create > Polygon Primitives > Plane and draw a plane on the perspective view port. 

Step 3

Initially, the plane should not have any segments. So, set the values of Subdivisions Width and Subdivisions Height to 1. 

2. Creating Chain

Step 1

To create the chain, go to Create > Polygon Primitives > Torus.

Step 2

Draw a torus primitive on the plane as shown in the following image.

Step 3

With the torus selected, go to Attribute Editor > polyTorus1 and set the values of Radius and Section Radius to 1 and 200 respectively. Set the value of Subdivisions Axis and Subdivisions Height to 6 and 5 respectively.

Step 4

With the torus selected, go to pTorus1 tab and set the Scale X value to 1.500. This makes the torus a bit scaled in X-axis.

Step 5

With the torus selected, press Ctrl-D key to make a duplicate copy of it.

Step 6

Arrange the duplicate torus as shown in the following image. Set the Rotate X value to 90.

Step 7

Now, make the duplicate copy of the first torus and put it as shown in the following image.

Step 8

Following the same way, make the duplicate copy of the second torus and put it as shown in the following image.

Step 9

In this way, keep creating the copies of the torus and put them in the form of chain as shown in the following image.

Step 10

With all chain elements selected, go to Mesh > Combine.

3. Creating Rope Simulation

Step 1

Jump in the top view and turn off the Grid view as shown in the following image.

Step 2

With the plane selected, go to Edit Mesh > Insert Edge Loop Tool.

Step 3

Create two edge loops at the inner ends of the chain as shown in the following image.

Step 4

Following the same way, keep creating edge loops as shown in the following image.

Step 5

Jump in the nDynamics mode. With the plane selected, go to nMesh > Create nCloth.

Step 6

With two vertices of the plane selected, go to nConstraint > Transform.

Step 7

Go to Attribute Editor > nucleus1 > Solver Attributes tab and set the values of Substeps to 10 and Max Collision Iterations to 20. 

Step 8

Go to Scale Attribute tab and set the values of Space Scale to 0.005.

Step 9

Go to nClothShape1 > Dynamic Properties and increase the Stretch Resistance value to 100.

4. Attaching Chain to Rope

Step 1

Jump in Animation mode. Select the chain followed by the plane and then go to Create Deformers > Wrap.

Step 2

Hit the play button and you will see the chain mesh is simulating according to the simulation of the plane.

Step 3

You can hide the plane during the simulation.

Conclusion

In the next tutorial, I'll demonstrate some more exciting tips and tricks of Dynamics in Maya.