Preview
1. Creating Tornado Mesh
Step 1
Open Maya.

Step 2
Go to Create >
Volume Primitives > Cone and create a cone in the perspective viewport.

Step 3
Select the top face of the cone and delete it.

Step 4
With the cone mesh
selected, go to pConeShape1 attribute. Open Smooth Mesh rollout
and turn on Smooth Mesh Preview option. Jump in the vertex selection
mode and edit the shape of the cone as shown in the following image.

2. Animating Tornado Mesh
Step 1
With the tornado mesh
selected, press D key and set the pivot point at the top of the mesh.

Step 2
With the mesh selected,
go to pCone1 attribute and set the Scale Y value to 0.

Step 3
Make a right mouse click
on Scale Y attribute and click on Set Key option.

Step 4
Go to 100th
frame on the time line and set the value of Scale Y attribute to 1.

Step 5
Jump in the Animation mode. With the mesh selected, go to Create Deformers > Lattice.

Step 6
Go to ffd1LatticeShape attribute
and set the lattice divisions as shown in the following image.

Step 7
Make a right click on
the lattice shape and select Lattice Point option. Edit the lattice
points as shown in the following image.

Step 8
With the tornado mesh
selected, animate the Rotate Y value from 0 to 200th
frames. Set the rotation value to 360 degree at 200th
frame.

3. Adding Fluid Effect
Step 1
Jump in the Dynamics
mode. Go to Fluid Effects > Create 3D Container and draw a 3D fluid
container in the view port as shown in the following image.

Step 2
Go to fluidShape1 attribute
and set the value of Base Resolution to 50. You can change this
value to 150 just before rendering for the final output. Change the
values of Density and Velocity to Dynamic Grid.

Step 3
Go to Container
Properties and set the options of Boundary X to None, Boundary
Y to –Y Side and Boundary Z to None. Set the values of
the grid as shown in the following image.

Step 4
With the tornado mesh
and fluid container selected, go to Fluid Effects > Add/ Edit Contents
> Emit from Object.

Step 5
Go to Auto Resize
to turn on Auto Resize option and turn off Resize Closed Boundaries
and Resize in Substeps options. Set the values of Auto Resize
Threshold to 0.002 and Auto Resize Margin to 4.

Step 6
Go to fluidEmitter1 attribute and set the value of Density/ Voxel/ Sec to 5.

Step 7
Go to Lighting
rollout and turn on Self Shadow option and change the value of Shadow
Quality of 2. Set the Ambient Brightness value to 0.2.

Step 8
Go to fluidShape1
> Content Details > Density and set the values of Density Scale
to 1, Buoyancy to 0, Dissipation to 2 and Noise
to 0.100. Go to Velocity and set the values of Swirl
to 10 and Noise to 0.250.

Step 9
Go to Turbulence and set the values of Frequency to 0.5 and Speed to 1.

Step 10
Add lattice and tornado
mesh in layers and turn off the visibility of these layers.

Step 11
Go to Fields >
Vortex and click on the option box.

Step 12
Set the Volume Shape as Cylinder and then click on Create button.

Step 13
Scale up the vortex size to fit in the container as shown in the following image.

Step 14
Go to Dynamic Simulation roll out and set the values of High Detail Solve to All Grids and Solver Quality to 50.
Step 15
Press the render button
and you will see the rendered and simulated tornado image.
Conclusion
In the next part of the tutorial, I'll show you how to create dust impact using fluid dynamics in Maya.
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