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 100^th 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 200^th frames. Set the rotation value to 360 degree at 200^th 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.