Animated fountain with 5 sources

In this tutorial we describe how to arrange a scene with five animated sources. First we animate sources direction.
Then we add speed animation and finally we animate source radius.

ARRANGING SCENE

  1. First of all, select a playback range from 0 to 150 frames.
  2. Press glu3D shelf button in the Shelf. glu3D Control Panel appear. A bowl is created by default. A glu3D source is placed in Maya scene with a LOD of 50. Select LOD equal to 100. For the moment until the end of the scene setup, we can work with a LOD of 100, that will be faster than higher values of LOD. Once scene is ready we can return to LOD 1000 (High LOD settings) and recalculate all.
  3. Go to Sources tag in glu3D Control Panel. Press New Source button four times. Four additional sources are then created around origin.
  4. Edit source's speed and set it to 8 for all five sources. This can be done in glu3D Control Panel in the Sources tag. Just type over the speed cell in every source and press ENTER key after editing each source speed.

ANIMATING SOURCES DIRECTION

  1. Select all sources ( nurbsCircleNodes ) with the shift key pressed
  2. Press s key to set a keyframe at start frame.
  3. Select rotate tool in the toolBox with all sources selected.
  4. Go to frame 50 and rotate sources to make them look to sky.
  5. Press s key to set a keyframe at frame 50.

Go to frame 100 and rotate the sources set to look horizontally.

  1. Press s key to set a key at frame 100.
  2. Select gluEmitter node and show AttributeEditor Window to access glu3D Particle's Death Parameters. Set Particle's Life Span to 50 (frames).
  3. Rewind animation and press PLAY button to make glu3D calculate animation. Some particles fall outside the test-bowl; however they die after reaching a -25.0 (viewport units) vertical coordinate (default value).

After animation time slider reaches frame 150 you can stop animation and REPLAY scene.

If you want to representate glu3D surface, then go to Surface tag in glu3D Control Panel and activate polymesh surface check-box. REPlay scene from start and a polymesh surface sequence is generated after calculating each animation frame.

ANIMATING SOURCE'S SPEED

Now we animate source's emission speed. First we go to start frame.

  1. Select a sourceGlu ( nurbsCircleShape) in Maya viewport.
  2. In Attribute Editor Window for a sourceGlu object press with the right mouse button over speed edit box and select Set Key.
  3. Go to frame number 50 and set one more key for sourceGlu's speed attribute. Repeat this for frame 100.
  4. Pick with right mouse button over speed attribute again and now select sourceGlu_speed.output attribute. Select sourceGlu_speed tag in Attribute Editor. There should be the table with the keys for sourceGlu's speed attribute.
  5. Set a speed of 12 for frame number 50.
  6. Now choose a viewport layout with two panes: one hypergraph and other graph editor. Select gluEmitter in hypergraph window. In Attribute Editor Window now appear all sources. Select one and set a key ( you should be at start frame) over speed atribute with right mouse button like before. Repeat this with all sources ( excluding the first one already edited). In the graph Editor Window now appear all sources.
  7. Select first source and in the spline graph select all keys (click and drag rectangle). With the right mouse button select edit/copy for that selected keys.
  8. Select one of the other sourceGluX.speed elements in the left side of the graph window. Click with right mouse button and select edit/paste. All keyframes should be pasted in this sourceGlu.speed.
  9. Repeat all this with the remaining sources. All sources must have the same graphic for sourceGlu.speed
  10. RESTART animation and let glu3D calculate all 150 frames of the playback range. Once calculated, REPLAY scene to see resulting animated fountain with particles.
  11. Once animation is calculated, we can add a polysurface mesh to recover the particle set. For that, select Show mesh surface check-box in Surface Parameter section of gluEmitter Attribute Editor. Vary some mesh parameters to adapt resulting mesh to your requirements. Then REPLAY animation again. Disconnect mesh surface for the moment to speed up the scene setup.

ANIMATING SOURCE'S RADIUS

In this last steps we animate emitter radius. This proccess is the same that animating source's speed so, just repeat last step sequence with radius attribute and set a radius of 0 for frame number 50 in all sources.

RESTART glu3D calculations with new keyframes and let glu3D calculate until the end of the playback range (frame 150).

       


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