Creating A Missile Animation in Maya Using Instancers - By Aziz
August 17th, 2006
Level: Intermediate
In this tutorial we will animate a group of missiles being shot towards the sky using the 'Instancers' features in Maya. Play the animation below to see an example of what we are going to create in this tutorial. This is an intermediate level tutorial, you are expected to be familiar with the fundamental tools in Maya.
Start a new Maya file, access the preferences and change the to and the the to Real-Time (24 FPS). This should make our animation smoother.
I am going to provide you with the missile model to save time as this is not a modeling tutorial. You can create your own model if you would like to do so. Insert the model into the scene and make sure that it is laying along the X axis as it so much easier to deal with instancers that way.
Scene and Missile Setup
Select the missile on the stage, this should make you see the transform pivot "X Y Z" in the center of the missile. We are going to move this pivot to the tail of the missile.* To do this hit the key on your keyboard to be able to move the transform pivot online without moving the missile itself. Move the pivot now to the tail as illustrated in the image below. Exit the transform pivot mode by hitting once again.
The transform pivot was moved to make the rotation of the missile an easier process, you can see the difference from the image below. The pivot had to also be moved to the back so that the particles that we will create later to simulate smoke are going to be generated from the position of the pivot.
We are now going to lock our pivot at the location 0,0,0 so that we do not accidentally move it anywhere. This is done by going through as illustrated in the image below.
Creating and Setting The Particles
Select the plane present in the scene and then go through and hit the small rectangular box to open the property panel.
You will need to make the changes highlighted in the image below. Click when you're done.
You can now hit to see the small particles emitting from the surface. You can change the shape/size of the particles if you think that they are too small. Hit on your keyboard while the emitter is still selected to open up the . You will need to select the tab labeled and then scroll down to , select the shape you want the particle to take from the drop down list and then hit and set its properties. I selected as the type and set the size to .
Instancer "Geometry Replacement"
Select the missile and all particles while holding down Shift. While the particles and the missile are selected, go through and click on the small box next to it.
The previous step should open up the , under the , set to , and then under the , set the to and click .
You can now hit to watch the missiles come flying from the surface!
Enhancing the Missile Motion
We will make our motion a little bit more realistic by adding a gravity effect to the missiles. To do so, we will first be required to select all the particles. Go through and then choose from the list as illustrated in the image below.
Now that all the particles are selected, we could add gravity to them going through and selecting it as the image below shows.
This should do it. Playback the scene to see the difference.
We are halfway through, click here to go to the second page of the tutorial.