Maya 8 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual Quickstart Guide

18. Dynamics

As you build your scenes in Maya, you’ll likely encounter effects that would be difficult to create using basic shaders (Figure 18.1), or situations that would be nearly impossible to animate using traditional keyframing. Leaves blowing across the landscape, for example, or a glass shattering as it hits the ground can take hours to animate by hand—and the scene still may not end up looking realistic.

Figure 18.1. Rocket trails created using particle effects.

Maya’s Dynamics tools simulate real-world physics. Using these tools, you can create objects that bounce off each other, that have mass and momentum, and that deform in a realistic ...