MEL Scripting for Maya Animators, 2nd Edition

Chapter 19. Examples Using MEL with Particle Dynamics

As we saw in Chapter 4, you can use particle expressions to achieve fine control over the dynamics of particle systems by directly manipulating particles’ positions, velocities, and accelerations.

An approach that is more useful in many circumstances, however, is to use MEL and expressions to manipulate particle goals. Using goals, you can use your scripts to influence particle motion while you still take advantage of fields and collisions. Rather than entirely bypassing the dynamics system as you do when you directly control particle position, velocity, or acceleration, by using goals to influence particles you can strike a suitable balance between your scripted behavior and the influence of ...