Creating Fast Rendering Sparks with Maya nparticles

This tutorial will show you how to make good looking and fast rendering sparks you can composite into your shots.


First go to nDynamics menu subset. then nparticles>create nParticles>create Emitter

This will place a small emiter in the center of your viewport.


First thing to do is make sure your playback speed is set at "Real time" otherwise it will play crazy fast. Right mouse click on the timeline in the bottom and select "real time"

In your outliner select your Emitter and move it up in your view port above ground level a bit so the sparks have room to fall later.

Make sure Emitter is still selected. In the attribute editor on the right. Emitter1 tab make the following settings.

Basic Emiiter Attributes>Rate (particles/Sec) 150
Basic Emission Attributes = Speed 10
Basic Emission Attributes = Speed Random 100

Now select the nParticlesShape1 tab and make the following settings.

Lifespan
Lifespan Mode = Random Range
Lifespan =.5
Lifespan Random = 6.0

Particle Size
Radius =.2

Dynamic Properties
Conserve = 1.0
Drag = .07
Damp = .005
Mass = 1.0

Now for the shading of our sparks. Duplicate all these settings.

Additional Color settings. Make sure The input types are set to "Age" and "Normalized age"

After all these settings are in set your play range longer and do a test play. You should be getting something a bit like this.

Select Maya Hardware for the render type and do a test render.

The length of the sparks can be controlled using the Tail Fade and Tail Size settings under Shading.

How quickly they change from white hot to orange can be changed in with the color Ramp in Shading to get a variety of effects.

Now let's make some gravity and ground for the sparks to hit.

Create a floor plane. Select it then in the ndynamics seubset goto nMesh>Create passive collider.

Now the sparks hit hte flor and bounce nicely.

Now select the emitter in the outliner. In the nParticleshape1 tab make settings
Dynamic Properties
Local Force = 0,-0.1,0



Now the sparks will fall nicely with gravity.In your render settings turn on Prduction quality and you can render out a fast rendering sparks pass to composite in After effects add glow etc.

Have fun creating sparks!

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