Daniel Soo posts a freely available script for Maya that will allow you to grow and creep vines along the contours of a model. The Maya Vine Generator which was written by David Anger & Daniel Soo.
The script will run a particle simulation using a goal and a parent UV to stick the particles to the surface of an object – following the UV map. The Maya script uses the U value to travel the particle horizontally, and the V value for vertical movement.
A vine Generator tool for Maya, coded in Python
Once the particle simulation is complete, the Maya Vine generator script will query the puritan for each point of each particle and then create the curves needed to build the geometry and add animation.
The Maya Vine generator will allow you to use default geometry such as a torus, plane or cylinder, or import a custom OBJ file for use with the vines.
The Maya vine generator provides a panels for settings and parameters for the geometry to use, how the particle simulation will go, and also vine attributes with a checkbox to apply animation.
The Maya Vine Generator can be downloaded from Daniel Soo’s site. If you have ever needed to grow something agains a surface, this might be what you are looking for. Maya Vine Generator.
Information about the script can also be found on David Anger’s site here: Maya Vine Generator.
sumbula
Cool stuff.