Bryan Woodard shares an interesting script for Maya. Particle to Bubble will let you convert Maya’s nParticles to replace the individual particle positions with a bubble.
a script that takes particles being emitted in Maya and queries their position and finally replaces the particles current position with a bubble
The Particle to Bubble script offers a method for getting a much more realistic simulation of bubbles, and allows you to have better rendering choices, as the bubbles are converted to geometry from particles.
The Particle to Bubble script will take particles that are being emitted in Maya, and queries their positions. Then it replaces them with geometry that is based on a dynamic nCloth solution.
This will allow the bubbles to bounce off of other geometry in the scene, and more importantly, interact with other bubbles as well. Having dynamic geometry for the bubbles also give you the opportunity to use shaders that typically would not be supported by Maya nParticle renders.
The script is freely available, and can be found on Bryan Woodard’s GitHub page. Check out Maya Particle to Bubble Script here. Bryan also talks at length about how the script came about and was created. Check out the post for Creating the Maya Particle to Bubble Script here.