Maximilian Schönherr Works With Maya Particles to Create a Dissolving Effect on Animated Characters

3D Artist Maximilian Schönherr shows us how getting reacquainted with Maya Particles can lead to interesting effects, such as a dissolving effect.

With Maya’s newly found motion graphics and instancing abilities, it is sometimes easy to forget that before all that, there was particles, goals, and dynamics. Maya’s nParticles are easy to create, simple to control, and fast to render.

Schönherr uses an off-the-shelf character from Maya’s Content Browser as a platform to emit the particles. Some tweaks to the timing of the animation using Maya’s Time Editor makes it more suitable for the sequence.

Maximilian Schönherr’s take on dissolving a character through particle effects is a simple one. If you want to dive deeper into more complex looking results, have a look at Ian Waters’ tutorial using MASH, and Jeremy Fernsler’s dissolve effect tutorial.