VEF 2 Project

For VEF 2 we were introduced to Maya fluid effects along with Houdini. For the project we were given two days to recreate a fire/smoke effect using this set up in Maya and Houdini. I had a lot of fun playing with maya fluids primarily because the look even before render was really easy on the eyes. Maya's fluid effects are fairly easy to get the hang of as well. We were taught in two stages how to create our simulations and it worked very well. The first stage was how to get the look and shape of the fire or smoke we were going for. We went adjusted the size, speed, direction and several other parameters that make up the general and refined look of our effect. From there we had a second lecture that went into shaders, lights, and textures. 

We were given free range to research anything relating back to VEF. I got my hands on RealFlow and it was amazing. The interface to this software is by far one of the most intuitive I've had the pleasure to work with. I noticed that when i created emitters and geometry into a scene they we automatically aware of each other. There was a no need to create rigid bodies of colliders. This was made possible because of the central hub node. Everything when created is initially plugged into the hub node and is aware of each other. This made your set up much faster and a lot easier to get to simulating.