This is a very simple tutorial explaining how to render particle systems simulated in Maya inside Isotropix Clarisse. I already have a few posts about using Clarisse for different purposes, if you check by the tag "Clarisse" you will find all the previous posts. Hope to be publishing more soon.
In this particular case we'll be using a very simple particle system in Maya. We are going to export it to Clarisse and use custom geometries and Clarisse's powerful scatterer system to render millions of polygons very fast and nicely.
- Once your particle system has been simulated in Maya, export it via Alembic. One of the standard 3D formats for exchanging information in VFX.
- Create an IBL rig in Clarisse. In a previous post I explain how to do it, it is quite simple.
- With Clarisse 2.0 it is so simple to do, just one click and you are ready to go.
- Go to File -> Import -> Scene and select the Alembic file exported from Maya.
- It comes with 2 types of particles, a grid acting as ground and the render camera.
- Create a few contexts to keep everything tidy. Geo, particles, cameras and materials.
- In the geo context I imported the toy_man and the toy_truck models (.obj) and moved the grid from the main context to the geo context.
- Moved the 2 particles systems and the camera to their correspondent contexts.
- In the materials context I created 2 materials and 2 color textures for the models. Very simple shaders and textures.
- In the particles context I created a new scatterer calle scatterer_typeA.
- In the geometry support of the scatter add the particles_typeA and in the geometry section add the toy_man model.
- I’m also adding some variation to the rotation.
- If I move my timeline I will see the particle animation using the toy_man model.
- Do not forget to assign the material created before.
- Create another scatterer for the partycles_typeB and configure the geometry support and the geometry to be used.
- Add also some rotation and position variation.
- As these models are quite big compared with the toy figurine, I’m offsetting the particle effect to reduce the presence of toy_trucks in the scene.
- Before rendering, I’d like to add some motion blur to the scene. Go to raytracer -> Motion Blur -> 3D motion blur. Now you are ready to render the whole animation.