This tutorial is designed to introduce several approaches to animating various cellular process using advanced dynamic systems such as nCloth and Hair.

Maya dynamics are powerful but take some time and practice to master. This is mostly because their implementation in Maya is less than intuitive. To understand why the various dynamic systems are set up the way they are you have to understand that historically, as each version of Maya has been introduced, additions have been made to the dynamics. Particles and rigid body dynamics have only changed a little since Maya version 4. Maya 8 introduced the nucleus dynamic system which is used for nCloth and is rumored to replace the current particle system in upcoming versions of the software.

Nucleus is a more advanced particle system that, unlike the standard Maya particle dynamics, has a built-in system for calculating particle interactions (the nucleus solver), which is like a much more advanced and accurate version of Maya particle springs. Currently the Hair solver is self-contained and not attached to nucleus however it is very similar to the nucleus nCloth system. Maya Hair was introduced before nCloth.

nCloth and hair are extremely powerful and surprisingly easy to use depending on the requirements of the scene. You can create some interesting dynamic movements to the objects in your scene without the need for complex expressions and connections. nCloth and hair systems can also interact with Maya particles and fluids as well, layering such dynamic simulations is sometimes required to create the very specific and unusual dynamic motions we frequently see in scientific animations.

Download pdf Advanced Dynamics: nCloth & Hair - Animating Mitosis