This tutorial will show how to make simple puffy explosion using fluids in Maya. It will explode and then give off black smoke.
You can see the final result here










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First set dynamic menu set. Go to Fluid Effects/Create 3d container.







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This fluid will be driven by animation of some shading parameters. There’s no need to use simulation data. That’s non dynamic fluid. It’s faster then dynamic but less accurate. It’s good for fast explosions like anti aircraft shell explosions for example.


Go to shading tab, set color to dark gray, its input to constant, set incandescence from bright yellow via red to black and its input to center gradient. Set opacity to like this in picture below. It's input is also center gradient.

Input graphs let you define the shape of the falloff for color, incandescence and transparency. Right side is the center of the fluid, and left is boundary. Move input bias slider to offset the graph.







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Turn on texture color, incandescence and opacity. This will multiply grid values by noise function. Frequency controls how small or big the waves will be. Depth controls the amount of small details. Color, Incandescence and Opacity tex gain controls amount of multiplying on these grids.







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Adjust input bias on opacity to get desired size.







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When rendered, the image looks like this below. Notice that small jittering on the edges? We’ll fix that later.







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Move colors on incandescence ramp to get more intensity in the middle.







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To fix jitter, go to shading quality tab and set quality to 3 and interpolation to smooth. Render will be slower.







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But jitter is gone.







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Also under lighting tab check self shadow. You can set it to use real lights, or to set light direction via vector. Second method is a little faster.







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Now explosion is getting depth







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For animating this type of explosion, you will only need to animate a few shader parameters. First animate incandescence input bias. Make it go from bright yellow to black (1,-1).







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Also animate opacity input bias so the explosion expands.







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