Artwork: Paint Effects

Just to give a recap to those out there who aren't 3D people, Maya has this wonderful little tool called 'Paint Effects' (PFX). Incredibly powerful in the right hands, this tool is most often used for creating trees, plants and grasses.

Sometimes they're pretty basic:





Other times they can be quite artistic:



And yet other times, in the hands of masters, they can create something astounding:



Yes, that's all 3D. Trust me, I've seen the breakdown and wiremeshes.

But, don't think that PFX are limited to creating foliage. That is what I learnt yesterday, and the reason for this post.

While doing some research to create pretty trees for my new Creatures inspired image, I stumbled upon a tutorial that told me I could use PFX to create water droplets on glass bottles. Essentially, condensation.

After a few hours of playing with the settings, and some After Effects tweaking, here's the result:



Not too shabby eh? Took quite a lot of work getting the droplets to animate nicely. They kept being very jerky and in the end I had to manually remove individual droplets to get a nice result. Still, not too bad for a days work.

Never did get 'round to making that tree though...