You can recreate a geometric object as a flexible object called a soft body. You can use various animation techniques to make the soft body bend, ripple, and bulge like soft objects in nature.
When you make a soft body from geometry or a lattice, Maya creates a corresponding nParticle object. The particle object is indented under the geometry in the Outliner and named using the geometry shape name appened with Particle. The combination of the geometry and nParticles is a soft body. Soft body dynamics are solved using the Maya Nucleus solver, which enables them to interact with other Nucleus objects, such as nParticles and nCloth. as well as use nConstatints. You can save and playback soft body simulations as nCaches. See nConstraint menu and nCache menu.
The nParticle object has one particle for each CV or vertex in the geometry. For a polygonal object, the nParticles exist at the vertices. For a NURBS object, the nParticles exist at the CVs and are visible in the workspace.
When a field, collision with other Nucleus objects, or expression moves the nParticles, the corresponding CVs or vertices move in response to the movement of the counterpart nParticles. You do not render the nParticles; they exist only so you can influence the geometry with dynamics. You render the geometry (see Render soft bodies with motion blur for additional information).
Because a soft body includes a particle object, it has the same static and dynamic attributes as a particle object. You can set these attributes the same as for other particle objects.
- Make the soft body trail or move towards a goal object made from the original or duplicate geometry. Using the Paint Soft Body Weights Tool, you can set goal weights on a soft body on a per particle basis by painting on the soft body surface (see Paint Soft Body Weights Tool).
- Create springs on a soft body to alter its deformations and resilience. If you select only the soft body and create the springs, the springs exist between its nParticles. You can also create springs between the soft body nParticles and other particle objects or geometry. See Springs.
- Emit nParticles from the soft body’s surface or nParticles. Select the appropriate item before you use . Emitting from the nParticles is the same as emitting from its CVs. See Create Emitter Options.