I’ve made some progress on my project and this update should cover all the latest additions.
I’ve now linked in opacity attributes into the master slider. These were initially unable to be keyed to the variable but I have used a workaround for this. These particular attributes control opacity settings on the opacity ramps which do not have a corresponding attribute to be keyed. However you are able to set the attribute in the script so these are updated in the storm script directly.
I’ve also added in the secondary cloud layer which resides just above ground level. This one of my favourite additions to the scene as it really creates some immersive effects. I’ve made this reasonably fast paced and both its texture time and opacity are linked in to the main storm controller.
Unfortunately I have ran out of time to explore the dynamic behaviour of the dust particles in the air. This would be linked in to a turbulence field which I shall discuss below. I’m not too concerned about this as I would’ve needed to explore more shading options to get the right effect I was looking for.
I’ve scripted in an air turbulence regulator which goes alongside the gust of wind event. It generates random numbers which over the course of 100 frames ramps a variable up and down. My plan was to link this in to the turbulence or use it to change the direction of wind over time. The script does provide a working set of numbers to work with (still needs a little tweaking) but I just don’t have the time to finish that.
I have been unable to sort out the rendering issue and have tried other computers to see if it was just mine. I’ve also ran into countless other Maya errors, most of which are harmless but are considerably annoying to deal with. I’ve logged these in a text file which I’ll include with the final project files.
As this was my last module hand-in for this semester, I was unable to foresee these rendering issues and with other modules taking up a lot of my time in recent weeks I was unable to solve the issue. I will have to use the Maya software renderer which does the job but doesn’t look as good.