This tutorial assumes that you have an intermediate knowledge of Maya.

Import the geometry Download the scene here: http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scene-files/c/scene-file-for-tutorial-burni ng-laser-effect Load up the scene file, which includes the following geometry: Plate LaserCannon and LaserBeam Motion Path curve (MotionPath) Glowing Sphere (LaserImpactGlow) Set up animation Create a Locator Rename it MotionPathLocator Select MotionPathLocator and MotionPath and go to Animate>Attach to Motion Path> (Options) In the Options, choose Start/End, and enter 50 as Start Time and 290 as End Time You should now see the Locator moving along the path. Now, let's make the laser beam follow the locator. Select MotionPathLocator and LaserCannon (in that order) Go to Constrain>Aim> (Options) Enter the following values: Aim vector: 0, 1, 0 Up vector: 1, 0, 0 You should now see the laser beam follow the Locator. But it moves linearly, lacking elegance. Let's make the motion a little more interesting. Select MotionPathLocator and find the U Value attribute in the Channel Box. Scrub to all the frames where the Locator makes an abrupt turn and set a keyframe on U Value at each such frame. Select all the keys by click-dragging in the Time Slider, right click and choose Tangents>Flat If you play it back, you'll notice it's now moving more organically. Adjust the spacing of the key frames to your liking. For an industrial robot type of movement, try spacing the keyframes evenly. Key Shader values

Let's animate the laser beam's shader, to make it turn on and off. In the Hypershade, select LaserBeamShader Go to frame 40 (10 frames before the beam starts to move) and change the Incandescence color to Black. Right click and choose Set Key Go to frame 50 (where the beam starts to move) and change the Incandescence color to Red (or the color of your choice) with Value (V): 2 Right click and choose Set Key Repeat this operation, but reversed, at the last key frame of your motion path.

Add Fluid Effects The Glowing Trail First, we will add a glowing trail where the laser has cut the plate This is done with a 2D FluidTexture. Let's create one. Go to Fluid Effects>Create 2D Container with Emitter Rename fluid1 to TrailFluid, and fluidEmitter1 to TrailEmitter Set the Base Resolution to 400. In the Attribute Editor, set the Size to: 24.5, 14.5, 0.25 Now, let's make the Fluid emitter follow the laser beam. Snap-move the emitter (TrailEmitter) to the MotionPathLocator and parent it to the same. If you press Play now, you will see fluid being emitted and flowing upwards in the container. Let's change some settings in the 2D container (this is where most of the fluid look and behaviour is defined) Select TrailFluid In Contents Method, set Density to Static Grid, Temperature to Dynamic Grid. The others should be Off. In Dynamic Simulation, set Gravity to 0 In Content Details, set Density to 5

In Shading, set Glow Intensity to 0.04 In the same section, under Color, set the Color to Black. This will be the color of the trail once it has cooled off. In the same section, under Incandescence, set the following colors and positions: White (V: 2), Position 0.86 H: 39, S: 1, V:1,5, Position 0.71 H: 13, S: 1, V:0,9, Position 0.57 Black, Position 0.44 Set Incandescence Input to TemperatureSet Input Bias to 0.440. Adjusting this value will change the time length of the glowing effect. In the same section, under Opacity, set the following values and positions (This will make the trail remain visible): V: 1, Position 1 V: 0.74, Position 0.043 V: 0, Position 0 Set Opacity Input to Density Set Input Bias to 0.244 Now, switch to the TrailEmitter tab. In Basic Emitter Attributes, set the following keyframes for Rate: 10 frames before the TrailEmitter starts to move, value 0. At frame where TrailEmitter starts moving, value 300. Repeat reversed for the end. Set Max Distance to 0.26 In Fluid Attributes, set Density/Voxel/Sec to 3 and Heat/Voxel/Sec to 50 In the same section, set Fluid Dropoff to 5 and enable Motion Streak With that done, you can make a test render and see your trail in action. Feel free to adjust the Fluid Effects settings as you desire.

The Sparks Let's make a particle emitter, which will give us some sparks. Under nParticles, choose Create nParticles>Points Under the same menu, choose Create Emitter> Options Set the name to SparksEmitter In Basic Emitter Attributes, Set Rate to 100 In Basic Emission Speed Attributes, set Speed to 0.4 and Speed Random to 35

Click CreateRename the resulting Particle1 node to SparksParticles Snap-move SparksEmitter to the MotionPathLocator and parent it to the same. Time to set some attributes to make the sparks look good. These settings are partly taken from Duncan's Slag Foundry tutorial. In SparksEmitter's attributes, key the Rate in the same way we've done with other Rate attributes, with the values 0 and 100, respectively. In SparksParticlesShape, under Lifespan, set Lifespan Mode to Random Range and Lifespan to 0.4 and Lifespan Random to 5 Continue to Dynamic Properties, and set Drag to 0.020 (this will make the sparks fall in an arched path) and Mass to 0.2. Continue to Shading, and set Particle Render Type to Tube (s/w), Radius 0 and Radius 1 to 0.120, Tail Size to 1.350, and Opacity to 0.270. In Opacity Scale, set the following values and positions: V: 1, Position 0.1 V: 0.44, Position 0.2 V: 0.14, Position 0.47 V: 0.8, Position 0.75 V: 0.1, Position 1 Set Opacity Scale Input to Speed, and Input Max to 30. In Color, set to solid Black. In Incandescence, set the following colors and positions: R: 0,147 G: 0 B: 0, Position 0 R: 2,250 G: 0,053 B: 0,053, Position 0.057 R: 78,440 G: 14,250 B: 1,412, Position 0.147 R: 0,552 G: 0,079 B: 0,026, Position 0.400 R: 0,128 G: 0 B: 0, Position 1 Set Incadescence Input to Age, Input Max to 1 and Incadescence Randomize to 0.280

Laser Impact Glow Now, let's make the glowing of the laser impacting the plate. Take LaserImpactGlow, move it to the center of the MotionPathLocator and parent it to the same. In the object's shader, key Transparency, Incandescence to switch on and off, at the frames where the Locator starts and stops. As before, make it fade in and fade out in 10 frames at both ends. If you render the sequence now, you'll see we have a laser beam, a glowing trail, falling sparks and an impact glow where the laser is hitting. The only thing missing now is fire and smoke, which we will add with more fluid effects. So, let's do that. Fire and Smoke Choose Fluid Effects>Create a 3D container with Emitter Rename the fluid1 to FireSmoke Set the following settings: Base Resolution: 60 Boundary X and Z: None, Boundary Y: -Y Side Density, Velocity and Temperature: Dynamic Grid High Detail Solve: All Grids Substeps: 1 (Turn this up to 2 before making final nCache) Solver Quality: 20 (Turn this up to 40 before making final nCache) Auto Resize: On (A great feature which makes the container follow the fluid) Auto Resize Threshold: 0.01 Under Contents Details: Density: Density Scale: 1 Buyoancy: 50 Dissipation: 1.6 The rest should be 0 Velocity: Velocity Scale: 1 on all

Swirl: 0.6, Noise: 0 Turbulence: Strength: 0.1, Frequency: 0.2, Speed: 0.2 Temperature: Temperature Scale: 4 Buyoancy: 50 Dissipation: 6 Diffusion: 0.4 Turbulence: 0.1 The rest should be 0 Under Shading: Transparency: V: 0.25 Dropoff Shape: Off (Important if your emitter is going to move around a lot) For Color, we will assign the same Projection that is lighting the Plate. In this way, the smoke will become black as it flows outside the illuminated ellipse. Go to Hypershade and locate EllipseProjection. Without further ado, drag this node to FireSmoke's Selected Color attribute under Color in the Attribute Editor with the MMB. Just a little more to go in this node: Under Incandescence, set the following Colors and Positions: H: 39, S: 0.5, V: 2.5, Position 1 H: 39, S: 0.85, V: 2.5, Position 0.96 H: 13, S: 1, V: 0,9, Position 0.8 Black, Position 0 Incandescense Input: Temperature Under Lighting, set Directional Light to 0, 0, 46. This is the position of the directional light in the scene and will give us a shadow of the smoke on the Plate. Real Lights

should be Off. With all that set, switch over to the emitter tab since we have some settings to do here too: First of all, rename it to FireSmokeEmitter Do the now customary keyframing of the Rate, just as we have done with the other Rates, with the values 0 and 100, respectively. Otherwise, the fire and smoke will appear even if the laser is not active, and that would be uncool. Under Fluid Attributes, set Density/Voxel/Sec to 15 and Heat/Voxel/Sec to 30. You should tweak these numbers according to your liking. Fluid Dropoff should be 2. Also in that section, enable Motion Streak. Set Max Distance to 1, or something similar. Finally, parent the emitter to the MotionPathLocator. That's it! Remember to tweak the settings! Before rendering your sequence, it is a good idea to create a Fluid nCache for the two fluids. Also, I recommend using mental ray, the smoke looks a bit better with it.