FAQ - Plugins: Maya

I cannot see the particles from RealFlow in Maya for Mac OSX. What should I do?

Make sure that the Maya plugin was correctly installed and check that you have updated your operating system to at least Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger.

What is the Maya workflow for RealFlow?

To watch a video illustrating how to use RealFlow with Maya, please → click here.

How can I render particle/mesh BIN sequences in a renderfarm?

Particle/mesh BINs are not located inside the Maya scene, so you need to install the plugin in all the machines in the renderfarm in order to load the BIN sequences. The meshes/particles are external files that are loaded whenever Maya changes the current frame. The important thing to remember about the path is that all the machines in the renderfarm must be able to reach it. So it is advisable to load the files through the network path.

How can I mix colors and fluids in Maya?

To get a better idea of how to mix fluid shaders have a look at this video: → Melt shader

Why do the objects that I imported in RealFlow not match their position in Maya?

This problem may occur when the geometry you are exporting from Maya is inside a group. In some cases these groups have transformations such as translations, rotations and scaling. Some of these can cause the plugin to calculate the transformations in the RealFlow space incorrectly.

The workaround is simple: ungroup your objects in Maya, freeze transformations, and then export them.

How can I apply motion blur to Meshes in Maya?

When you enable 3D motion blur in Maya, the RealFlow Mesher plugin will interpolate the mesh between frames. Each time the render asks for a sample, we should provide it with the interpolated mesh. There is also a plugin edit control called "Motion Blur Strength" to apply a motion blur effect to the mesh.