Animating the candle melting using Maya's Blend Shapes This is an important step as the reduction in surface thickness allows for more light to pass through the surface where the candle wax is at its thinnest between the candle's body and candle's lip. To finish off the candle model I pulled out the molten crater to create the concave inner edge of the candle's lip. I modelled this area manually by grouping CVs into clusters - not the fastest way of working but it allowed for controllable fine tuning of the candle model's lip. Once the basic shape had been created I transformed the Control Vertices (CVs) around the lip to create the wavy upper edge. Starting with a NURBS sphere I split the surface around the centre, extruded the lower section into the body of the candle, added Isoparms and used the surface's Hull to pull out the basic shape of the candle's lip and crater (the pool of molten wax around the candle's wick). Modelling the candle using Maya's Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS)ĭue to its smooth organic nature I decided on NURBS for the candle model. Hint: Key your cameras at frame 1 so you can revert to overcome accidental translation.
![candle flame in maya 2016 tutorial candle flame in maya 2016 tutorial](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PJ1UFX_-mVU/maxresdefault.jpg)
The test camera is the camera I've used for the rendered stills and animation within this tutorial - a close-up allowing the finer detail to be seen. I setup the render camera including an image plane of the background and a test camera. The shot the animated candle was to be used within was locked so an easy task which then allowed me to model the candle to the camera.
![candle flame in maya 2016 tutorial candle flame in maya 2016 tutorial](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/fJ7_xVkZHGM/sddefault.jpg)
The first thing to do was setup the camera. It proved invaluable when producing both the candle's model and texture. I have a candle at home which has the dusty mottled texture you sometimes find on larger candles, this I brought into the studio and sat on my desk. Once I'd decided on my favourite images - the styles I liked and those showing the different elements of a candle, its wick and flame - I composited these together for ease of reference.Īlthough the photos had much of the shape and texture reference I was looking for, they were a little plain. There is a near endless supply of photos and videos of candles and candle flames on the web so I advise first spending some time having a search for some you like. Candle, wick and flame referenceĪs with most projects the best way to start is to find some good reference material. The original project was mastered to Blu-ray, for this I used Adobe Encore CS4 and ImgBurn. Editing and compositing was achieved in Adobe After Effects CS4. The candle animation was rendered using Mental Ray for Maya and RenderPal V2. When not procedurally created within Maya source images were created using Adobe Photoshop CS4 64bit. The candle animation was created using Autodesk Maya 2012 圆4. I'll write this up as a separate tutorial and add a link to it here once the fluid dynamics candle flame tutorial is online. The candle flame you'll see within this tutorial was created using Maya's Fluid Dynamics. To help anyone looking to produce candle wax using Mental Ray's Subsurface Scattering Shaders I started the 3D animation project from scratch created a new candle and the following step by step tutorial explaining how I went about it.Īdditional to the lighting, shading and rendering of the candle wax and the candle's wick, I'll also explain how I modelled and animated the candle and the candle's wick.įor the same project I needed a candle flame. I found technical reference quite thin on the ground when looking for information about using Mental Ray's Subsurface Scattering Shaders specifically using Mental Ray's misss_fast_shader to create the translucent candle wax I required. I'd not worked with subsurface scattering before although knew that subsurface scattering would be the best way to achieve the most realistic candle wax possible.
![candle flame in maya 2016 tutorial candle flame in maya 2016 tutorial](https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/005/548/627/large/zhongkun-ji-candlefire.jpg)
For a recent arts animation I was required to create a melting candle.