Pouring Tea Animation - Part 2

Maya Tutorial

Pouring Tean Animation Using Curve Path in Maya - Part 2 

Ok, now part 2 of the pouring tea animation. Last time, the setup was creating the profile of the cup for the animation path of one locator. The other locator was positioned in the middle of the cup, and we measured the distance between both locators so we got the “animated” radius of the cup. Then we hooked that value to a circle radius. When we play the animation, the curve radius was following the radius of the cup from bottom to top. Well, that's a brief summary from last tutorial.

Now, from the planar NURBS surface, rewind to frame 1 and convert that NURBS surface to polygon.I use the count and quad settings. Then delete it's history. Parent or point constraint (I use point constraint) this polygon to the pathCurve_LOC (or the locator that on the middle). Name this polygon “polyLiquid”. Open hypershade, find the multiplyDivide node that cinnected with the distanceBetween that created in this tutor part 1. Change the input2X with the same number of input1X, in my case it's 1.521, and change the operation to divide. Connect this multiplyDivide output1X to polyLiquid.scaleX, Y and Z. Play the animation to check if the polyLiquid has animation in it's scale channel.

Create two point circular arc, and two locators. Name locator1 as “crvPoint1_LOC” and locator2 as “crvPoint2_LOC”. Connect crvPoint1_LOC.translate to the makeTwoPointCircularArc.point1, and do the same with crvPoint2_LOC.translate to makeTwoPointCircularArc.point2.

Point constraint the crvPoint1_LOC to the tea pot, and don't forget to adjust the pivot point of the crvPoint1_LOC so that it stays on the tip of the tea pot. And point constraint crvPoint2_LOC to the middle locator in the tea cup.

Now the arc curve will change its shape according to the tea pot position. Also u still can adjust the arc curve radius in its history. Create another NURBS circle and while the circle still selected, shift LMB to the arc curve. Extrude them with this setting:

Why partial? Because we're going to animate the extrude surface later on. Now in the inputs of the extruded surface, there are three inputs available, the extrude, the subCurve1 and subCurve2. Click on subCurve2, set key on subCurve2.maxValue to 0 at couple of frame just before the polyLiquid is moving up. And set another key when the liquidPoly is still moving up. Set this key to the value of 1.

This will create some sort of “water” coming out of the tea pot and filling the tea cup. You can tweak the circle that has output connection to the extruded surface if the water (extruded surface) looks too rounded. When about the polyLiquid almost got to the top, set key on subCurve2 min and max value. So the minValue would be 0 and maxValue would be 1.

Set another key after a couple frames, minValue to 1 and maxValue to 0. Hit play to see the animation. Of course, yweak the key on subCurve2, min and max value, for better timing with the polyLiquid animation. Or edit their timing both with graph editor.

Now we'll see some kind of animated tea pot and animated tea pouring and filling the tea cup. Ahh... break time...