Autodesk Maya offers an expanse of nodes that can be used for virtually anything, almost mimicking an application hat has its roots in a procedural workflow. Maya isn’t completely procedural however, even though some things can be considered procedural, Maya in large, is just a high end 3D application with node-based capabilities, that are sometimes procedural.

Creating procedural dust at intersection of two poly-mesh using Soup & Maya fluid.

Thanks to Peter Shipkov, if you want to expand on Maya’s procedural capabilities, there are the SOuP Nodes for Maya. SOuP brings a collections of new nodes to maya that are based on the thought of creating a non-destructive procedural pipeline within the Maya environment.

If you want to see what SOuP Nodes are capable of, there are extensive examples on the product’s site. You could also follow the work of VFX Artist Ruchit Bhatt, who has been posting some interesting SOuP tutorials, showing how he has put some effects together.

With his latest, Ruchit Bhatt shows how to create dust at the intersection of two polygon meshes, using SOuP Nodes and Maya Fluids – Completely procedurally.

The SOuP project is developed and supported by Peter Shipkov,with contributions by Jeremy Raven, Maxim Kotrolev, David Schoneveld, Sergey Tsyptsyn, Ivan Turgeon, David Corral, Jack Straw, Michel Tuttle, Alex Smolenchuk.