Pirate Camp/Procedural Animation

Over the last few days I have been playing about in Maya some more, trying to get my head around particle effects and nCloths (dynamics). I feel pretty happy about basic nCloth techniques now - creating an nCloth on an existing mesh and then using a constraint such as the transform tool to make it stay in one place. I also feel a little more comfortable with particle effects, although I am still not very confident with texturing and rendering them.

I did discover the preset fluid effects in Maya for fire, smoke, lightening, etc., however, I probably should not use these in my final project, as the main part of the brief is that I understand how particle systems work and should make my own.

Maya "Create Fire" preset tool test on campfire logs

Here is a quick screenshot of what I have modelled and half textured for now to just give a feel of what it might look like when I come to my final renders:

So far I have made a few similar logs for a campfire to be in the middle of the campsite, a flag similar to that I made for Baris' nCloth tutorial using a wooden pole with metal accessories, and a pirate "jolly roger" flag. I have also recently made a quick tent shape using 3 edited boxes, and have turned the front of these into the door of the tent, and made it into an nCloth which blows slightly in the wind. There are also a few logs similar to my campfire holding up the tent, although two of these logs have forked tops to hold up the third one. :) (see below)

Logs/sticks holding up the tent

Next I need to make pins and string holding the tent to the ground, and perhaps work a little more on the ncloth animation of it to make it slightly more realistic. I also need to learn how to make a fire that won't crash my laptop and will actually look quite realistic in mental ray!