Dynamics for the Water Fountain

Single Emitter created within the Dynamics Tab of Maya Blobby Surface Particles were chosen for the particle render type and a gravity field was added to them to make them fall. The rate was 250 so the particles travel a certain height before falling,- similar to fountain water pressure.

Emitter type was set to directional with only direction of Y with a value of 1. a 0.2 Spread was added as so the particles look scattered rather then coming from a straight line.
The Fountain was made as a collision surface so the particles don't clip through the fountain when falling.

Second larger cloudy particles were emitted through Particle collision events after the original particles die.

Blobby surface particles were linked to a blinn shader with medium (50%-60%) transparency, Cloudy particles were linked to a Volume Shader with high (80%-90%) transparency.

Particles were rendered using Maya software, and through a batch rendering workaround with a MEL script- rendering each frame in sequence and saving automatically using the render view. As batch render did not render the particles. Thanks to John Mather from NextDesign for the script:
string $filename = "render"; int $startFrame = 1; int $endFrame = 398; string $directory = (`workspace -q -rd` + "images/"); // check for render panel. Found here: http://www.creativecrash.com/forums/mel/topics/error-object-not-found-renderview string $renderPanel; string $renderPanels[] = `getPanel -scriptType "renderWindowPanel"`; if(size($renderPanels)) $renderPanel = $renderPanels[0]; else { $renderPanel = `scriptedPanel -type "renderWindowPanel" -unParent renderView`; scriptedPanel -e -label "Render View" $renderPanel; } for ($i = $startFrame; $i <= $endFrame; $i++) { currentTime $i; renderWindowRender redoPreviousRender renderView; string $concatFilename = $directory + $filename + "." + $i; if (`getApplicationVersionAsFloat` >= 2011) // Thanks to nowayfra on creativecrash for his workaround catch(eval(renderWindowSaveImageCallback ($renderPanel, $concatFilename, `getAttr defaultRenderGlobals.imageFormat`))); else renderWindowSaveImageCallback ($renderPanel, $concatFilename, `getAttr defaultRenderGlobals.imageFormat`); print ("Saved " + $concatFilename + "\n"); } print ("Completed rendering of " + (($endFrame - $startFrame) + 1) + " frames.\n");

Particles were finally combined in After Effects in correlation with the scene. As they are saved as TIFF, they already contain the needed transparency attached so no further modification will be needed.

Final Render