Manchester
A procedural animation tool kit for Maya.
What is Mash? MASH is a suite of Maya nodes developed in-house at Mainframe aimed at enabling our artists to create versatile 'motion design' style animations. It offers a selection of effector nodes which can be daisy chained together to generate a wide variety of customisable effects. It's fully controllable from both Maya's Attribute and Node Editors. Video here Installation detail…
Current version: 2.0 Buy/Try MASH 2.0 here. Installation Note: Before you install MASH 2.0, please remove any old MASH installation, simply remove all of the .py files from your plug-ins folder, and delete the shelf as this no longer works with MASH 2.0. To install, copy the .bundle or .mll plug-in into your Maya plug-ins folder: Mac: /Users/Shared/Autodesk/maya/plug-ins PC: Documents\maya\plug-ins The…
Animate objects along a curve. Atribute Editor parameters Time Step: This controls how far apart the objects are. Animation (slide): Use this to control the speed at which the objects travel along the curve. This is a fraction of the curve length. Time Step Variation: Adds/ removes a random amount to the time step on a per object basis. Calculate Rotation: Objects will face down the curve when this i…
Inherit the animation of an object, and offset it in time. Atribute Editor parameters. Time Step: This controls the total time of the delay (in frames). Time Variance: An object by object randomiser for the time step. Time Offset: A backward offset for the time step. Strength: Fades the node’s effect all the objects at the same time. Random Strength: Smoothly fades the node’s effect on all the object…
A powerful node useful for the arrangement and echoing of objects. Atribute Editor parameters. Arrangement: A menu to determine the type of distribution, drop-down options are: Normal: Linear distribution Radial: Distributes objects around the circumference of a circle, or in a spiral/ helix. Spherical: Places the objects randomly on the surface of an imaginary sphere. Auto-animates. Mesh Vertex: Pl…
Takes the entire input array and duplicates it. Atribute Editor parameters Echoes: The number of times to instance the downstream MASH network. Echo Offsets: Offset the echoes in the XY or Z axis. Echo Offset Variance: Random offsets. Echo Slide: Randomise the offsets values. Echo Time Slide: Randomise the echoing input array through time. Note: The time slide only effects the incoming array not ani…
A basic node to control spherical falloff volumes. Atribute Editor parameters Invert Falloff: Take a guess? Radius: Radius of the falloff volume in world units. Inner Zone: Areas in this zone will be at full strength, it’s measured as a ratio of the radius. Falloff Ramp: Customise the falloff curve.
Easily assign different objects to your MASH points. Note: This should be added to the ‘Instancer ID’ channel. Atribute Editor parameters ID Type: The type of ID distribution, the options are: Linear: Increments the ID of each object by 1. It loops if there aren’t enough objects. Random: Each object gets a random ID. Echo ID: Each Echo gets a different object. Cycle: IDs are incremented by 1 per fram…
This node will allow you to inherit the positions and animations of objects outside the MASH network. This node allows multiple inheritance objects. Atribute Editor parameters. Distribution Style: Linear: Point 1 is assigned to input 1, point 2 to input 2 etc., etc. Random: All points are assigned randomly to the inputs. Strength: Fades the node’s effect all the objects at the same time. Random Stren…
Remember the current positions of your objects. Note: It’s always best to add this node first so that any initial transforms aren’t overwritten by other nodes. Note: If your objects have rotation or scale information, zero this out after adding the node, otherwise you’ll end up with double transforms. Atribute Editor parameters Enable Position/Rotation/Scale: Turns on this channel of the initial sta…
Use Python expressions to manipulate your objects. Atribute Editor parameters Use ‘XYZ’ Expression: Checkboxes to enable or disable expressions. Note: The random and maths modules are imported automatically, Maya commands are assigned the namespace ‘mc’. MASH supplies you with several local variables: id = object number (the same as the Point ID) totalid = the total number of objects time = the frame n…
Create animated curves based on MASH points. Atribute Editor parameters Curve Type: Join the Dots: Joins all the MASH points with a curve/curves. Tracer: Trace the paths of your points. Point to Point: The current position of your point is connected to the location of a helper object(or 0,0,0 if you don’t connect one). Point to Point Location: Connect Point Object: Connects a selected translate for use…
A simple node for fading out all the nodes downstream of it. This node requires another node before it, otherwise it has no purpose. Atribute Editor parameters. Strength: Fades the node’s effect all the objects at the same time. Random Strength: Smoothly fades the node’s effect on all the objects in a random order. Step Strength: Turns the node’s effect off one object at a time. Reverse Mute Order: …
Affect your objects with Improved Perlin (Simplex) noise. Atribute Editor parameters. Amplitude: Strength of the noise. Frequency: The speed of the noise. Strength: Fades the node’s effect all the objects at the same time. Random Strength: Smoothly fades the node’s effect on all the objects in a random order. Step Strength: Turns the node’s effect off one object at a time. Step: The time difference be…
Offset or multiply values. Atribute Editor parameters. Type of Offset Normal: Takes the incoming array (if there is one) and adds to it. Multiply: Multiplies the results of the incoming array. Rotate All Points:This will rotate all the objects around a given point. It only makes sence touse this is the position channel. Overwrite: Values will be set to these reguardless of the incoming array. This ca…
The orient node aims objects in their direction of travel, or alternatively, aims them at a target object. The orient node requires some animation on your objects to do anything. Atribute Editor parameters. Note: This object should be added to the Rotation channel. Note: Point your original objects down the X axis to make the up vector relevant. Up Vector: Which direction is up for your objects. Targ…
Display your point locations with OpenGL. Atribute Editor parameters. Enable Points: Disable the node. Colour: The colour of the points in the viewport.
A random number generator. Atribute Editor parameters. Minimum Number: The lowest random number that can be generated. Maximum Number: The highest random number that can be generated. Random Seed: A seed value for the random numbers. Strength: Fades the node’s effect all the objects at the same time. Random Strength: Smoothly fades the node’s effect on all the objects in a random order. Step Strength…
Add spring to your animation. Atribute Editor parameters. Note: The spring node requires animation to do anything, so add it after some animated MASH nodes. Note: Spring currently doesn’t work correctly when scrubbing, this will be fixed. In the mean time, simply play through your animation to see it work. Spring Strength: An envelope for the overall spring effect. Damping: Dampens the spring, higher …
Use Sin/Cos/Tan to animate your objects. Atribute Editor parameters. Amplitudes: The amount of units at the peak and trough of the animation curves. Frequencies: The speed of the animation. Strength: Fades the node’s effect all the objects at the same time. Random Strength: Smoothly fades the node’s effect on all the objects in a random order. Step Strength: Turns the node’s effect off one object at …
Affect the visibility of your objects. Atribute Editor parameters Strength: The ratio of the objects turned off. By default, objects are turned off in order. String filters: Type in object numbers, separated by commas, or number ranges, separated by a hyphen to hide them. e.g. 3,4,5, 8-13 Filter On: These objects will remain on, no matter the other values. Filter Off: These objects will be invisible,…
These tools are found under Create > MASH > Utilities Create MASH Deformer: First select a mesh shape and then a Waiter node, then select this option.This adds a deformer to the selected MESH object that is driven by the MASH network. The deformer has some enveloping options and supports Falloff objects. Thaw Objects: Select a group of frozen objects and select this option.If you want to work wi…