MASH flight node setup in Maya 2017

[Steve Davy]

Anyone played with setting up a flight node in MASH in 2017 (Ian are you listening?).

I've been trying to do it by following a three year old tutorial, but either the workflow has changed or the defaults now behave very differently than they used to, and I can't get even a simple flocking behavior.

It used to be as simple as -- Create MASH network > Add signal (noise) node > Add flight node -- to get a working sim right out of the box.

But this now just seems to produce total chaos, with points flying off into oblivion! 

[Keith Rogers]

That's life.

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[Ian Waters]

Hi Steve,

I’m always listening :)

Did you set the distribution on the Distribute node to 0 ?

Walkthrough here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfwv0zgnvade4wk/Flight2017.mp4?dl=0

Max. Playback speed was set to 24fps.

It doesn’t need noise/ signal before it any more, but you can still add it to get more of a swarming effect.

I realise I need to get some more tutorials done, I’ve got Friday earmarked for it.

Best,

Ian

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[Steve Davy]

Hi Ian,

Thanks for the speedy reply. I'm not in front of 2017 today but will try this.

I realized that in the tutorial I had been watching you were working in Maya 2013. So, yeah, some updates would be great!

Cheers.

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From: maya...@googlegroups.com <maya...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ian Waters <water...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2016 2:08 AM
To: maya...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [maya_he3d] MASH flight node setup in Maya 2017

 

Hi Steve,

I’m always listening :)

Did you set the distribution on the Distribute node to 0 ?

Walkthrough here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfwv0zgnvade4wk/Flight2017.mp4?dl=0

Flight2017.mp4 www.dropbox.com Shared with Dropbox

[Steve Davy]

Hi Ian,

I notice this new approach gives flocking but in a very planar, rather than 3D, layout. Can't figure out which attributes would need to be adjusted to give noise in a more 3D space?

Also, I'm attempting to replicate some of the effects in your butterfly tutorial. In particular the orient node now doesn't seem to work right out of the box either.....

Cheers.

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From: maya...@googlegroups.com <maya...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ian Waters <water...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2016 2:08 AM
To: maya...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [maya_he3d] MASH flight node setup in Maya 2017

 

Hi Steve,

I’m always listening :)

Did you set the distribution on the Distribute node to 0 ?

Walkthrough here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfwv0zgnvade4wk/Flight2017.mp4?dl=0

Flight2017.mp4 www.dropbox.com Shared with Dropbox

[Ian Waters]

Hi Steve,

I did a tutorial - it might help answer your questions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3g10grzcDQ

[Steve Davy]

Hi Ian,

Great, thanks so much! I'll try to replicate this as soon as I have a chance.

So it's no longer necessary to cycle instance IDs to get animation as before, and you can instance actual deforming geometry? That's really cool.

At one point you seem to be saying that even the instances are actual geo and can be manipulated directly as well, or am I misinterpreting that?

Cheers.

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From: maya...@googlegroups.com <maya...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ian Waters <water...@gmail.com>

Sent: Monday, August 22, 2016 1:41 AM

To: maya...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [maya_he3d] MASH flight node setup in Maya 2017

 

Hi Steve,

I did a tutorial - it might help answer your questions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3g10grzcDQ

Maya 2017 - Schooling fish with MASH Flight node www.youtube.com Here we use the Flight node to get a school of fish to follow a locator around a curve. We have three types of fish, and we randomise the speed of their animation ...

[Ian Waters]

Hi Steve,

That’s correct, you don’t need to do cycle IDs anymore, the output from the Repro networks is real geometry; you can add deformers to it, put it into another MASH network and do all that good stuff you can do with a normal mesh :)

If you want an instancer based workflow (like the old MASH always had) you can choose that in the new network option box - or you can change switch your network between the two at any time using the utility script.

Best,

Ian