Maya Paint Effects with MASH - Field of grass

Maya's MASH makes distributing Paint Effects much easier than it was in the past. Here we look at using MASH and Arnold Stand-ins to make a grassy field. We also see how to paint a simple texture map to control local visibility.

[@nourghafarji]

i am starting to feel that everything in maya is a workaround process, more than something that is there clear, and without headache!

[@3dsplanchnic737]

I hear you. My experience is that Maya has untold depths if you can bend it to your will (sometimes by writing scripts etc. Sometimes doing everyday things seems more difficult than necessary. You have to learn to love the challenge (or that's what I tell myself).

[@heavenseek]

"everything in maya is a workaround process" . You put into words what I have always been thinking but couldn't quite express, Thank u!

[@dubtube6691]

Hey, this could have been my comment lol in our company my colleagues are always saying I cracked it. Everything is somehow hidden in Maya. And we have to spend hours and days and years to reveal them, and then the performance is still bad. Simple example vertex paint, on such a plane is fast, but when it's 10 time bigger go get a coffee

[@karadanvers6136]

hahaha you would be right! it works when it wants to work! at least thats my experience...

[@george8582]

no one said it would be easy you are literally making a computer simulate the real world

[@DarkFoxOkajima]

Thank you so much for this wonderful tutorial! I Learnt a lot

[@farell1440]

Man you save my project. One of the Best video ever on how to create environment on maya

[@salazar665]

best of the best tutorial.. need more like this,

[@3dsplanchnic737]

thanks!

[@Rajuuken]

Nice tuto ! Thanks!. I liked the "somebody is funny in Arnold".

[@lena1swg]

this helped me so much, thank you!

[@pyrotechnick420]

thank you, very cool the .ass filename got me lol

[@kajalkohli2cool]

Great tutorial ! Thank you so much

[@dodomesh2826]

Thank you for this tutorial!😊

[@3dsplanchnic737]

you're welcome!

[@dubtube6691]

I like this advanced show as bounding box mode lol

[@milagroswarnholtz2137]

so amazing! and useful thank youuuu

[@3dsplanchnic737]

Glad it is helpful!

[@ikaringfly1]

Thank you so much.You saved my life...

[@3dsplanchnic737]

Glad to help

[@MEGA_TREE]

Very good

[@prajwalmalode9622]

Thank you sir

[@karadanvers6136]

looks cool but maya wont let me save the standin file, but it creates the standin, so then i do the MASH, but i only get the initial grass clump and not the 10 other clumps. the boxes are there, but they are empty... :( also my shader nodes do not show up at all, so i skipped that portion of the tutorial.

[@nicholaslin1758]

3:43 is that put the grass together? or DEL the grass?

[@yantingye1677]

thank you谢谢

[@dubtube6691]

One day may Maya will have the possibility to show object as point Clouds and not as bounding boxes, perhaps 2030

[@salazar665]

After using the visibility node., It's not scattering like the map i drew. I also gave the map helper my ground plane. It looks the same. Help someone!!

[@shiv3375]

What did you do at 3:43, at least mention what shortcut did u use.

[@paulin2art315]

awesome##

[@ahledanish4622]

Thanks

[@vaibplays6127]

Hey iam facing a problem about Maya 2020 .... Whenever I apply create mesh network on a model or on a standln then it gets disappear I can't find the problem plz help me in this if you can

[@suenoguajiro]

Is there a way to add a wind effect? I tried not deleting history so I could animate the paint effects attributes but nothing happened.

[@pyrotechnick420]

hey why is Ignore Ramps the default setting in MASH distribute node? Meehhh I guess that makes sense

[@NightcoreFan-qs4zx]

how do I playblast it with the grass showing? When I tried, it just showed its boxes but not the grass itself like in the Arnold Render view

[@pyrotechnick420]

Did you ever figure out how to get the rotation to work?

[@1998hsh]

5:34 i can't create '.ass' flie like that..

[@brottopf2861]

I cant seem to find the export StandIn function in the newest version of Maya

[@bdavd]

Arnold -> Scene Export -> Export Selection to .ASS

[@thepoorlittleartist]

Hi! When I drag my plane to Input mesh, the grass will be out of the mesh instead of on its surface. Do you know how to fix it?

[@olivia56014]

Me too , did you fix it?

[@olivia56014]

Hey i fix the problem maybe you check your maya units change to centimeter then will be ok

[@qwame41]

@@olivia56014 Thank very much God bless you

[@olivia56014]

@@qwame41 ：）

[@Chandansingh-iu5wv]

Could you please let me know the size of the terrain?

[@shenzellerey7268]

A major problem, when I drag the planecube on to the thing and the grass scatters everywhere and floating in the air, I followed every single Instructions you say.

[@3dsplanchnic737]

Probably because the grass model does not have its pivot point in the right place (centre bottom of model) and/or you need to freeze the transformations (make sure translations in x y and z are at 0). This is usually the source of this problem.

[@aalia_v8374]

How to scale the ( softly lift a surface) ?

[@AsiaRivera]

Ive freezed transformations, center pivot, delete all history and the aistandin is totally scattered and above the plane... Dont know what i am doing wrong

[@3dsplanchnic737]

Hmmm - is the plane in smooth preview mode? It may look smoothed (and contracted) on screen, but the Mash will be placed on the unsmoothed positions of the faces/vertices.

[@kellytrxm]

how do u animate the entire field as a whole so that the grass is moving with the wind?

[@3dsplanchnic737]

I'm not sure that's possible with this set-up. The PaintFX is separate from the original brush now - just repeated using Mash. However, you could animate the original brush in PaintFX and then save it as an animated Alembic file, and then distribute that with MASH. I haven't tried it so I don't know if it would work. If you take out the MASH part and just use PaintFX to distribute the grass, then you could use its built in animation features (grass wind for example)

[@OffendedFoxCh]

where is the tiff files for 3D paint located at?

[@3dsplanchnic737]

Hi - it was a long time ago, but I think this was vertex painting, so no tif maps. I'll look for the file and see if I can answer more completely.

[@sapphiclynx7761]

Could you make an updated video or try to help, I got stuck on 7:20 because it's not letting me drag my plane as an input mesh, I'm not sure why

[@3dsplanchnic737]

Hi. I'm afraid I can't update it right now. Make sure you are middle mouse dragging the name of the plane from the outliner into the field for the input mesh (rather than the name of that attribute). Maya sometimes wants you to drag onto the name and sometimes the field. It is a long-standing small annoyance...

[@onpatrol4567]

at 14:04 what did you do? The plane was white and black and all the sudden its grey and you seem to be starting over with painting it.

[@3dsplanchnic737]

Hi - thanks. Good question. I think that I switched methods there. Before that point I was painting vertices - the actual geometry. This is one way to paint a map on an object that doesn't rely on UVs. After 14:04 I was painting into a file texture (part of the shader network and not the geometry itself). So the switch at 14:04 was going back to shaded mode from wireframe (press 5 on keyboard), and also having applied a new lambert to paint a texture onto. The reason for using a lambert rather than an Arnold shader is that the Arnold shader won't show the painting on-screen when you use 3D paint in Maya. In both cases I was just trying to paint a map in black and white (and shades of gray) to tell Mash where to put the grass (and not put the grass, more importantly). Thanks

[@basspig]

I lost you in two places.. first, with the shaders.. ended up with a colorless grass poly. Second with the MASH.. ended up with clumps of grass randomly floating above the poly plane.

[@Shuhmuhshuh]

Usually when the mash items are not where you expect them to be it is because the source model has some values in its translation x y and/or z. Take the source model place it at the world origin and freeze transformations. It could also be that the geometry on which the mash items are distributed is only smoothed onscreen. That is to say, if you hit 3 on the keyboard with the ground plane selected it will appear to be smoothed. However the Mash items will be distributed on the unsmoothed version. Hit 1 on the keyboard to see if the unsmoothed ground plane matches the placement of the mash items. Hope this helps.

[@Shuhmuhshuh]

If the grass is colorless look up Ian Waters on KZbin. He has a great tutorial about shading mash items. I may have one too but I would have just copied him.

[@basspig]

@@Shuhmuhshuh In my case, the source model or ground mesh did not undergo any translations. I changed the subdivisions to 20x20 and used the Sculpt tool to pull up some "hills" on the mesh. Then I drew the grass clump, converted to polys, applied MASH and watched it all go wonky.

[@basspig]

@@Shuhmuhshuh The color disappears when I convert Paint Effects to Polys. Thanks for the reference to Ian Waters. I'll check it out.

[@carlosmiret35]

7:13 When I connect the mesh to the mash distributtes, the grass gets the position ON THE AIR, not over the mesh. What am I mising?

[@3dsplanchnic737]

Hi - that's usually because the pivot point of the original grass model is offset from the base (of the grass model itself). Move the pivot to the base of the source model and freeze transformations and see if that helps. It could also be because the surface mesh that you are distributing onto will use the unsmoothed preview (when you press 1 on the keyboard). If you are smooth previewing the model (3 on keyboard) that will shrink down when it smooths but the grass will be on the surface where it is in unsmoothed mode...

[@carlosmiret35]

@@3dsplanchnic737 oh my... The pivot! ¿How not to think in this detail? Thanks

[@CryptoBroke]

Is this plug in or just in maya?

[@3dsplanchnic737]

Hi - this is in Maya. Paint effects and Mash both ship with Maya.

[@nourghafarji]

i tried this using renderman rib, but i don't know why this does not help my performance speed, it's the same if i used straight away the mesh! any advice ?

[@3dsplanchnic737]

I don't have any experience with renderman... sorry!

[@cyberfoxgaming6349]

How do you get your render to render with a white background? Can't stand the black

[@3dsplanchnic737]

Hi - you can change this in the Arnold renderview window. There is a gear icon on the side, and you can click this and then change the background colour. I think in this case I had a skydome light set to white. By default the colour of the light will be the BG colour.

[@dlsayq9391]

7:00 i don't have MASH section... what can i do? please help me !! : (

[@3dsplanchnic737]

Hi. If Mash does not show up in your menu options go to Windows>settings/preferences>plugin manager and make sure MASH is enabled (check "autoload", too. Hope this is what you are referring to.

[@dlsayq9391]

3D Splanchnic Oh !!! you've solved the problem !!!! Thank you very very much : )

[@nosirve9458]

I dont find the window Mash

[@3dsplanchnic737]

Windows > Settings/Preferences > Plugin Manager > make sure MASH is set to load and autoload. This is often the issue when a module/plugin is missing from the interface.

[@nosirve9458]

@@3dsplanchnic737 Got it, Thanks a lot

[@bigdamnhero2297]

How to animate it though?

[@HugoArcier]

+1

[@mynmyself]

theres a bunch of ways... If you just want a random movement you can go to Behaviour--- Forces and apply some turbulence and wind. When you hit play it will start moving (you should do an alembic cache of this animation, so it is not recalculating all the time). Another way, in case you want something a bit more controllable (maybe you want a specific wind blow, or some sort of special effect) you could either turn the geometry in ncloth and use something like input mesh atrack to paint different dynamics and then add your prefered field/force, or you could turn the geometry into dynamic curves/hairs

[@d5bs]

7:08

[@nathankoehler5076]

How would I maybe export the grass as an fbx file? I've tried the bake instancer but not only does it take a really long time but it doesn't generate me usable objects.