Autodesk Technical Specialist Roland Reyer shows how you can use MASH as a modeling tool within Maya to build a jet engine using a procedural workflow.
That just happens to be one of the important points of the tutorial. It is also a masterclass on how to quickly create selections in Maya for other operations such as beveling edges. Reyer uses selection constraints, which can easily make complex selections using simple logic. It’s really a great way to quickly derive selection in models, rather than selecting individual edges, faces or points.
How to use Mash as a modeling tool while keep a non destructive and procedural workflow
The tutorial is jam-packed with great tips. For instance, Roland uses other user-utilized tools in Maya. Revolve is often undercooked when modeling, in favor of simple polygon extrusions. The tutorial shows Roland using Revolve to simultaneously create all the main pieces of geometry that are needed for the jet engine. Revolve can start with NURBS curves, but can easily be output to polygons.
The rest of the tutorial relies heavily on MASH for modeling tasks. Not just creating repetitive items like the fan blades, but also the technical detailing of the engine, placing all the greebles and components by using the MASH Repro node.
There are some nice tips that are helpful for moving, aligning and orienting the pivot of an objects of the jet engine before using MASH. This includes how to bring back the actual transform values when the pivot is moved by baking the values for MASH to use.
Need to place objects with a certain order or pattern? Roland shows how you can do that easily using DASH, the fast expression language for quickly adding maths into any value field.
MASH is a great way to add all the details easily, leaving all of them with the ability to be art-directed along the way. Lots of great stuff in this one!
