Maya 2016 Ext 2 not only included the procedural animation toolkit known as MASH, but also some pretty great additions to MASH for creating motion graphics style work. MASH for Maya acts as the motion graphics toolkit, and finds some new features and a rewrite of some old ones. New to MASH in the 2016 Ext 2 release is the ability to use UDIMs.

Here, Ian Waters shows how you can use UDIMs in Maya MASH, with the color node to create a more random color distribution for textures on your MASH points. If you are not familiar with UDIMs (U-Dimension), popularized by The Foundry’s MARI. UDIMs represent coordinates of a texture, essentially giving you unique texture tiles.

Instead of using one large texture for a model, you can use a series of smaller tiles, thereby giving you more texture space within each. It is a much more efficient method for creating model textures. MASH can make use of UDIM UV-space, to create some interesting facts within animation.