Animating Textures With Expressions in Maya

Maximilian Schönherr Shows How to Create Complex Animated Textures With a Bit of Expressions.

Expressions are relatively straightforward in Autodesk Maya. You can theoretically override any numerical attribute with an expression. It’s a great way to automatically animate elements without generating keyframes for them. With his latest tutorial Maximilian Schönherr experiments with some basic expressions that inevitably will make animating textures.

You can create some fairly complex looking patterns by merely using a sinewave, and animating it with “time”. It’s pretty amazing what can happen with a simple line of addition or multiplication. Extending the expression workflow in Maya is DASH scripting — A speedy way to issue commands without leaving the channel box in Maya. Check out this tutorial that shows how to get started with DASH scripting in Maya.