Chad Vernon shows some methods for creating trig functions using default Maya.

Maya doesn’t come with any specialized nodes that can calculate trig functions. While trigonometry functions are helpful in rigging, there are a few excellent third-party tools out there to help. Foremost is Math Nodes by Serguei Kalentchouk. If you don’t want to use any third-party tools, creating trig functions in Maya is still possible, as shown by Chad Vernon’s latest blog post.

Vernon recently added trig function support to his Dependency Graph Expressions script that creates node networks through equation strings. “My library converts string math equations to Maya node networks. Using math and trig knowledge, we can recreate these functions with the nodes that come with Maya.”

Check out Chad Vernon’s post on How to Create Trigonometry Functions in Maya without Third-Party Plug-ins.