topic Re: How do you change the length of a MASH animation? in Maya Dynamics Forum

How do you change the length of a MASH animation?

rimcrazy — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 21:39:44 GMT

I set up a MASH network and it created an animation that was the length of my time slider in my scene. It was originally 400 frames long. Now I need to change that to 500. Simply changing the time slider does not work. I change it to 500 frames in length and at frame 401 I get an error and the animation has quit. The time is still moving but there is no animation.

Re: How do you change the length of a MASH animation?

tony.su — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 04:27:26 GMT

Did you want to change your animation time?

You can use Graph Editor or Attribute Editor to change animation time.

If you want to change the whole scene time, you can use timewarp.

Re: How do you change the length of a MASH animation?

rimcrazy — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 18:29:46 GMT

Hi Tony,

This kind of answers my question but not really. I have a MASH network where I have one sphere and I am using the curve node and I am animating it along the curve. First, it appears that the default for the sphere to animate all the way along the curve is 400 frames. What is setting that number? It's not my original timeline. Second, I see you set a keyframe on the distribute distance and that allowed you to keyframe that parameter. What parameter is it that I keyframe to change how the object moves along the curve? I'd like to change both the start time (have it NOT be frame 0) and the end time. I'd also like to have more than one MASH network with multiple spheres on multiple curves and adjust the start/stop time on each of these to be different from each other. I don't see how I can do that.

Thanks

Re: How do you change the length of a MASH animation?

mspeer — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 18:58:33 GMT

Hi!

Maybe 400 frames is a default setting. If that's the case break the connection on the Time attribute of MASH_Curve and set a value of 0 and make a key at your preferred start position then go to your preferred end position set the Time value to 400 and make a key there. You can also set a default value for Time and key the Strength attribute, the Clip Start and the Clip End Attributes (Move other keys accordingly).

Re: How do you change the length of a MASH animation?

rimcrazy — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 19:09:16 GMT

No, that does not work. Clip Start and Clip end are not frame values. They are values between 0 and 1 and are percentages of the path traveled. I want the animation to follow the full path but not start until frame 100. Proceed to the end of the curve at frame 300 and the scene itself has 400 frames. If you break the connection to the time value there is no way (at least that I can see) to move the object that is on the path to the desired location on the path to create a second keyframe.

Re: How do you change the length of a MASH animation?

rimcrazy — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 19:16:29 GMT

A couple of things I found since I cannot edit my earlier posts. The length of the animation does in fact appear to be set by the timeline setting when I create the MASH network. I had my timeline set at 200 frames. It was taking 400 frames to complete because the Animation Speed setting on the Curve node is defaulted to .5. When that parameter is set to 1, the animation completes in 200 frames.

Re: How do you change the length of a MASH animation?

mspeer — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 20:00:16 GMT

Hi!

Create a sphere, create MASH Network, set Number of Points for MASH_Distribute to 1, create MASH_Curve, create a curve, assign curve to MASH_Curve Input Curves.

Then break connection of Time Attribute in MASH_Curve and set the value to 200.

Now i can animate and key the position of the sphere on the curve with either of the following attributes:

Animation Speed, (Clip Start, Clip End), Time, Strength. For the Time attribute use CTRL+Right-Mouse in the input-field to change value interactively.

Re: How do you change the length of a MASH animation?

rimcrazy — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 20:45:48 GMT

Hi,

Ok that works. I have to say that it is an very non intutive way to do it but you are correct, it does work. Clip Start/End give very strange results and the animation jumps around. There still does not seem to be anything clear on how it times it self to follow a path too. I deleted everything. Created a new path. Set the timeline to 200 and then created a MASH network with one distributed element, the original sphere. If I set the animation speed to 1 and move the playhead the sphere moves about 80% along the path but it does not go to the end of the path.

Anyway, I can see with your input how I should be able to accomplish what I need. Thanks.

Re: How do you change the length of a MASH animation?

abars51099 — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 18:44:39 GMT

This is also what I need to do, but I don't understand the instruction "break the connection." How does one do that?

Re: How do you change the length of a MASH animation?

abars51099 — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 19:05:57 GMT

I figured it out. Nevermind.