This week was a busy week. I first completed the first 3 scenes and their respective animations. For the character, I managed to create the rig work for the ad It’s not the best rig, but I’m proud of what I have accomplished.
For the scenes, I had to refresh my understanding of how MASH worked.
For scene 1, I created a simple MASH setup to turn one almon into a controlled ‘rain’ through dynamics. Starting with one almond, I instanced it through MASH Distribute to scatter the almonds around, and Dynamics tweaked bounce and friction, and Transform to create the physics and make it land on the ground. For the girl and the swing, I kept it as simple as possible, moving the minimum necessary to create a feeling of stillness.
In scene 2, there are two different MASH nodes: the fire and the tray full of almonds. The fire consists of three geometries combined with MASH Signal for vibrations and Transform to move the fire to the desired place. For the almond tray, Distribute was on a high number of copies (ex., 400) but using a mesh to fit the tray exactly. The almond, on the other hand, was animated by hand at precise points.
For scene 3, the most challenging one for me, since there were a few elements in Contact with each other. I had the hand grab the spatula, both meshes combined for easy management. I placed a locator at the spoon tip where it contacts the ‘liquid’ for a clean animation reference. I then added a parent constraint from the spoon to the locator, so it perfectly followed the spoon’s motion without altering the rig. The mix used basic geometry inside the bowl, deformed by a lattice—the lattice was animated along the locator path. Finally, I filled the bowl of sugar with the same amount of almonds.
After achieving what I wanted in each scene, I worked on their UVs to prepare them for Unreal.