Maya Wiggle Expression
Here’s a quick MEL wiggle expression for Maya’s transformation channels.
This is similar to After Effects’ wiggle() expression.
Step 1. Go to Channelbox > Edit > Expressions…
Step 2. Paste the following
Translation
$wiggleF = 3; //Wiggle Frequency $wiggleA = 3; //Wiggle Amplitude $wiggleV = 1.1; //Wiggle Per Axis Frequency Variant translateX = noise(time*$wiggleF)*$wiggleA; translateY = noise(time*$wiggleF*$wiggleV)*$wiggleA; translateZ = noise(time*$wiggleF*(1/$wiggleV))*$wiggleA;
Rotation
Scale
Step 3. Adjust Frequency, Amplitude and per axis frequency Variant to liking
Note: By default, the translate Y and Z frequency has a 1.1 (and ~0.9) multiplication to vary the animation on all 3 axes to avoid spatial linearisation.
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Hello.
Thank you for this, is amazing!
I have a doubt.
Is there a way to change the seed?
I’m using this for a fleet of boats and all they wiggle to the same axis at the same time. I’d like to have all of them randomly. Could you help me?
Hi Cize,
A fleet of boats wiggling sounds the easiest to achieve using Maya’s MASH system. Have you tried it?
If you’d still want to do things the manual way, try this:
I haven’t tested this, so no guarantees it’d work.
Each boat would need a unique seed inserted into the noise expression. In the case of translateY for example:
int $seed = 123125; //introduce this new “seed” variable, each boat has to have a unique seed number
translateY = noise(time*$wiggleF*(1/$wiggleV)+$seed)*$wiggleA; //observe where the $seed variable sits in the expression, and adjust yours accordingly
cheers!
Thank you so much! It helps a lot.
I don’t know how to use MASH with existing geometry but I’ll give it a chance, tnx!
In the case of translate, for example, can you set the value to give a noise between 5 and 10?
Hey Park,
I think so, although I don’t have time to test it now, but here’s how I’d approach it. Right now, if we set the amplitude to 2.5, we’d expect the values to run from -2.5 to 2.5, which is a variance of 5 in total. Adding 5 to this, we’d get a resulting output of 5 to 10.
So I’d start by setting the amplitude to 2.5. Thereafter, I’d find a way in the expression to introduce the offset of 5.
Hope that made sense and I wish you luck!
Thanks,
So usefull
No problem Javier!