Speed Modeling Resources?
polycounter lvl 13
I have a friend who is moving from Max to Maya and is having real issues speeding up his workflow. I'm not sure he was ever particularly fast as a modeler in any package, but the transfer between software has slowed him down even more.
Are there good resources out there for speed modeling (especially Maya specific ones that teach hotkeys/functions), or speed modeling competitions somewhere? I used to participate in the game-artist.net speed modeling competitions and definitely lurked a whole bunch and felt that those quickly got me up to speed, but the time when those were consistent and weekly is long in the past it seems.
My friend is concerned with how slow he is performing compared to his peers and I'd like to help but not being a Maya guru I'm not well suited to teaching a lot of the hotkeys/shortcuts and quick functionality bits, and more importantly I don't have the ability to really delve deeply into where his workflow problems arise.
I would assume that a useful exercise would be to take an hour a day and GIS an object, then attempt to model it for 50 minutes and spend the last 10 minutes putting together a list of what he felt was his slowest processes and then google up solutions or ask coworkers/friends about how to speed up those workflows.
Has anyone else found a process that quickly ramped them up to higher productivity levels and faster modeling? I know for a lot of people it is a gradual thing that you always improve but I'm wondering if anyone has "bootcamped" their way to noticeable improvement and if there were any resources or processes they found particularly helpful.
Are there good resources out there for speed modeling (especially Maya specific ones that teach hotkeys/functions), or speed modeling competitions somewhere? I used to participate in the game-artist.net speed modeling competitions and definitely lurked a whole bunch and felt that those quickly got me up to speed, but the time when those were consistent and weekly is long in the past it seems.
My friend is concerned with how slow he is performing compared to his peers and I'd like to help but not being a Maya guru I'm not well suited to teaching a lot of the hotkeys/shortcuts and quick functionality bits, and more importantly I don't have the ability to really delve deeply into where his workflow problems arise.
I would assume that a useful exercise would be to take an hour a day and GIS an object, then attempt to model it for 50 minutes and spend the last 10 minutes putting together a list of what he felt was his slowest processes and then google up solutions or ask coworkers/friends about how to speed up those workflows.
Has anyone else found a process that quickly ramped them up to higher productivity levels and faster modeling? I know for a lot of people it is a gradual thing that you always improve but I'm wondering if anyone has "bootcamped" their way to noticeable improvement and if there were any resources or processes they found particularly helpful.
Replies
http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?157484-Maya-Demystified-The-Hidden-Marking-Menus
Seriously. Get him to learn the marking menus, once you learn them and memorize where certain tools are it becomes literally muscle memory and you're able to execute marking menu "gestures" of sorts which allows you to get to the tools before the menu even pops up sometimes.
Maya itself is a pretty clunky modelling application and has a ton of quirks, but after a while it shouldn't take too long to do a lot of things you can do in Max...although there's a 80% chance it will be much more convoluted compared to Max and/or require a 3rd party script.
When you initially start using it,it feels a bit awkward,but once you know where to gesture,it speeds up your workflow quite a bit...