Maya Modeling questions coming from Max
polycount lvl 666
I haven't used Maya in a few years (primarily a Max user), and have apparently forgotten some things. Was wondering if some of you Maya modelers could answer some questions for me:
-Does maya have an easy way to make individual meshs transparent in the viewport, like in 3DSMax, or is it still necessary to use a script / assign a transparent material to them for such an effect?
-Is it possible to make Mayas multi-cut tool snap to points on a secondary mesh/curve? In Max the cut tool can work together with snapping so cuts can be made across a surface based on a curve/spline placed in front of it, but I can't seem to figure out how to do the same thing in Maya?
-Is freeze transformations the equivalent to Max Reset XForm , or is it more for animation like Maxs freeze and only meant for use when rigging?
-Does maya have an easy way to make individual meshs transparent in the viewport, like in 3DSMax, or is it still necessary to use a script / assign a transparent material to them for such an effect?
-Is it possible to make Mayas multi-cut tool snap to points on a secondary mesh/curve? In Max the cut tool can work together with snapping so cuts can be made across a surface based on a curve/spline placed in front of it, but I can't seem to figure out how to do the same thing in Maya?
-Is freeze transformations the equivalent to Max Reset XForm , or is it more for animation like Maxs freeze and only meant for use when rigging?
Replies
I find the new modeling tools don't work very well with multiple objects.. and it's kinda annoying, for example, you can't even select two objects, both in vertex mode, and drag a selection over them anymore.
Freeze transformations does the same as reset xform, as far as I can remember, but you may find that the pivot does not move the the center of the grid/world (even though it says 0,0,0 in the channel box), for that, I find it's best to do freeze transformations and then reset transformations right after.
That's a real downer knowing the current tools aren't designed to work with multiple objects at once, hopefully they will fix that sometime in the near future (but its AD, so probably not...).
For the Bonus Tools, why do they have it as a separate plugin instead of just including the features in the app? Are they considered unfinished, or maybe AD is concerned with bloat (doesn't seem likely) ? Either way, I'll give that a shot later and see if it's worth using over user scripts that are out there.
Anyhow, some other questions I had:
-When using the move tools 'Transform Constraint > Edge' , components seem to move based on a relative percentage instead of an absolute value (ie. if two verts are being moved at the same time, the one on the longer edge will move further), unlike in Max. Is their a way to change this behavior?
-Is it possible to scale multiple edge loops at the same time by their individual centers (ie. without collapsing towards each other) ?
I'm assuming you know you can scale across 2 axes simultaneously, so you must want to scale two loops that aren't aligned to the same axis. In that case you might be able to use Edit Mesh > Transform and translate outward by local axis Z.
I don't think all of the bonus tools are created/curated by AD, some tools are a little buggy or "quirky" as far as their use goes. They're finished, but perhaps not polished.
-Multicut doesn't have any snapping like that and it drives me insane. It also ignores a "Live" mesh. Autodesk plz!
-Edge slide via that constraint can't be changed AFAIK. Use the Edge Slide tool instead, once active, ctrl+shift+rmb lets you toggle absolute/relative; but it only works on edge selections.
-For uniform transforms, shift-rmb>Transform Components.
Maya 2016, SP6. It seems to only be the marquee that doesn't work for me. It only selects the components (verts, faces, edges, uvs) on the first object, even though i clearly dragged the rectangle over both.