Reccomend some Maya tools, along the lines of digitalRaster?
polycounter lvl 12
Anybody use any external Maya tools/scripts to make life a little easier?
Had a look at DR tools: http://draster.com/nex-1.5/faq.html
but I wonder if anybody else has had experience with other useful packages?
Cheers
Had a look at DR tools: http://draster.com/nex-1.5/faq.html
but I wonder if anybody else has had experience with other useful packages?
Cheers
Replies
for realtime render i also like using the hlsl shader Xoliul.
edit: I might take what I said out after seeing the latest release notes:
http://draster.com/nex-1.5/release-notes.html
Dont know if it was issues with Nex or issues with our tools and and Nex conflicting.
on the other hand, maya has all the tools you need and much more. if you stick working with the dropdown menus or shelves, you will never get a decent workflow. i just can advise you like bugo, learn using marking menus ( http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?157484-Maya-Demystified-The-Hidden-Marking-Menus ) or build your own.
i think i can do all the stuff from max, plus much more as custom MEL code is easy to setup and makes custom tool building easy.
I REALLY dissagree with that, but I'm not starting anything here. Get to know marking menus, shift+RMB and ctrl+RMB, ctrl+shift+RMB and others first. Make sure to get your customization and you will see how fast and insanely featured maya can be.
i have used both before, but personally feel that for all it's flaws, max is a better program for modelling and general environment work.
ands maya does have a nice selection system that is a bit hidden, try doable clicking faces or edges and double middle clicking them to get edge loop and edge ring selection and mesh selections, you can also choose where it stops too by selection a other edge first,.
It's not a PERSONAL feeling really, I've switched to max recently mostly because of that.
but that's just me.
i think there is another thread, where they discuss max/maya tools and how to get same behaviour in the other package.
regarding animation, maya rocks. i hate the material editor(hypershade) and the rendering was so easy and fast to setup in max, i'm still not sure if autodesk does not want people to get fast results in maya or they just want you to buy tons of tutorial cds..;)
kinda i use maya but i don't use it much for modeling i tend to do that in silo and everything else in maya, and that was part of the reason why i do modeling in a other app most of the time.
Sorry about my english and the iPad corecture
example: you have a building with a wall texture, a floor texture, a roof texture. it's one solid mesh. in the uv editor all uv's are visible at once. how do you only show uv's that are assigned the wall texture?
You do have select polygon by angle by default on the select menu, it's a bit of a pain to do it tho. You also have the angle the same way as Max on Nex.
You gain in some ways and you lose in others.
Here's a list that I admire in Maya that Max users could have:
- Transfer Attributes
- global soft selection
- Being able to edit all verts of the scene without having to attach and lose pivots.
- every single move or edit is saved and you can go back and delete it (history)
- expressive marking menus without having to look for a hotkey
- reflection modeling (that im unsure max have, it does have mirror if i remember, but its not the same thing)
- Paint Reduce tool
- Clean up tools
- Way better vertex color painting without relying on stacks
- Horizontal and Vertical unfolding.
- Automatic uv layout with world scaling.
- Easier vertex normal editing.
- Unified style of menus, not just a lot of different menus for every single tool.
- There's a lot more that I would have to think about.
wasnt saying it is bad i just find the silo's modeling tools faster, i still will use maya's modeling tools for simple stuff, and when i need deformers, and there are a ton of things in maya i wish other packages would take up, expecially the UV tools and vertex colour tools and the being able to go back and history or make changes to operations in your history.
i haven't seen many bugs in maya vertex tools, but i think the tools are just not suitable for reasonable editing.
a cool tool is VertexChameleon:
http://www.renderheads.com/portfolio/VertexChameleon/#Home
the plugin has some stability issues and undo is not working, but it was worth the money.
as they are a bit slow in updating to the newest maya version, i wrote myself my own script. of course it's just very simple and has no realtime update plus it tends to get slow with too many vertices selected. nothing i can do about as MEL is damn slow. maybe a python port could help. note that this version is for maya 2008 and up, as it uses docking menus.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/132816/shinen_shaderTools.mel
if you don't mind i'll post some counter points and you can maybe tell me how i could get the most out of maya? cheers
- Transfer Attributes
never had a need to use anything like this in max, how useful is it in day to day environment modeling?
- global soft selection
definately simpler to do in maya, but not sure where i have ever thought to myself "i wih i had this" in max
- Being able to edit all verts of the scene without having to attach and lose pivots.
i actually really really dislike this feature. i like to be editing one object and locked into it. does maya let you do anything like that?
- every single move or edit is saved and you can go back and delete it (history)
do you just press the delete key on an operation you want to undo? i tried right clicking and couldn't get the option to remove something.
this is definately a nice feature but i don't think i ever used it in all the time i used maya, rather than just using undo. i imagine it is more useful for things other than basic modeling.
i definately miss the stack though.
- expressive marking menus without having to look for a hotkey
i found this to be a really nice way of working and something i would like to see in max. it's a shame you cannot edit the deault marking menus (or can you?)
- reflection modeling (that im unsure max have, it does have mirror if i remember, but its not the same thing)
most people use symmetry modifier for things like this (although i might misunderstand what you mean)
- Paint Reduce tool
not used it, sounds interesting but i would love to have the multires modifier in maya
- Clean up tools
not sure which you mean, any examples? would be great to know if there's something i could make regular use of.
- Way better vertex color painting without relying on stacks
i have been using the vertex colour tools a lot lately in maya, i miss being able to define a colour per vertex (it seems i have to choose my colour and then paint it).
i also enjoyed the stack system.
- Horizontal and Vertical unfolding.
- Automatic uv layout with world scaling.
not something i need to use, umnless i am missing a trick. i find that maya is missing some very useful tools for dealing with uv's. the relax tool is really bad and always warps uvs violently, i cannot show only uv's used on a specific material, and the lack of element selection (in uv and regular component editing) is a huge pain.
- Easier vertex normal editing.
true. i miss smoothing groups but i can live with mayas system.
- Unified style of menus, not just a lot of different menus for every single tool.
haha yes, max is also plagued by backwards compatibility, they cannot remove old and defunct features because people complain.
- There's a lot more that I would have to think about.
i would love to hear any tips you have for making life easier. like i said i can put up with, and even enjoy some aspects of maya, but i don't want to make life hard for myself by not getting the most out of the program.
hopefully i don't come across as being too confrontational, i am not meaning this to be a debate about max/maya because that's not something that will ever be solved until autodesk can one of them for shits and giggles.
anyway, cheers.
Sure man!
Ok, this one is easy, let's say you have a high mesh that is uv'd and you want to transfer by world space the uvs of that high mesh to your low poly, with transfer attritubes you can do that. Not just uv's, but topology, vertex colors, and other functions.
Oh, trust me, if you had a huge terrain, and your engine requires you to export less amount of verts by mesh and you have a bunch of patches and your lead comes and say "hey, I want that mountain a bit higher" But that mountain contains 3 meshes, you would want this feature. Not just terrain, but separate meshes on characters, rock formations and many others. All the seams would be intact and you wouldn't have to attach everything together.
You can do both. I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to select 2 meshes and edit both together tho for faster iteration. Isolate selection or even selecting and editing on mesh in Maya is also possible. You have both, not just one.
If you go to the attribute editor, you will see the "select" attribute at the bottom. Just select it and press "del" you will see that the attribute is gone. There's also "node lock" and other functions, you might want to read Maya docs for that.
You are right, you CANT edit the default marking menus, but you can do your own. I have my setup using A, S, D on keyboard to do EVERYTHING I need, with tons of submenus. So it's a matter of getting used to it. You can also setup the "space bar" menus.
Well, it's a bit different, there's both in maya, the reflection is for fast translation of verts and doesn't require a stack. You can hold "w" and LMB and go up on it's marking menu to select "reflection". It's just a faster way of adjusting something without loseing uv's etc, if they are not mirrorred.
You do have LOD setup in Maya as well. Read docs.
Let's say you have a whole mesh with open holes, five side polygons, or even nonmanifold geometry, and you want to find out where those verts are. Usually very good for decimated meshes. This tool is a miracle. Read docs, it explains very well the use of it.
The vertex color in Maya is very much like painting in photoshop with layers, If you want to apply a color to a vert is easy. Use the "apply color" on colors menu.
What I mean is, You CANT have different channels of colors in Max. In Maya you can have as many as you want and blend them later if you want to.
Huh, you have all you said above. You can select elements, there's a button for that on the top menu of the uv editor called "Move UV Shell Tool". My guess you are just used to max and can't find the tools in Maya. As for the horizontal/ vertical unfold. Per say you have a whole set of wall and you want to unfold the whole set without moving the verts vertically, simply do a cylindrical mapping and use the horizontal unfolding. In no time you will have your WHOLE set of walls together and unfolded. Usually character artists have a hard time doing hair planes, that also helps a lot. Anything that has a face loop really.
It's true, many of the good features in Max got removed and people are pissed.
Well, I'm here to help. It's definitely not easy! But the more you know the faster you get. I know that Maya is harder to learn and I do agree that, but it's on the market and increased the amount of users for a reason. It is really a matter of getting used to.
Not at all, believe me! On my side I would say if you could stay with Max I would say you should. Learning another tool is a pain!
Not a problem, my pleasure.