From Maya to Max
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Sorry If I'm writing in the wrong section or thread but here it goes.
So I'm switching over from Maya to Max for the second time, And well
seems like I lost all my knowledge from last time, as well as I never really
felt as comfortable in Max as i do in Maya, even though I used Max fulltime for maybe 4 years in total.
I would probably do this quietly by myself if I had the time, but I have more or less 2 days to get in shape, so hope you guys can help me make the transition easier.
For a first, The main problem I have with max vs maya is snapping, In maya I use snapping
for everything, to move my object to move any faces or verts where i want them, rarely use
move tools for anything, and I only have to use 2 buttons.
Never managed to figure out a way to do this in max without going in to options and changing
things for every snap i want to do, Is there any fix for this now? If i had the maya snapping tool I could almost choose max over maya.
Question 2, When i create a cube,plane etc how do i get it to just create a box on the pivot, without me having to place it out?
Thanks for the help
So I'm switching over from Maya to Max for the second time, And well
seems like I lost all my knowledge from last time, as well as I never really
felt as comfortable in Max as i do in Maya, even though I used Max fulltime for maybe 4 years in total.
I would probably do this quietly by myself if I had the time, but I have more or less 2 days to get in shape, so hope you guys can help me make the transition easier.
For a first, The main problem I have with max vs maya is snapping, In maya I use snapping
for everything, to move my object to move any faces or verts where i want them, rarely use
move tools for anything, and I only have to use 2 buttons.
Never managed to figure out a way to do this in max without going in to options and changing
things for every snap i want to do, Is there any fix for this now? If i had the maya snapping tool I could almost choose max over maya.
Question 2, When i create a cube,plane etc how do i get it to just create a box on the pivot, without me having to place it out?
Thanks for the help
Replies
I haven't tried switcher by draster but the videos make it sound like it does a pretty nice job making max seem maya comfortable? Have you checked out the draster website yet?
Hope that helps.
There are only two major dcc tools really. That pipelines are more effective by denying artists the tool of their choice is a myth on many levels. The penalty is spent elsewhere at someone elses expense either way. Whether it's the poor sod sweating it out (again) late at night. Or when the otherwise uber-talent passes over or leaves your project for a rewarding experience. Screw that! I am going to be dead soon enuff. If there was no pay at all I would wash dishes again and still work overtime for free. But I would dam well use the tool of my choice.
Ahhh, supercool! :thumbup:
Nevermind then :poly124:
It's true that many companies allows for people to work with either max or maya,
but there are still engines that are built for one or the other, as well as in house scripts or programs are built for one or the other, So if your changing companies alot you
might as well learn both.
The snapping seems improved, so that kinda saves me, now it's more about regaining my max memory.
Anyone know how to move the pivot of an object?
Anyone know how to get uv's straight in max? If it was maya i would just align two verts then unfold unselected, why max can't have one constant uv window open for all objects I won't even ask.
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/uv-strip-straightener
ya it is pretty hard to switch over, i find i just cant get used to the max navigation and selection style.
i've been trying to pick up max myself since it's modifer stack can be useful in some cases, and i have worked with engines that got a pretty broken pipeline if oyur on maya or xsi.
Yeah having experienced this before, It isn't fun, but atleast I have previous experience,
just need to get all that knowledge back as soon as possible.
Any button i can hold in to do a select unselected in max?
Anyway, straighten is in the upper right corner inside Quick Transform, they are called Align Horiz and Align Vert.
With this you have to straighten each loop one at a time, if you try to straighten a few different lines it smashes your entire selection to one edge. Because of that I don't really use it that much, I continue to use some custom scripts that I wrote before they added Align. My script will straighten each loop on its own.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2336353/UVFlatten.ms
To install: Run the script once from anywhere MAXScript -> Run Script
Then you can assign it to a shortcut, toolbar or quad menu from the Customize -> Customize UI menu.
They also added Straighten Selection which is under Reshape Elements and is used to square off messy UV's. Most of the time it works, sometimes it doesn't so I use the above script.
Click Edge, Click Loop, Click Ring, Flatten Horiz/Vert.
Thanks Mark! didn't notice you wrote before sorry.
Just wondering about some hotkeys and other small things that would help alot
I think most of these things i have lived with before, but as I really need to
speed up my workflow it would be really nice if you could help me.
1. extruding directly by just holding a button and draging an edge out.
having to go into the extrude options and set everything to 0 every time and then
drag it out is really tiring, so is this possible?
2. hotkey to switch to move the pivot instead of the object, as i do this alot when i snap object to each other.
And well just because i go here to ask I forget what more i need help with, so I'll get back with more questions, hopefully someone can answer.
Thank you in advance
but you can use the little coloured squares & topbar of the right click quad menus to repeat the last cmmand from that menu though (it'll be highlighted)
its not as quick as hitting G but once you're used it the extra flexiblity is nice and it becomes a kind of gesture
But to answer some of your questions:
1. For Extruding, set that to a Hotkey for the Settings Options, when the dialog pops up, if its not at 0, just rightclick the spinner, it goes to 0, and hit Accept/enter.
2. I set Insert to Affect Pivot Only, like Maya does, then I set the Home Key to Center the Pivot for each object selected. What's awesome in Max, and I don't see in Maya, is that you can Rotate the Pivot as well as move it.
3. There isn't one that I know of, although there might be. I don't do that, but there might be a script for it. I just hotkey everything, and its pretty damn fast imo. Maybe not quite as fast as repeat last.
poopipe - what colored squares? I'm running max 2011, everything seems quite grey.
mLichy - If you want to move the pivot, just hold D + V easiest and fastest, never felt any need to rotate the pivot but i guess thats mainly because we get used to not having stuff.
well i guess ill go hotkeying.
4. guess there is no hotkey for ring and loop either then?
anything like that in max?
6. I asked about it earlier, but select unselected, i mean holding in a button and drag selecting it, for example all selected faces becomes unselected and all unselected faces becomes selected
4. ring and loop do have hotkeys - they're called select edge ring amd select edge loop in the customize UI thingy - dunno what the defaults are because I change them.
5. in edit poly you can control click the icon in the selection rollout to transfer selections - it doesn't work on all object types/modifiers but does on some
6: ctrl+I will invert your selection - there's no equivalent to Maya's (completely foul) selection method though
7. click and drag the middle of the gizmo where the innermost triangle is for uniform scale, use the large triangle for 2 axis scale and the axis sticks for single axis scale - if you wave the cursor over the gizmo it'll highlight the axes you're going to scale in.
added repeat last to the useless x button
4. seems like there were other with the same name thats why it didnt work to change the hotkey for me.
5. hm ok maybe there is a better script or something.
6. kinda mistook max for maya and found it accidentally nice
7. ah great that worked.
in max how can i rebind the keys for the default quad menus.
currently max has the modeling quad menu on control+rmb, but since im used to maya i wouldn't mind somehow moving that too shift+rmb and making a new one for selection tools on control+rmb.
though from looking at max it seem impossible to bind anything to a modifer key plus a mouse button, aside from the defualt ones which seem to be hard coded like that.
We've also been after Autodesk for decades to include a switchable nav system so it can be configured to behave like every other 3D app (aka Maya navigation).
Fingers crossed for 2013! But I'm not holding my breath, heh....
ah what i thought, ya biggest annoyances, is that the max nav feels clunky and stupid too me, and cant be switched, i cant switch what shift, control and alt do to selections, since i rather have shift as add and control as subtract, and the quad menu bit.
one of those things that just baffles me with max like why the hell would these things be hard coded.
i find max to be the tool i want to like, because i really do like the modifier stack workflow for working on certain assets.
Just to add you can rotate the pivot in maya. Just hold d and a little sphere click thing will show up underneath the pivot, click and rotate. Maya changes the move settings to custom orientation so its technically on every model so you have to switch it back to object/world etc
unwrap uvw questions, Is there any good plugins for max when it comes to uv editing?
In maya there is uvdeluxe for example,
one thing i really want is to be able to normalize by pixel per cm or unit etc.
the ones i have tried doesnt always work.
also when i use max, use unfold or relax, i allmost never get a good result on cylinders or round objects, always calculates wrong, is there any special settings to use?
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http://www.3dmotive.com/training/3ds-max/uvw-unwrapping-an-introduction/?follow=true
So if anyone can give me a working script it would be really! appreciated.
I have a hard time believing everyone push the extrude button to extrude then merge everything for every edge they want to extrude
here is posts talking about this as it was quite a normal method.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-985324.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090916115845AAGBO4R
EDITED.
I wudn't know. To me the edge extrude is hard coded, i don't see any way to override the drag function. Might be wrong.
But my bet is you try to extrude an edge that can't be.
I'm lazy, so :
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/support-tech-discussion/4313-3dsmax-shift-drag-extrude-problem-help.html
sadly that isn't the problem though, doesnt work on any mesh or plane surface
Well... technically you can extrude a closed edge in "edit Mesh" but it orphans the newly extruded part when the mesh is converted to edit poly.
In general extruding non-open edges is a mess...
Thanks for taking your time trying to help me
Repeat last action is the ; key