Maya 2013 has been Announced! ( as well )
polycounter lvl 10
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/cory/announcing_maya_2013
Unless the announcement thread is already deeply buried. Max 2013 is not the only new announcement?
I really liked the mel and node feedback they previewed last week. Like timerX on steroids. Should really be helpful in finding performance roadblocks in scenes.
( however I do not see it in the announcements )
More interoperability like HIK between motionbuilder is an awesome direction.
Would be nice to see more direct connections with other applications ( photoshop? )
But I was really hoping that I would see more ( like skyline runtime fun! )
Unless the announcement thread is already deeply buried. Max 2013 is not the only new announcement?
I really liked the mel and node feedback they previewed last week. Like timerX on steroids. Should really be helpful in finding performance roadblocks in scenes.
( however I do not see it in the announcements )
More interoperability like HIK between motionbuilder is an awesome direction.
Would be nice to see more direct connections with other applications ( photoshop? )
But I was really hoping that I would see more ( like skyline runtime fun! )
Replies
At least we still have CreativeCrash.
I think the new hair and physics things will be fun to play with, MayaBullet is going to be cool if its anything like rayfire for max but I'm not sure how useful they will be for game development, but you never know, people come up with some crazy inventive ways to use things.
Free image planes could be useful.
[ame="
From DAG profiler results showing-
from a skinned and smoothed sphere mesh with animation:
98% of the compute time comes from establishing the polySmoothFace history?
( even if I was not ready to freeze that history yet... it's nice Maya's smooth previews do not have that same compute hit penalty! )
Seeing bottlenecks this easily at a glance, I imagine that I would be taking advantage of caching alot more often. And perhaps optimize scene?
The MEL profiler looks like echo on steroids! I evangelize using the internal Maya scripts directory as the lost half of Maya's Documentation. Mel profiler's tracking of script directories gives that strategy a table of contents! ( this would save me a lot of time using "find in files" )
Hopefully those scripts can be opened up into my text editor of choice by double clicking/right clicking?
In the example, it makes sense that it is MEL being profiled since the only actions are from internal Maya scripts ( as long as Maya is built on top of a bunch of mel scripts such a profiler should be pretty powerful )
However is there no python functionality available from the profiler yet?
These kind of updates give me a lot more power than yet another bunch of new "edge loop tools" that could have probably been better implemented with the added love from someone in the community anyway.
Would love to see a dual boot version option of Maya built upon python scripts intead of mel scripts! I imagine that in addition to faster execution times and startup times having development consolidated under one strategy could save a lot of development time as well. Without losing maya's open architecture that was easily dissected ( all the power still open... but in python )
I assume this will happen sooner or later? ( hopefully both options might exist for 2 or 3 versions till everything is moved over? )
That would be an awesome empowering advancement exposing true power under the hood.
Better integration with DirectX, advanced realtime shader? More Post effect shader Support? GeForce Radeon Support representing the game industries end user experience? DirectX active stereo support where natively supporting a 3d game was not guesswork till in engine. Touting thier applications as game industry solutions without serious support for gaming hardware should always be heavily rejected.
GPU baking with geforce leveraging multiple gpu sounds nice considering how long iterating can sometimes take ( beast's interactive global illumination previews sure does look like the bees knees tho )
watching HIK in unreal/Maya with skyline really looks powerful. Imagining a future where unrealscript is dropped leveraging python solutions universal to say...
a custom hik retargetting solution that is also utilized at runtime for a climbing strategy in unreal?? I could easily live without yet more edgeloop modeling tools that could easily have just as well been built with added love from the community for revolutionary power under the hood that should have been implemented 10 years ago with "art to engine".
( Fingers crossed )
With every new HIK advancement...
Kaydara is looking to be Autodesk's best aquisition yet ( albeit, thru Alias ).
Considering they are listing all the Subscription Advantage features that were rolled into version 2012 as new to 2013...
Then yeppers, so far this release seems to be very light!
[ame="
the responsiveness should make a lot of people who loathe hypershade performance happy.( But when so much material work is iterated outside of Maya anyway? when days of tight engine intergration are probably around the corner
Been some talk about new mental Ray support of ptex allowing more fun in Maya although in a rough way??
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7282238#post7282238
I wonder if new the ptex painting features in Mudbox 2013 would make Rough support in Maya alluded to by Cory... more managable?
If so, I wonder if simply poly painting in zBrush could be imported into Maya over a ptex meshscape? ( using the resolution of polypaint like a ptex proxy? )
Have been asking modeling updates since 2010, kinda sucks XD
and you'll hear the same thing about maya in 3ds max thread.
I wouldn't even use maya without them loaded, and they have some nice symmetry modelling scripts.
http://area.autodesk.com/downloads
Or just work with an instanced copy in the negatif axis.
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/modeling/poly-tools/c/cly_pivotreflectionmodeling-mel--2/comments#tabs
since Maya once again breaks my quick gui ( now because of Maya's new shelf button menu system ) where the overloaded shelfButtons no longer stick.
Otherwise, if u just look in the scripts for all the arguments to the commands...
( also the first install will work if u just wanted to preview all the symmetry functionality till I post yet another fix )
Otherwise if anyone is interested I will be posting the fix over the weekend.
Wrote the following symmetry/reflection tools to update as transparently as possible. Because I was tired of constantly setting up symmetry, cleaning my origin.
I use to just use an instancing solution... But re-orienting the object space, in addition to rotating, ( both a simple option checkbox in the preference ) and parented transforms can lead to breaking of and a lot of setup to then re-establish. Not to mention annoying origin seams and constantly fiddling with normals.
After 7 years of refining where reflection tool axis settings automatically align to the mirroring axis preference in both directions ( maya transform tool setting's reflection axis align with cly_mirror preference changes and vis-versa ) And after 7 years of using the auto mirroring option... I have not been able to break it yet. ( after every mesh tool completion and action all edits are reflected instead of just the transform tools... It just always works for me. ) ( wish I could say the same for the usersetup code for the gui with every new maya version )
But all the things that happen under the hood when a model is symmetrized to give the illusion of simple reflection is a huge mountain of tweaks. The changing vertex order can frag edge smoothing assignments. The difference between the first time that happens compared to subsequent mirrors... How each tool and action loses predictable re-establishment. Interactive tool edits on a given selection where vertex order across symmetry frags the selection after mirroring... that established selection has to be rebuilt as if in the same location to maintain interactivity.
All transparent to the end user equals a lot of saved button clicks at the end of the day.
If you are suffering with no symmetry solution, I would happily reccomend giving it a try:
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/modeling/poly-tools/c/cly_pivotreflectionmodeling-mel--2
Upgrade yer Autodesk to a suite before april 2013 get 20% off..
http://simulistic.com/events/autodesk-demand-more-promo/
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2013/en_us/index.html
http://docs.autodesk.com/MAYAUL/2013/ENU/Maya-API-Documentation/index.html
the Maya core is becoming too old compared to the technology we see in newer softwares like Modo. The thing is that autodesk guy should stop releasing useless releases (they're almost all bug fixes and some spare new features here and there) and try to think about rewriting something from scrath.
Of course, we all know that rewriting that code isn't simple as it seems and would be a pain in the ass also for a huge company as Autodesk, but that would be something cool, really.
WTF there's still no INSET TOOL! C'mon!
Please autodesk, take your time and try to make something useful.
both maya and mudbox blow so much this year
rip dudes, days of your actual development are missed by many †
There have lot changes in core system that you see in future version
In Maya,
Inset is the Extrude tool's offset feature.
Beside the speedier pinch sculpting...
Inset functionality improvements via offset slider enhancement was the only other Modeling feature added.
( every slider/virtual slider in Maya should respect the ctrl modifier sensitivity. The offset slider is now virtual so there is no min or max. And now respects channel box precision. I always got predictable offset from the slider so I always assumed it already was aligned. But ctrl dragging is very welcome )
However,
Hacking the existing addresses ( substituting the last 2 with a 3 in 2012 ) worked fine.
presto chango:
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/mudbox2013/en_us/index.html
Beside the new interface there are some additions to ptex documentation:
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/mudbox2013/en_us/index.html?url=files/Prepare_model_for_PTEX.htm,topicNumber=d30e25476
Though I did not see any pipeline explained for the new mental ray p-tex functionality in Maya 2013.
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/cory/announcing_maya_2013/comments?pg=6&
To rough to advertise?
Been checking the alpha development of Stripes ( a free download ) but no support past Maya 2011 yet:
http://www.mankua.com/Stripes/Stripes.php
Sucked alot, it is the one that actually worked?
In each Maya before that you could access the offset attribute in the channel box but it would work wrong where the inset would be of different values at certain points in the topology.
They improved the offset a lot in Maya 2012, but that slider was something like a hell to handle...
If you wanted a little bit more control you had to open the attribute editor and type the value manually, and when you need to do this same operation several times this means some headaches... it's a very very slow workflow..
Hopefully it seems they have fixed this in the new release by making it virtual and maybe more controllable. I'm looking forward to try it to see how it works.
Anyways, Maya has always been my fav 3d package, I started with Maya and grew with it. And I don't think I'll switch to something else at the moment.
I'm just sad about seeing so little improvements every year.
I mean thats how almost all of the tools in maya work though. Not that it is ideal functionality, because I think that alot of other tools could use those interactive sliders, even "broken" like they were in 2012.
Mudbox got a few nice features like Drag/Drop UI customization and 3DMouse support. It's also good to see it finally having the ability to duplicate meshs in-editor.
But honestly mudbox feels like its being worked on by a skeleton crew based on its progress compared to other apps like ZBrush or Modo. My guess is that AD pulled most of their staff to work on the Max Excalibur project a few years ago and so all the other apps are getting second hand treatment. This is easy to see by just looking at the fact that Max is the only app they've even bothered to setup User Voice for.
Neil Blevins wish list shows most of the things that Mudbox should have:
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/cg_wishlist/cg_wishlist_mudbox.htm
I'd be happy if they just got decent PSD support (import/export folders and masks). But there object/layers list doesn't support folders at all yet.
and modelling toolset from 2010, which fades in comparison with rapidly developing zbr.
what is 3Dmouse? I use 2D intuos.
I don't want to guess and assume, but autodesk has a shit ton of cash from autocad licensing.
maybe it doesn't sound that stupid to actually hire new people if their current r&d are too buzy optimizing 3dsmax start-up times.
ummmm hopefully?
iirc maya stability issues went batshit around 2008-2009 releases.
I had to use 7,0 for some time, and it was pretty stable,
2011 was nice, I haven't bothered with 2012 yet, and won't be with 2013 so far.
A 3D Mouse is one of these: http://www.3dconnexion.com/
Some people really like using them over a standard mouse.