From Blender to Maya Questions.
polycounter lvl 4
So I'm coming from Blender which I've used since like idk 13, 14 years old somewhere around there. So I might be a wee bit biased towards Blender. Anyways since I want a job in this industry I need to learn the industry standard software, thus why I'm trying to learn Maya and will probably try learning 3ds max afterwards.
I feel like it's always best to do stuff as non destructively as possible but I can't really find much of a way to do that in Maya. In Blender I could just mark edges to be used with a bevel modifier. This way allows me to go back and decide if I want a bigger/smaller bevel or just completely get rid of it altogether. It also enabled me to keep everything relatively low poly so that it is really quick to get my final low poly mesh afterwards.
Anyways I can't find anything like that for Maya. It seems like the only way would be an add on like hard mesh. Unfortunately I can't get hard mesh to work either (I just downloaded and got the trial running today but so far it doesn't work at all like promised; doesn't bevel things in a way I could use, has a problem with scale, and low poly stuff doesn't work at all)
Also I can't stand that fucking stupid widget. I've looked online but can't seem to find any way to get the move, rotate, scale, etc. to work with a hotkey like in Blender. Closest thing I can find is to Shift MMB to move along an axis (but I still have to press w, e, or r first). Also in Blender I can press g and then type in a number like 15 to move something a set amount but can't really find a quick way to do that in Maya. Aslo that widget always gets in my way when trying to select stuff.
Another little note is that Maya is weird how it selects stuff and adds new geometry. Is there a way to add geometry without creating a new object that I have to combine later? For instance in Blender I can within edit mode just press Shift A to add any sort of primitive (In Maya it always seems to make a new object). And don't get me started on how the selection works...
Anyways just trying to figure out why everything modeling wise is so much slower in Maya (I'm sure half of it is just me being a total noob to Maya but some of it feels so odd that they wouldn't have certain hotkeys for things or are missing functions, etc.)
P.S. if anyone knows of tutorials for learning Maya from Blender then I would love to check those out. It seems like every Maya tutorial treats you like you are some baby that has no clue about anything 3d. Also if you know of any plugins or scripts that might help with modeling let me know.
I feel like it's always best to do stuff as non destructively as possible but I can't really find much of a way to do that in Maya. In Blender I could just mark edges to be used with a bevel modifier. This way allows me to go back and decide if I want a bigger/smaller bevel or just completely get rid of it altogether. It also enabled me to keep everything relatively low poly so that it is really quick to get my final low poly mesh afterwards.
Anyways I can't find anything like that for Maya. It seems like the only way would be an add on like hard mesh. Unfortunately I can't get hard mesh to work either (I just downloaded and got the trial running today but so far it doesn't work at all like promised; doesn't bevel things in a way I could use, has a problem with scale, and low poly stuff doesn't work at all)
Also I can't stand that fucking stupid widget. I've looked online but can't seem to find any way to get the move, rotate, scale, etc. to work with a hotkey like in Blender. Closest thing I can find is to Shift MMB to move along an axis (but I still have to press w, e, or r first). Also in Blender I can press g and then type in a number like 15 to move something a set amount but can't really find a quick way to do that in Maya. Aslo that widget always gets in my way when trying to select stuff.
Another little note is that Maya is weird how it selects stuff and adds new geometry. Is there a way to add geometry without creating a new object that I have to combine later? For instance in Blender I can within edit mode just press Shift A to add any sort of primitive (In Maya it always seems to make a new object). And don't get me started on how the selection works...
Anyways just trying to figure out why everything modeling wise is so much slower in Maya (I'm sure half of it is just me being a total noob to Maya but some of it feels so odd that they wouldn't have certain hotkeys for things or are missing functions, etc.)
P.S. if anyone knows of tutorials for learning Maya from Blender then I would love to check those out. It seems like every Maya tutorial treats you like you are some baby that has no clue about anything 3d. Also if you know of any plugins or scripts that might help with modeling let me know.
Replies
This is a tiny change, hopefully it makes things more comfortable:
http://polycount.com/discussion/172524/blenders-select-all-deselect-for-maya
One thing I had trouble with in Maya, coming from Blender, was navigation. This script helps with that:
https://www.highend3d.com/maya/script/focus-on-mouse-cursor-for-maya (you need to create a free account to download)
No idea about the movement hotkey, that always seemed bizarre to me about blender.
No way to add geometry in the way you're asking, sorry.
Nearly everything in maya is node-based, which is quasi-non-destructive, but it's not always easy to just "kill" something like a bevel. It's either undo to back out, or selecting the bevel node in the hypergraph and deleting it. As for tweaking a bevel or whatever, you immediately get a floating panel that you can MMB on to change the vales, in addition to doing the same action in the channel box.
Yea I'm sure the shock will wear off eventually...