Autodesk keeps screwing stuff up (Maya2013)

bugo

So, Maya 2013 launched, bunch of good stuff in, but they've take tons of stuff out. Glossmaps, reflection mask, surfaceshape tangency for normal maps, ALL don't work anymore! On top of it, normal maps are giving tons of bug on the viewport 2.0. Doens't make me feel the need of using 2013 at all...

Anybody got to experience that?

Dataday

I stick with 2011 because of crap like that. Autodesk seems notorious for each new version becoming more unstable.

haiddasalami

Yeah didnt see much use for 2013 as Maya 2012 the viewport 2.0 works perfectly There was mention of a hotfix coming down as they screwed up rotation orders or something.

poopipe

the yearly release cycle is killing all their apps and has been since 2008

largely because it takes longer than a year to develop and test a major update

Dataday

poopipe wrote: »

the yearly release cycle is killing all their apps and has been since 2008

largely because it takes longer than a year to develop and test a major update

It doesnt help that they have very little in the way of competition (since they bought out the competition). They want their yearly releases to generate more revenue, despite the fact it hurts the actual product. Kind of sad isnt it?

poopipe

I dunno if its that cynical - the max development seems well intentioned enough, they just need enough time to fully implement everything before we all see the benefits.

The release cycle itself will be using up vast swathes of development time in last minute panic bugfixing etc. that would be much better spent in actually finishing stuff properly. If they could only go back to the 2-3 year cycle they ran on prior to 2008 things would be better for everybody - there wouldn't be the big push for new featurs you expect with a full release and they'd actually be able to fix important bugs before rolling out a shiny new version with more buttons and an extension of the same set of bugs.

m4dcow

http://mayafeedback.autodesk.com
Go log these bugs, also let it be known what you would like added or changed with Maya too, it is a better way of letting them know.

Joopson

Normal maps work fine for me. Could it be your graphics card, or something?
Though largely I agree, the yearly releases tend to hurt the product.

Neox

joopson, can you try using baked normalmaps from 2013 in 2012 or below? our last tests showed that it seems like the tangentbase is screwed up - which is bad for productions synched to 2012 or lower

Joopson

Oh, I misunderstood the issue, I guess. I thought he was saying normalmaps wouldn't display correctly in Maya 2013; not that normal maps rendered in 2013 won't display correctly in earlier versions of Maya.

What I was saying is that I have had no issues in 2013 displaying normal maps, whether they are "right-handed" or "left-handed" tangent-space. But also, I don't bake in Maya.

AlecMoody

My understanding is that the tangent basis hasn't changed but the way maya computes normals in 2013 is different. Normals have just as big of an effect on the final smoothing as tangents.

edit:

Joopson wrote: »

Oh, I misunderstood the issue, I guess. I thought he was saying normalmaps wouldn't display correctly in Maya 2013; not that normal maps rendered in 2013 won't display correctly in earlier versions of Maya.

What I was saying is that I have had no issues in 2013 displaying normal maps, whether they are "right-handed" or "left-handed" tangent-space. But also, I don't bake in Maya.

Tangent basis isn't really an issue of right/left. Its the math used to compute the mesh tangents. Also, getting normal maps to render correctly requires getting more than just the tangents orientated the same way.

bugo

Well I was mainly saying that the left/right thing was not switching or doesn't work.

Sometimes the normal map appeareance looks like its going by object mode instead of tangent, and I try to switch on the bump node, nothing happens. So there's something there that it's happening, all my tests were done with maps baked in Maya 2013 using Maya 2013 meshes.

Brygelsmack

I'm mainly sticking to 2012 because 2013 has no exporter for CE3. But seeing this I doubt I'll even update...

Lamoot

poopipe wrote: »

The release cycle itself will be using up vast swathes of development time in last minute panic bugfixing etc. that would be much better spent in actually finishing stuff properly. If they could only go back to the 2-3 year cycle they ran on prior to 2008 things would be better for everybody - there wouldn't be the big push for new featurs you expect with a full release and they'd actually be able to fix important bugs before rolling out a shiny new version with more buttons and an extension of the same set of bugs.

Or maybe they should switch to a 8-12 week release cycle like Blender does?

Joopson

I actually think Pixologic's technique, combined with UDK's technique, would make for an awesome release cycle, and much better software. Maybe you pay for each "BIG" update (maybe once every 2 to 3 years), but they update each month with bug fixes, and extra tools, et cetera. Gosh, I would be really happy with something like that, but I guess they can't get at our wallets as often that way.

bugo

Brygelsmack wrote: »

I'm mainly sticking to 2012 because 2013 has no exporter for CE3. But seeing this I doubt I'll even update...

Same here, comming back, I wish that Cryengine would accept FBX tho.