ShadowKindGames - that should be plenty of horsepower! I'm using a 15" Retina Macbook and a 2013 Mac Pro w/ D300's and haven't hit any huge perf hits with LT. Any crazy texture maps or anything in the scene? Trying to think of what might be choking VP2 performance. It's slow to tumble or slow to playback deforming meshes?
I looked into the color output further and Turtle can output the full diffuse (no shading, lighting etc) if you just check off the Albedo under the Outputs. That will give you the full diffuse output of your object like you get from Transfer Maps using MentalRay in the full version of Maya. Try that out and let me know if it meets your needs - a bit puzzling that it's named differently in Turtle especially since Turtle's diffuse factors in lighting and shading while Transfer Maps doesn't.
Do you mean you'd like to see more stuff added for animation and rigging btw?
This was just a char model that had been zremeshed from zbrush and dumped in Maya LT. Not a finished clean character, but still when scaling / moving the mesh VP 2.0 crawled.
On the animation side something for none biped would be nice. But we make RPG's and 9/10 times the char models are Bipeds and Maya is so easy to use when animating and rigging. So that's a plus for Maya LT, it's the reason I'm looking into it as opposed to getting some subscriptions for 3DSmax on pre-paid annual. The price difference is hard to ignore, so another plus for Maya LT.
The only reservations I have is hitting a limitation somewhere, but for the most part I like it. Shame the trial isn't longer.. Not that $240.00 for a year is exactly something we can't afford to buy and cancel.
D'oh! I forgot that I put the high res cube in a display layer that I turned visibility off of. Go to the Channel Box tab and in the Display Layer Editor at the bottom check the first box which is visibility. You should see a V appear in that box and the high res should then be visible. Sorry about that, I turned it off to do the screen cap and must've forgot to enable it before saving.
Thanks for your helping hand. I really appreciate that. I was be able to bake it with the same result as yours.
I'm not 100% sure why these options worked. But yeah it did.
Still it would be good to have better control here. i.e. with a custom envelope/cage, ray blockers etc.
Thanks smcclelland!
I'll investigate all settings a bit closer in the next days.
So after playing with LT for some days now, my overall impression of Maya LT is good.
What I like in Maya LT over Blender (I'm a Blender user), are:
The UV tools.
These are more sophisticated, with snapping, automatic symmetry, better unfold algorithm and the option to edit the UV's of multiple objects at once.
The rigging is quite easier to set up and has fancy things like automatic joint placement based on volume etc.
I also like quad draw for retopo work. And the layer system.
What is nice to have, but not necessary for me is the viewport 2.0 shading. I use Substance Painter anyways for texturing. But yeah it looks good and is a convenient way to see your model and how it will eventually look in the engine.
Now the things I don't like too much.
This is for one Maya's modeling workflow. Compared to Blender, it is clumsy and slow IMHO. There are too much buttons to click vs. a fast shortcut based workflow.
This is a general issue for me in Maya. It's too button centric.
But I think you can get used to it eventually.
Unfortunately I also miss non-destructive modifiers like in Max, or Blender. These are really handy.
The lack of a GoZ pipeline is also a bit of an issue in LT.
I know Autodesk would rather sell people Mudbox over Zbrush. But I think this should be really considered, for people who work with Zbrush.
Maybe you could also consider a direct pipeline with UE4 without poly cap like with Unity.
What I also noticed as a Macbook Pro Retina user, Maya LT does not support Retina displays which results in a pixelated interface.
Adobe and Blender has high res support. Shouldn't be a problem for Autodesk to tackle this too, right?!
I didn't play much with the animation system yet. So I can't say much to that. But some spline based animation features would be great. And a grease pencil.
That's it, on top of my head.
I think Maya LT is a good alternative for people on a shoestring budget, who are used to the common Autodesk workflow and have issues to get used to Blender, or find Modo too pricey (which also lacks some features for game artists).
Ruka : Maya is just as keyboard-oriented as any other modeling package - you can assign any shortcut to any tool you want thanks to the hotkey editor. However if you do not know the category a certain tool belongs too (and that's understandable, it's quite crowded in there...), the easiest way is to find a given tool in the menus, and click on it while pressing ctrl and shift. This will send a copy of the tool to the current shelf. From there, you can middle-mouse drag this icon into the script editor and it will reveal the actual command that Maya executes behind the scenes. Once you know that, you can create your own shortcuts for anything in the program. (it is preferable to put these new shortcuts into the "User category" by the way). The process sounds convoluted at first, but it is very fast once you've done it a couple times.
---
SMC : here's a pipeline issue which this time is partly related to regular Maya, and partly related to LT :
A very common practice for highpoly creation of, says, armor pieces, is to block out a mesh using low polygon techniques and give that basic model some rudimentary surface/tension weighting so that it provides a solid base to sculpt on.
In Max, the preferred way of doing that is to assign smoothing groups to various parts of an object, apply a turbosmooth modifer with the smoothing groups option turned on, and export as obj. It creates a very nice base for sculpting. (this is often referred to as the "double smooth" technique when a second turbosmooth modifier is applied on top of the result, this time without the SG option, for extra finesse). And if anything, there is also a Zbrush plugin that can read the smoothing groups information of an imported OBJ and subdivide accordingly. Good stuff ! Like this :
However in Maya/MayaLT this is not really easily possible since as far as I am aware there is no way to subdivide an object based on its hard edges. Therefore one needs to use another useful technique : Edge weighting. Now the creasing tool works fine inside LT, but there are two issues :
1. From what I have heard, with regular Maya, one can simply save the lowpoly mesh as .ma and the edge creasing data inside the file is picked up by Zbrush when importing the mesh. Which is awesome ! But since LT uses .mlt, which Zbrush does not read, this time-saving technique is not allowed to LT users.
2. The other solution is to subdivide the creased model inside LT, and export the resulting dense mesh for sculpting. However if one selects the mesh with "smoothpreview" enabled and exports it as obj, only the low basemesh is exported. The only way to get the subdivided data out of Maya/LT is to run "modify > convert smoothpreview to polygons", and then export. But this is a dangerous process as performing this conversion and/or undoing it often leads to crashes, especially when multiple objects are involved. And furthermore, in the case of LT, it is very likely that the resulting meshes would be over the allowed OBJ polygon limit anyways.
In short : something that should really be a one second process becomes a chore, leading to convoluted scene organisation and possible crashes.
It's all about being able to get this out of the modeling package and into Zbrush/Mudbox, as quickly as possible : (example taken from Sebasten Legrain)
I hope this makes sense ! I can capture some screenshots/videos if needed.
VP2.0 performance:
I tried a 12m poly character OBJ file in MayaLT 2015, on my laptop and I have no performance issues at all. I was able to move around and perform modelling functions with every object visible. The card in my HP laptopn is a Quadro K5000M, so it's a beefy card.
I did try the model on an older laptop with a lower spec card and there was a drop in performance, but it wasn't low enough to hamper my work.
As for MayaLT on a MBPro Retina. I honestly don't know if retina is supported, but I've been running MayaLT on my MBPro Retina and I certainly haven't noticed a pixelated interface, nothing I'd notice anyway.
As for MayaLT on a MBPro Retina. I honestly don't know if retina is supported, but I've been running MayaLT on my MBPro Retina and I certainly haven't noticed a pixelated interface, nothing I'd notice anyway.
Unfortunately it is not supported.
It might not obvious to everyone, especially if you work often on regular monitors too. But I noticed it instantly. I think I'm spoiled here :poly136:
It's indeed not a roadblock for the workflow.
But does look really nicer with crisp graphics, like in Photoshop, or Blender for example.
Thank you for the tests and reply ! Unfortunately I think we are not completely understanding each other ... but that's probably because of me not being very clear. I'll try to clarify.
My issue is not so much about possibly replicating the "double smoothing" workflow inside of LT (I merely mentioned this technique as it seemed somewhat relevant to the subject, and thought you might be interested). I am aware of steps allowing to create something quite similar based on edge weighting inside LT. On an example like the cube, it would be something like this : (left = lowpoly base with marked edges at full edge weight ; middle = a few subdivisions taking the creasing into account ; right = another subdivision added on top, to round off the edges and catch crisp highlights properly.)
So, no problem here. It is convoluted and not as fluid a workflow as the Max turbosmooth approach, but it works. Of course it kinda breaks down when trying to actively work on the base lowpoly while attempting to display the end-result at the same time, but that's besides the point here.
For reference, heres is the technique explained in detail. It is widely used amongst Max users, and it is easy to see why - it is a huge time saver (skip to 5:30 for a practical example)[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87I8FpXn3Yc"]Double Smooth in 3DS Max - YouTube[/ame]
Now, back to the core issue. I actually do not have any problem with the SmoothMesh realtime preview in MayaLT ; I find it very reliable - stable and very fast. (I have it bound to a toggle hotkey instead of 1-2-3, which makes it even faster.) The problem is that I cannot find a reliable, non-destructive (ie not adding nodes to the scene) and above all fast way of exporting its results *out* of MayaLT. With regular Maya it is possible to just save as .ma and let Zbrush subdivide the lowpoly mesh according to the crease data ; but the .mlt format doesnt allow for that.
This means that the user ends up being stuck : I can try to run "convert smoothpreview to polygons" (or apply a regular smooth node) but that is at the risk of stability issues / is a destructive process / and will likely result in a tricount over the poly limit ; or, I can export the lowpoly mesh in its most basic form as obj or fbx, which guarantees to be under the poly limit but looses all the awesome advantages of working with creasing and smoothpreview in the first place.
In other words, I think that for LT (and regular Maya) to play nice with major sculpting programs there needs to be a one step way to export the following out of LT into sculpting packages :
In other words, I think that for LT (and regular Maya) to play nice with major sculpting programs there needs to be a one step way to export the following out of LT into sculpting packages
I too have also run into this issue. In zbrush you can get around this by using auto-polygroups and dynamesh but it's not an ideal situation - and if you were using mudbox you'd be stuck.
Ha ! interesting. So basically, both polygon edge splits and UV edge splits can be detected by Zbrush for later grouping. Therefore the only thing missing from the Maya/MayaLT toolkit to get (approximative) edge creasing data into Zbrush would be the ability to simply select all the currently creased edges - so that the user can then either split them open, or separate UV islands accordingly before exporting to OBJ. Anyone knows of a way to do that ?
The easiest way I can think do do that is use the Crease Set Editor to make your creases, that way you can select/add to/modify your creases easily. I'm using regular maya though, so I'm just assuming that editor is in LT.
Aw, as a matter of fact I cannot seem to find the crease editor in LT. Which is quite surprising since the Crease Tool itself is available. Odd ! Back to square one.
Only fast-ish way I found is to enable "extend selection to creased components" in the Crease Tool, which makes the selection of existing creased edges a bit faster - but sill tedious on a complex mesh of course.
So I just stumbled across that file referencing isn't supported in LT, this is a feature I use at work with Maya where I will have a Mesh File, Rig File and Animation files separate so I can keep things clean.
I was about to setup a file at home the same way but noticed LT doesn't support this. are there any plans for this in the future?
Of course referencing is a nice and useful features, but I think it is a bit of an exaggeration to state that this is a core feature for Indie/Small game development.
I have made several large and small games without ever using referencing.
Inconvenient at times, but I think Maya LT is perfectly usable without it.
Referencing is more of a pipeline tool and if you want to setup a custom pipeline like that then regular Maya is the recommended option right now.
At the end of the day it would be nice to have an exact list of the features that are turned off in LT compared to regular Maya. I don't think it should be up to the users to figure it out ...
I am temporarily renting it out now instead of getting a permanent license for that reason.
So I downloaded Maya 2015 LT from steam tonight and I noticed that using "Duplicate Special" set to instanced is giving me flipped normals like older versions of maya. Now correct me if Im wrong but I use Maya 2014 at work and dont have this issue.
Does anyone have a solution to this issue, or another way to work "Instanced" with mirroring?
So I actually found a fix for my issue of black mesh "duplicate special" on the internet.
If your using duplicate special and negatively mirrored your new mesh and its black all you need to do is goto your perspective viewport, look for the lighting panel, inside there enable two sided lighting. Boom go do your instancing and you should be good to go.
On a side not I checked and used back face cull and flipped the normal's and the normal's are both facing in the same direction after the fix so this isn't just a weird visual hack. Hope this helps.
So I downloaded Maya 2015 LT from steam tonight and I noticed that using "Duplicate Special" set to instanced is giving me flipped normals like older versions of maya. Now correct me if Im wrong but I use Maya 2014 at work and dont have this issue.
Does anyone have a solution to this issue, or another way to work "Instanced" with mirroring?
Turn on two sided lighting - under the Lighting menu in your viewport. It's on by default in maya 2014 and off by default in maya LT.
I think you'll find the normals are actually reversed on a mirrored object in maya 2014 but you can't tell because two sided lighting is on.
Is anybody else experiencing heavy lag when trying to retopo a mesh? I have a pretty good machine but when trying to use the Quad-Draw tool on a high poly mesh to retopo it takes about 1-4 seconds for Maya to actually draw the Poly.
I turned off history to see if it makes a difference but after a few drawn quads the same issue shows up. Anyone got any ideas?
I received feedback from AD regarding the sluggish/slow down when using quad-draw to retopo. The bug has been confirmed. The problem here is that the reference mesh is a 3D Scan which has plenty of holes and bad geometry so Maya has a bit of a problem with that. Cleaning, fixing holes etc does help some but you will still get lag. I guess I will have to use 3D Coat for that task.
In any case, it's not every day that you load in a nasty 3D Scan so in many other cases Maya LT does just fine in the retopo area.
So I wanted to bring up something I just came across. I've been working with some friends (who have access to Maya Full) who have been mentoring me on Rigs and Animation - I'm learning how to do it all and I love that SDKs are available in LT now however there's one problem.
When I've gotten stuck, and need help from a friend who is remote - to trouble shoot what I'm doing, I can't just export the LT file as an FBX because it would lose the SDKs.... if I make a rig without SDKS I can send them an FBX just fine to maya full.
So things get a little sticky in that regard. I'd love to be able to make something and be able to send it to a friend properly... I could see this being an issue if say myself or any person using LT has some contract work and the client has you do some game art but on their end they use Maya full... As I can't afford the full version of maya I'm using LT for that reason, because it's affordable. I know I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too - I want the nice and cheap version of Maya LT but I want it to play well with it's big brother if I got work or had to work with someone that was using it. SDKs is an area that's been added to LT but unfortunately won't go back into full...it's not even an FBX export option.
I did get a suggestion from support that said the following: "One thing you could do is see if there is any MEL script on the net that will save and load SDKs, so you could save them to a file from Maya LT on your side and on the other side load the SDKs back from file in Maya. "
Yeah, I think that the file format limitation is going to be a sticky issue for a while : a freelancer trying to play nice by getting an official license of LT ends up being penalized compared to someone just pirating the full version.
I understand the intention behind it all, but in practice I am not sure if it is very viable - it makes it look like LT is being targeted to the artists *not* interacting with bigger studios. It might not affect modelers at all, but for animators it's bound to be a big issue ...
Yeah, I think that the file format limitation is going to be a sticky issue for a while : a freelancer trying to play nice by getting an official license of LT ends up being penalized compared to someone just pirating the full version.
I understand the intention behind it all, but in practice I am not sure if it is very viable - it makes it look like LT is being targeted to the artists *not* interacting with bigger studios. It might not affect modelers at all, but for animators it's bound to be a big issue ...
Yeah agreed, I get asked by friends, why don't you just get a "free" copy... I said I can afford 30 bucks a month, so I'd like to do that and be legit. (no offense to those who are using a "free" copy). Just sucks that there are some issues keeping me from being fully functional.
it makes it look like LT is being targeted to the artists *not* interacting with bigger studios.
That bigger studio can always rent you a license of the full version of Maya for a little while or you can rent it yourself if you have a freelance project with a big studio that requires a full license.
LT is NOT meant for freelancers to get a cheaper, full copy of Maya so they can work for larger studios. If that was the case a larger studio would just get copies of LT themselves for a lot of employees.
LT is meant to support Indie/small developers or individuals. Not as some hidden path way to get assets to a big company.
I also do not really agree to your argument of "penalized compared to someone just pirating the full version." Renting LT is very affordable and easy. Really no excuse to pirate at that point. And alternatively you can rent the full Maya for a bunch more.
There will always be those who do illegal stuff in any part of life. The guy who robes the bank also does not have to work every day like we do. You cannot build a company around those who do illegal stuff. You can only make it as easy as possible for those who care to do the right thing.
After all, with the current system, a modeler can totally use LT to freelance work for any studio precisely because AD decided to control the user base through pricing only, as opposed to putting conditions dictating which kind of professional work is allowed or not with LT. So it seems a bit odd to me that modelers are implicitly allowed something (thanks to the native FBX and OBJ support) that animators/riggers are not.
However I do agree that a big studio most definitely should rent out a seat of regular Maya for a freelancer. Fair point ! It's still a bit of a bummer that files are not compatible tho.
I think we misunderstood each other regarding the case of people pirating the software. I am not talking about people pirating LT (indeed, no point in doing so since it's so cheap) ; I am just saying that freelancers who use a cracked version of regular Maya, not caring at all about having a proper license of any kind, end up running into less issues and limitations than someone who tries to do things right by using a proper license of LT and that's a bit of a shame, I think.
Also, not every freelance job is for big studios ; what if someone with a LT license ends up freelancing with a very tiny studio, which just happens to run a single license of regular Maya for its pipeline ? That sort of stuff ...
At the end of the day none of that applies to me (at the moment) hence it doesn't bother me much - just trying to think of some scenarios in advance
smcclelland, if I can still request a feature, I'd like to request the view compass to be brought back. (the one from Maya 8.5, the one you guys replaced with that horrible ViewCube in 2008. )
I bought this yesterday on steam and I only have one immediate question: is there a way to start multiple instances of the program? I used to have 2 copies of Maya 2012 open a bunch to experiment and copy stuff back and forth, it was super handy. Every time I try to start another copy of LT though steam simply says it's already running.
Interesting - I just tried it with regular "Autodesk-purchased" MayaLT and this version does allow for multiple instances. It seems like the second instance has trouble closing down tho - took about 15ish seconds instead of being instantaneous, probably because of the app freaking out when writing to the preference files.
Yeah if it's specifically a steam thing that would kinda suck... I'd have to use the non-steam one, which doesn't have any of the dota tools. Ugh. Isn't there a best-of-both worlds?
there's gotta be a way to open multi of the steam one.
then again, not sure how often I'd use the dota tools in LT anyway. But it would be nice.
@radiance - I like to have one open for my main scene and another open if I want to try bringing something in from another file, or experimenting with new shapes/procedures, etc. anything with more than one model, so I don't need to close, reopen, close, reopen. I copy paste between files enough. I don't remember all my scenarios but I do know I do it fairly often.
Maybe you can try launching Maya from the folder that Steam put it in?
I don't have it personally, but Steam\steamapps\common would be a good place to check.
Hope it works.
I have a question that someone who uses the maya on steam might be able to answer:
Does maya LT on steam mean that you don't need to be connected to the internet? I have the regular LT version and it complains if my internet connection goes out. Is the steam version any better?
If you use LT I suggest trying the demo first. It "forgot" some of my settings, so every time I had to switch "radians" back to "degrees", in order to use the snap rotate. It also doesn't quite work as well in the UV-editor, since it won't just merge two vertexes in the editor, you actually have to match them by hand and merge. Hmm what else: no storying/saving weight maps, no obj export (which means Roadkill doesn't work).
I know I wrote part of this before, but the student version of LT is really not nearly as good as the student version of Maya 2014. Somehow a lot of things are not yet working. Subscription LT seems to have been fixed in that regard, but seriously, who would pay subscription, if you can get a permanent license after 4 months for the same price. Obviously you'd want a permantent license for a MayaLT that actually works the way it should, which the current student version does not.
Just ran into the issue of not being able to save off weight maps and yeah I'm hosed...now I'll have to start my project over
Hey folks, Steam does indeed only allow a single running instance of an application.
As for the internet connection the Steam version only checks once every 30 days for a valid subscription so outside of that you should be able to be 'off the grid' and still able to use the app. It just needs to check with Steam to renew your subscription every period.
Thanks for the reply - I think I'll switch to the steam version
Hi there - I just ran once more into the Pythonhome problem mentioned earlier, and narrowed down the issue. There seems to be a conflict between Maya/MayaLT and the Source SDK when it comes to the PythonHome path, with the SDK seemingly changing the OS environment variable (without warning!) to something that Maya does not like. This is of course a Source/Valve problem and not something that AutoDesk should usually be directly be concerned with, bit with MayaLT being advertised as a fitting tool for Source Engine/Workshop work, this becomes a huge problem to be addressed one way or another.
Now I am lucky to be able to fix this as I am comfortable with Windows environment variables, but this could be a huge problem for a lot of users, as improper Python setup deeply breaks Maya/MayaLT functionality - making file opening/saving and project folder setup impossible, among other things.
Curious if LT will ever have, or if it does have - maybe I don't know about it - a texture painting mode similar to what blender has. Which I think is pretty amazing. I would definitely use it if it was available.
Curious if LT will ever have, or if it does have - maybe I don't know about it - a texture painting mode similar to what blender has. Which I think is pretty amazing. I would definitely use it if it was available.
thanks
B.
It does seem to have a 3d paint tool, but i haven't used it yet.
Replies
The thing is I can't see the high-poly cube. No matter what I try (display/unhide etc.) So I guess it won't be taken in consideration while baking.
I'm not much used to Maya. So it might be on my side. I didn't change anything, mind you.
Thanks.
This was just a char model that had been zremeshed from zbrush and dumped in Maya LT. Not a finished clean character, but still when scaling / moving the mesh VP 2.0 crawled.
On the animation side something for none biped would be nice. But we make RPG's and 9/10 times the char models are Bipeds and Maya is so easy to use when animating and rigging. So that's a plus for Maya LT, it's the reason I'm looking into it as opposed to getting some subscriptions for 3DSmax on pre-paid annual. The price difference is hard to ignore, so another plus for Maya LT.
The only reservations I have is hitting a limitation somewhere, but for the most part I like it. Shame the trial isn't longer.. Not that $240.00 for a year is exactly something we can't afford to buy and cancel.
Thanks for your helping hand. I really appreciate that. I was be able to bake it with the same result as yours.
I'm not 100% sure why these options worked. But yeah it did.
Still it would be good to have better control here. i.e. with a custom envelope/cage, ray blockers etc.
I'll investigate all settings a bit closer in the next days.
So after playing with LT for some days now, my overall impression of Maya LT is good.
What I like in Maya LT over Blender (I'm a Blender user), are:
The UV tools.
These are more sophisticated, with snapping, automatic symmetry, better unfold algorithm and the option to edit the UV's of multiple objects at once.
The rigging is quite easier to set up and has fancy things like automatic joint placement based on volume etc.
I also like quad draw for retopo work. And the layer system.
What is nice to have, but not necessary for me is the viewport 2.0 shading. I use Substance Painter anyways for texturing. But yeah it looks good and is a convenient way to see your model and how it will eventually look in the engine.
Now the things I don't like too much.
This is for one Maya's modeling workflow. Compared to Blender, it is clumsy and slow IMHO. There are too much buttons to click vs. a fast shortcut based workflow.
This is a general issue for me in Maya. It's too button centric.
But I think you can get used to it eventually.
Unfortunately I also miss non-destructive modifiers like in Max, or Blender. These are really handy.
The lack of a GoZ pipeline is also a bit of an issue in LT.
I know Autodesk would rather sell people Mudbox over Zbrush. But I think this should be really considered, for people who work with Zbrush.
Maybe you could also consider a direct pipeline with UE4 without poly cap like with Unity.
What I also noticed as a Macbook Pro Retina user, Maya LT does not support Retina displays which results in a pixelated interface.
Adobe and Blender has high res support. Shouldn't be a problem for Autodesk to tackle this too, right?!
I didn't play much with the animation system yet. So I can't say much to that. But some spline based animation features would be great. And a grease pencil.
That's it, on top of my head.
I think Maya LT is a good alternative for people on a shoestring budget, who are used to the common Autodesk workflow and have issues to get used to Blender, or find Modo too pricey (which also lacks some features for game artists).
---
SMC : here's a pipeline issue which this time is partly related to regular Maya, and partly related to LT :
A very common practice for highpoly creation of, says, armor pieces, is to block out a mesh using low polygon techniques and give that basic model some rudimentary surface/tension weighting so that it provides a solid base to sculpt on.
In Max, the preferred way of doing that is to assign smoothing groups to various parts of an object, apply a turbosmooth modifer with the smoothing groups option turned on, and export as obj. It creates a very nice base for sculpting. (this is often referred to as the "double smooth" technique when a second turbosmooth modifier is applied on top of the result, this time without the SG option, for extra finesse). And if anything, there is also a Zbrush plugin that can read the smoothing groups information of an imported OBJ and subdivide accordingly. Good stuff ! Like this :
However in Maya/MayaLT this is not really easily possible since as far as I am aware there is no way to subdivide an object based on its hard edges. Therefore one needs to use another useful technique : Edge weighting. Now the creasing tool works fine inside LT, but there are two issues :
1. From what I have heard, with regular Maya, one can simply save the lowpoly mesh as .ma and the edge creasing data inside the file is picked up by Zbrush when importing the mesh. Which is awesome ! But since LT uses .mlt, which Zbrush does not read, this time-saving technique is not allowed to LT users.
2. The other solution is to subdivide the creased model inside LT, and export the resulting dense mesh for sculpting. However if one selects the mesh with "smoothpreview" enabled and exports it as obj, only the low basemesh is exported. The only way to get the subdivided data out of Maya/LT is to run "modify > convert smoothpreview to polygons", and then export. But this is a dangerous process as performing this conversion and/or undoing it often leads to crashes, especially when multiple objects are involved. And furthermore, in the case of LT, it is very likely that the resulting meshes would be over the allowed OBJ polygon limit anyways.
In short : something that should really be a one second process becomes a chore, leading to convoluted scene organisation and possible crashes.
It's all about being able to get this out of the modeling package and into Zbrush/Mudbox, as quickly as possible : (example taken from Sebasten Legrain)
I hope this makes sense ! I can capture some screenshots/videos if needed.
I tried a 12m poly character OBJ file in MayaLT 2015, on my laptop and I have no performance issues at all. I was able to move around and perform modelling functions with every object visible. The card in my HP laptopn is a Quadro K5000M, so it's a beefy card.
I did try the model on an older laptop with a lower spec card and there was a drop in performance, but it wasn't low enough to hamper my work.
As for MayaLT on a MBPro Retina. I honestly don't know if retina is supported, but I've been running MayaLT on my MBPro Retina and I certainly haven't noticed a pixelated interface, nothing I'd notice anyway.
Unfortunately it is not supported.
It might not obvious to everyone, especially if you work often on regular monitors too. But I noticed it instantly. I think I'm spoiled here :poly136:
It's indeed not a roadblock for the workflow.
But does look really nicer with crisp graphics, like in Photoshop, or Blender for example.
I just chimed in to ask, anyone know how to get animations from Maya LT into Blender for rendering? Collada and FBX imports aren't cutting it.
Would an OBJ sequence be advisable for this? Or are any external renderers out there that I could get animation into?
Thanks
My issue is not so much about possibly replicating the "double smoothing" workflow inside of LT (I merely mentioned this technique as it seemed somewhat relevant to the subject, and thought you might be interested). I am aware of steps allowing to create something quite similar based on edge weighting inside LT. On an example like the cube, it would be something like this : (left = lowpoly base with marked edges at full edge weight ; middle = a few subdivisions taking the creasing into account ; right = another subdivision added on top, to round off the edges and catch crisp highlights properly.)
So, no problem here. It is convoluted and not as fluid a workflow as the Max turbosmooth approach, but it works. Of course it kinda breaks down when trying to actively work on the base lowpoly while attempting to display the end-result at the same time, but that's besides the point here.
For reference, heres is the technique explained in detail. It is widely used amongst Max users, and it is easy to see why - it is a huge time saver
Now, back to the core issue. I actually do not have any problem with the SmoothMesh realtime preview in MayaLT ; I find it very reliable - stable and very fast. (I have it bound to a toggle hotkey instead of 1-2-3, which makes it even faster.) The problem is that I cannot find a reliable, non-destructive (ie not adding nodes to the scene) and above all fast way of exporting its results *out* of MayaLT. With regular Maya it is possible to just save as .ma and let Zbrush subdivide the lowpoly mesh according to the crease data ; but the .mlt format doesnt allow for that.
This means that the user ends up being stuck : I can try to run "convert smoothpreview to polygons" (or apply a regular smooth node) but that is at the risk of stability issues / is a destructive process / and will likely result in a tricount over the poly limit ; or, I can export the lowpoly mesh in its most basic form as obj or fbx, which guarantees to be under the poly limit but looses all the awesome advantages of working with creasing and smoothpreview in the first place.
In other words, I think that for LT (and regular Maya) to play nice with major sculpting programs there needs to be a one step way to export the following out of LT into sculpting packages :
I hope this makes sense !
I too have also run into this issue. In zbrush you can get around this by using auto-polygroups and dynamesh but it's not an ideal situation - and if you were using mudbox you'd be stuck.
Or is there another way to pass polygroup information from an Obj to Zbrush ? Using per-faces material assignments maybe ?
Only fast-ish way I found is to enable "extend selection to creased components" in the Crease Tool, which makes the selection of existing creased edges a bit faster - but sill tedious on a complex mesh of course.
Maybe there is a way to script that in mel ?
Something like that - you could also use dynamesh with polish by groups turned on or applied afterwards
I was about to setup a file at home the same way but noticed LT doesn't support this. are there any plans for this in the future?
Thanks.
B.
edit: added a request for it to the ideas page:
http://mayaltfeedback.autodesk.com/forums/215180-ideas-for-maya-lt-forum/suggestions/6178656-add-reference-editor-function
I have made several large and small games without ever using referencing.
Inconvenient at times, but I think Maya LT is perfectly usable without it.
Referencing is more of a pipeline tool and if you want to setup a custom pipeline like that then regular Maya is the recommended option right now.
I am temporarily renting it out now instead of getting a permanent license for that reason.
Does anyone have a solution to this issue, or another way to work "Instanced" with mirroring?
If your using duplicate special and negatively mirrored your new mesh and its black all you need to do is goto your perspective viewport, look for the lighting panel, inside there enable two sided lighting. Boom go do your instancing and you should be good to go.
On a side not I checked and used back face cull and flipped the normal's and the normal's are both facing in the same direction after the fix so this isn't just a weird visual hack. Hope this helps.
Turn on two sided lighting - under the Lighting menu in your viewport. It's on by default in maya 2014 and off by default in maya LT.
I think you'll find the normals are actually reversed on a mirrored object in maya 2014 but you can't tell because two sided lighting is on.
I turned off history to see if it makes a difference but after a few drawn quads the same issue shows up. Anyone got any ideas?
I tried this as well. Didn't make much of a difference. It's really rather odd. Reported it as bug. Really can't figure out why it's acting like that.
In any case, it's not every day that you load in a nasty 3D Scan so in many other cases Maya LT does just fine in the retopo area.
So I wanted to bring up something I just came across. I've been working with some friends (who have access to Maya Full) who have been mentoring me on Rigs and Animation - I'm learning how to do it all and I love that SDKs are available in LT now however there's one problem.
When I've gotten stuck, and need help from a friend who is remote - to trouble shoot what I'm doing, I can't just export the LT file as an FBX because it would lose the SDKs.... if I make a rig without SDKS I can send them an FBX just fine to maya full.
So things get a little sticky in that regard. I'd love to be able to make something and be able to send it to a friend properly... I could see this being an issue if say myself or any person using LT has some contract work and the client has you do some game art but on their end they use Maya full... As I can't afford the full version of maya I'm using LT for that reason, because it's affordable. I know I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too - I want the nice and cheap version of Maya LT but I want it to play well with it's big brother if I got work or had to work with someone that was using it. SDKs is an area that's been added to LT but unfortunately won't go back into full...it's not even an FBX export option.
I did get a suggestion from support that said the following: "One thing you could do is see if there is any MEL script on the net that will save and load SDKs, so you could save them to a file from Maya LT on your side and on the other side load the SDKs back from file in Maya. "
Does anyone know of such a script?
Thanks in advance.
I understand the intention behind it all, but in practice I am not sure if it is very viable - it makes it look like LT is being targeted to the artists *not* interacting with bigger studios. It might not affect modelers at all, but for animators it's bound to be a big issue ...
Yeah agreed, I get asked by friends, why don't you just get a "free" copy... I said I can afford 30 bucks a month, so I'd like to do that and be legit. (no offense to those who are using a "free" copy). Just sucks that there are some issues keeping me from being fully functional.
That bigger studio can always rent you a license of the full version of Maya for a little while or you can rent it yourself if you have a freelance project with a big studio that requires a full license.
LT is NOT meant for freelancers to get a cheaper, full copy of Maya so they can work for larger studios. If that was the case a larger studio would just get copies of LT themselves for a lot of employees.
LT is meant to support Indie/small developers or individuals. Not as some hidden path way to get assets to a big company.
I also do not really agree to your argument of "penalized compared to someone just pirating the full version." Renting LT is very affordable and easy. Really no excuse to pirate at that point. And alternatively you can rent the full Maya for a bunch more.
There will always be those who do illegal stuff in any part of life. The guy who robes the bank also does not have to work every day like we do. You cannot build a company around those who do illegal stuff. You can only make it as easy as possible for those who care to do the right thing.
After all, with the current system, a modeler can totally use LT to freelance work for any studio precisely because AD decided to control the user base through pricing only, as opposed to putting conditions dictating which kind of professional work is allowed or not with LT. So it seems a bit odd to me that modelers are implicitly allowed something (thanks to the native FBX and OBJ support) that animators/riggers are not.
However I do agree that a big studio most definitely should rent out a seat of regular Maya for a freelancer. Fair point ! It's still a bit of a bummer that files are not compatible tho.
I think we misunderstood each other regarding the case of people pirating the software. I am not talking about people pirating LT (indeed, no point in doing so since it's so cheap) ; I am just saying that freelancers who use a cracked version of regular Maya, not caring at all about having a proper license of any kind, end up running into less issues and limitations than someone who tries to do things right by using a proper license of LT and that's a bit of a shame, I think.
Also, not every freelance job is for big studios ; what if someone with a LT license ends up freelancing with a very tiny studio, which just happens to run a single license of regular Maya for its pipeline ? That sort of stuff ...
At the end of the day none of that applies to me (at the moment) hence it doesn't bother me much - just trying to think of some scenarios in advance
there's gotta be a way to open multi of the steam one.
then again, not sure how often I'd use the dota tools in LT anyway. But it would be nice.
I don't have it personally, but Steam\steamapps\common would be a good place to check.
Hope it works.
Does maya LT on steam mean that you don't need to be connected to the internet? I have the regular LT version and it complains if my internet connection goes out. Is the steam version any better?
http://mayaltfeedback.autodesk.com/forums/215180-ideas-for-maya-lt-forum
Just ran into the issue of not being able to save off weight maps and yeah I'm hosed...now I'll have to start my project over
Thanks for the reply - I think I'll switch to the steam version
It's been brought up before here :
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2753326
And this is what I am getting :
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/pior_ubb/maya_alienswarm_python_issue_zpsa6336efd.png~original
Now I am lucky to be able to fix this as I am comfortable with Windows environment variables, but this could be a huge problem for a lot of users, as improper Python setup deeply breaks Maya/MayaLT functionality - making file opening/saving and project folder setup impossible, among other things.
thanks
B.
It does seem to have a 3d paint tool, but i haven't used it yet.