Do I really have to use Maya for animation?
polycounter lvl 18
Not that there's anything wrong with Maya, but it seems to be the only option if you want to focus on serious rigging/animation. Is there any other tool out there right now that specializes in animation that is as good or close and user-friendly?
Replies
Yes, I'd learn Maya personally. Whilst not absolutely totally necessary, you're better off knowing it than not.
Sucks, don't It?
In all honesty from what i keep hearing it is the beezzzknees.
That being said I'm sure there are studios that exclusively use maya, max, or motion builder,but the programs are just programs, the concepts are going to translate throughout.
I believe it's Valve's go to animation software, and it sure is a thing of BEAUTY!
A few other local TV & FX houses around town use it as well.
What are schools using? AM, iAnimate, and AnimSchool all provide rigs in Maya (though the latter may also provide XSI equivalents?).
Who's writing helpful scripts/plugins and for what software? On the Maya side, you have stuff like the incredible Morpheus 2.0 project and all the associated scripts from the CGMonks guys. You also have the Red9 Studio Pack which adds tons of functionality. That's not to say other software packages don't have free scripts available that would help your workflow, but it's hard to compete with the sheer amount of stuff available for Maya due to its current popularity.
Maya's not perfect animation software by any stretch of the imagination (and I would love for something better to come along), but it contains a mature tool set and a robust ecosystem of rigs, scripts, etc. Unless you have personal opposition to Autodesk or simply can't get your hands on a student copy or whatever, choosing Maya is a pretty decent option. At the very least you'll be able to get up and running quickly because there's a lot of training content available!
I guess it is. but that doesn't mean it stops there, you still have all the keying features you'd ever need.
I do all my handkeying in motion builder.
I know it's way standard in Sweden and I've come across tons of job listings where they want motion builder experience and I'm assuming it's not just for cleaning mocap.
The thing is that since it's primarily for mocap (quoting you on this, didn't ask autodesk rly :poly136:) it has a ton of nice tools like layers (which exist in other packages sure, but these are smoother to work with), offsetting your whole animation based on a quick tweek, like for example if you need your character to actually be 10 meters further in Z, you'd have to go and modify individual keys in other programs (just moving the hip's Z-curves would fuck you up else where, and moving everything in Z would probably as well) where as in motion builder you just move the whole character and click "move keys".. you've got the workflow of takes rather than seperate files / trax editor crap - for each animation, so you can quickly try something different in your animation by just moving all of the keys to a new take, tweek it, like it or not and delete/keep the take.
those are some things I like about it.. then of course the FK/IK-magic rig :poly124:
and that rotations aren't...hmm..global..local?...I dunno..
I was cleaning mocap in maya a month or so ago where I had to match up run-starts and stops and whatever to 90-degree angles, with a run animation that was facing just forward. pasting in the forward run pose into a -90 or 180 turn would of course have the character flip at the last frame. motion builder would have done some magic there and......just....worked.. but in maya, I had to use the studios tools and copy a bunch of properties back and forth and trick maya into turning the character.