Blender to Maya LT questions

electricsauce

I'm used to modelling in Blender, but I'm evaluating Maya LT to see if it can improve my asset production speed. I just have a few questions about making the transition.

In maya, is it possible to hide a face or vertex?

When I open a tool screen (average normals for example) can I dock it or force it to stay open until I'm done working with it?

In Blender, I can add edge loops with crtl + R. Can I bind a hotkey in Maya to do they same?

In Blender, I can cap the end of a cylinder by extruding, and then pressing s , 0. How would I do a similar operation in Maya?

Thanks!

Ponk

electricsauce wrote: »

In maya, is it possible to hide a face or vertex?

Yes but requires few more steps.
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2012/en_us/index.html?url=files/Viewing_the_scene_Show_an_isolated_subset_of_objects_or_components_in_a_panel.htm,topicNumber=d28e15945

electricsauce wrote: »

In Blender, I can add edge loops with crtl + R. Can I bind a hotkey in Maya to do they same?

Yes. Also you can add hotkeys to custom made shelf scripts, just like in blender.

In my opinion you will gain nothing switching to maya unless you are an animator guy. As I remember in maya you always need more steps and clicking buttons to do simple things. Even custom scripts and marking menus can't help if you simply doesn't have basic tools for modeling and uv maping.
BTW- It's not just random fanboy rant. I spend 2.5 year on maya and after that approx same time on blender.

oglu

Ponk wrote: »

I spend 2.5 year on maya and after that approx same time on blender.

maya changed in the last year a lot on modeling and uvs... and there is more to come...

but i agree only for modeling there is no need to switch to maya...

Gmanx

Having spent years using both I'd have top agree that Blender is (now) a very accomplished modelling package. No need to go Maya.

Ponk

oglu- Of course Maya changed but comparing to Blender amount of changes is small. In 2010 maya was superior in modeling but after ngons in blender 2.63 everything changed. I follow release notes of maya, max and blender and overall progress of autodesk softwares is 3 times slower than blender.

electricsauce- I forgot that Maya LT has crippled animation features. You can ignore what I was talking about "animator guy".

electricsauce

Thanks for the info. Working exclusively in Blender does have a few drawbacks though, with the biggest one being the import export issues. I do occasionally sell things in the Unity asset store, so smoothing and rotation issues aren't acceptable.

Here's a catapult that I made about a year ago in Blender. The main chassis is a skeletal mesh while the wheels are static meshes. Although you can't see it, the chassis imported with a 90 degree rotation and the wheels didn't.

You don't realize how good Blender's modelling tools are until you start looking at other software.

oglu

in 2015 you have mel scripting and the ability to save to objs...