Maya LT for DOTA?

Haftoof

So I'm working through my set and other projects and I'm starting to be a touch concerned about having a legit copy of Maya (I'm using a student version).

Do folks have an opinion on Maya LT?

Confrontation

Hello,
I use maya lt for my work. And i think it is a good tool to use. Espessily after the last version. Now u have a higher polycount limit. maya lt is perfect for the workshop in my opinion. Before i used maya lt i used the student version for maya too.
But i am new to the dota workshop. So that is only my opinion.

Malloy

MayaLT is really accessible, I used to use component editor for skin weights but they dont have that in LT.. they just have paintweight tool. Everything else is pretty much the same and the export process to Dota 2 is super easy. I recommend it!

Haftoof

Hmmmm, I'll look into it then, I am planning to rebuild my PC (re-install and get rid of a bunch of junk and optimize). Wonder if its cheaper on steam or straight from Maya, at least with steam it updates itself.

pior

Hi there Haftoof - I asked myself the same question while transitionning from studio jobs to being an indie. MayaLT seemed like a viable option, therefore I subscribed to it for several months and worked on a few Dota2 projects with it.

From a toolset point of view it's pretty viable as it has most of the regular Maya features, and Dota2 work doesn't require advanced plugins anyway. The very accurate Dota2 realtime shader for Maya is working fine in LT too, so besides a few visual glitches requiring one to switch back and forth between viewport rendering types to clear them out it is quite viable.

That being said, I found LT to be surprisingly unstable when using it on a daily basis. I also ran into the arbitrary polygon count limitation a few times so that was frustrating too. (admittedly this was before they finally decided to raise that limit, but in principle this is still an issue that shouldn't be there to begin with). Another weak point is that Maya and MayaLT do not have reliable SMD import/export plugins that I know of, whereas Max and Blender both do. To my knowledge this is a necessity when working on any Dota2 project that is not oficially supported by the ingame importer.

Last but not least : you definitely will run into issues when collaborating with other artists who might be using a regular Maya license, as as far as I am aware files are not cross compatible. This was actually the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and I ended up cancelling my subscription to then take a month off in order to transition to Blender, which is now my main 3d environment.

In short : if you work on your own and know that you will only be working with already available Dota2 heroes, then MayaLT might be a good fit. For any other scenario, you will likely run into increasingly frustrating limitations, making LT not worth its asking price.

I hope this helps !

Haftoof

Hmmmm, definitely something to consider, for now I would only be working on existing hero-sets (IE things that the importer will munch on).

I appreciate the perspective. I really enjoy using maya but I am sure I can cross-function to another software set if needed. For right now to build out my skills and speed of production I'd like to focus solely on a specific set of tools so I think I will probably get MayaLT once I rebuild my PC sometime this week.

Really appreciate the responses. As for MayaLT not playing nice with anything else, it's kind of lame... they definitely need to open things up but when you're in the business of money not art (Looking at you Zbrush, two thumbs up for being awesome) then you end up with that.

I've also heard really good things about soft-image but I'm not sure yet whether I want to take the plunge into something that is effectively unsupported now.