Maya 2018 Opinions

Semi

Just tried the new release, and I'm happily surprised. Comparing it to this year 3ds Max, I now think I'm gonna make the switch for good. Single click extrusions were something I missed from Blender and I'm really glad that I don't have to look for new plugins to do things I feel should already be in the program. New UV's seem cool, circularize feature will probably be useful too. I'll test it more to see if stability has been improved. Arnold seems faster in Maya than in Max for some reasons. Have you guys noticed anything particularly interesting? The only downside for me are that some of the Bonus Tools have not been integrated to the official release, and I need to wait for the new version. I'd love to hear about what do others think about it, and if you found any neat little things for modeling, animations, rigging and I'd love to hear about the scripting side of the things. Have a good day! 

RyanB

I'm working on lighting for a mobile game.  During testing, I found that I could not bake Arnold lighting in Max 2018 out of the box.  I could bake Arnold directly in Maya 2017.  Ultimately, we decided to go with VRay in Maya 2017.

Ged

Im still on maya 2017 release before uv tools got added. Are they really worth using? my workmates said that learning the new uv tools is a massive pain in the ass because all the old shortcuts dont do what you expect anymore and it makes uving way more time consuming because you need to learn to get used to tons of new stuff.

Semi

@Ged Personnally, I dont think so, but I can see how it can be a problem. I mostly use the the shift-right click menus for Uvs and in the 2018 release small changes, like a submenu for the unfold options, are quite annoying. I don't think it's a massive pain but if you were using a lot of shortcuts before, which I dont use much of( I definetely should though), I can see how your friend found it annoying. You could probably just give it a shot and see for yourself if you have some time.  

Ged

Semi said:

@Ged  ...I don't think it's a massive pain but if you were using a lot of shortcuts before, which I dont use much of( I definetely should though), I can see how your friend found it annoying. You could probably just give it a shot and see for yourself if you have some time.  

Ok thanks good to know, I will hopefully give it a try sometime but yeah don't have any free time to just try things out at work, too busy hitting deadlines of course haha.

bounchfx

Is there any word on when LT 2018 will be released?

Fansub

soon from what i've heard, preeeety soon even ^^'

R3D

they added the uv tool that softimage used to have, so im happy with em

Odow

I love my maya 2015.

oglu

some video material...
http://youtu.be/LhQdgePM5Os

oglu

and one for the uvEditor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gT3XAbOiV0

Froyok

Since 2017, Maya is a no-go for me because of the UI bugs. Am the only one having theses ?

Examples (still valid in 2018) : 

https://twitter.com/Froyok/status/825999238328938496

https://twitter.com/Froyok/status/826001975921750016

All the modeling and UV improvements sounds super promising, but I won't jump until it's more stable. Also the viewport 2D is mandatory now but still full of glitches (stops refreshing sometimes for example).

It's really unusable on my end right now.

oglu

have you tried to use clean prefs... sometimes those bugs does appear cause of corrupted prefs...

Bellsey

R3D said:

they added the uv tool that softimage used to have, so im happy with em

That was the the Unfold plugin algorithm, and has been there since Maya 2015

Sage

Maya 2017 and Maya 2018 have a been a huge improvement. It now has a lot of features that Max has, so I'm pretty happy with it. it finally does extrude with shift. It took over a decade for Autodesk to add this.

throttlekitty

Bummer @Froyok, that doesn't happen here, seconding trying with fresh prefs or the usual video card driver update suggestion.

Loving the additions to the UV editor, though the new panel is a clusterfuck coming from NSUV. I was most excited to see the set texel density in now, it's a butt ton faster than Nightshades, which is nice. Getting a lot of "division by zero" errors on some test meshes that I can only attribute to some uv shells being too small, but not small enough to not get pixels or anything silly.

VP2.0 feels a lot smoother now too. Gonna miss the legacy ones, they still had a couple uses here and there.

I have a question! The new slide additions to the gizmos are awesome. One move I like to do is with the old-old slide edge tool on edge loops. I'll add a bit of volume to a surface with shift-mmb to push the loops out a bit further than I need to, then wiggle mmb a little to quickly smooth everything out. Can we do that now with just the transform tools and minimal clicks? (push out on normal, then edge slide a few times)

e: got it: ctrl+move tool to push, ctrl+shift+move tool to slide.

SonicBlue

Hey @Froyok that looks like a graphical glitch, have you tried switching to an Aero theme? If you find it to be too slow, there's the Aero Basic too (Windows 7), that's almost as fast as the Classic theme. For the other OS there's the hidden Aero Lite.

Before switching theme, save your current theme and screenshot your settings in System-->Advanced system settings-->Advanced-->Performance-->Settings...
(this one)



As the change will overwrite all of what you customize.

oglu

Bool plugin from Mainframe does look great...
https://www.mainframe.co.uk/products/bool

bounchfx

Fansub said:

soon from what i've heard, preeeety soon even ^^'

not soon enough i guess

RIP

Froyok

Actually, the legacy viewport can be brought back with an environnement variable : MAYA_ENABLE_LEGACY_VIEWPORT See : http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2018/ENU/?guid=GUID-4928A912-DA6C-4734-863B-AB5959DA73C9

oglu said:

have you tried to use clean prefs... sometimes those bugs does appear cause of corrupted prefs...

Yeah I use clean prefs for each new install since 2016. I have custom scripts to re-setup everything I need.

SonicBlue said:

Hey @Froyok that looks like a graphical glitch, have you tried switching to an Aero theme? If you find it to be too slow, there's the Aero Basic too (Windows 7), that's almost as fast as the Classic theme. For the other OS there's the hidden Aero Lite.

Before switching theme, save your current theme and screenshot your settings in System-->Advanced system settings-->Advanced-->Performance-->Settings...
(this one)
<*img alt="" src="https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/nq/nam7jvke2ndy.jpg">


As the change will overwrite all of what you customize.

I already tried switching to an Aero theme and so on. The only thing I didn't tried yet is seeing how the build behave on Windows 10. Otherwise my drivers and so on are up to date (a bit mandatory in my field). I guess I will continue to dig the problem since it appears I'm alone ?

throttlekitty

@Froyok Maya has had issues with various UI things over the years related to multiple displays or even certain resolutions. Have you checked any background apps you might be running?

That's awesome about the legacy viewport, thanks!

Odow

I haven't switch maya forever but VP 2.0 used to have a weird sorting issue with texture that contained alpha back them is it still the case ?

R3D

I love that they added the UV tools from softimage

RIP.

throttlekitty

Odow said:

I haven't switch maya forever but VP 2.0 used to have a weird sorting issue with texture that contained alpha back them is it still the case ?

There's several sorting modes you can pick from, they added a new one for simple cutout for this release.