[Maya]Viewport PBR preview strategie in AAA game studio ?

SebKaine

Hi guys, 
I know many folks here work in AAA gamedev studio. I would like to know what is generally the main strategy for PBR level preview with a Maya based pipeline in a game studio ? When you have build and shade all your assets individually and you have now to layout them to build your levels, how do proceed to get an accurate viewport preview ?
- Do you have directly your in house game engine connected to maya , and then you can preview the exact result directly inside Maya ?
- Do you have a shaderfx based pipeline where you have your own in house PBR shaderfx material that try to mimic your engine behavior ?
- Do you use instead the default shaderfx stingray / substance workflow that use a restricted / limited shaderfx context ?
- Do you use instead the arnold aiStandard material that has been enhance recently as a previz material ?
- Or do you forget about Previz in Maya and integrate directly the layout in the game engine , no maya preview of the levels , engine only ?
Thanks for your lights, and sorry if my question feel kinda weird ! 
Cheers
E
 

oglu

Just integrate your engine into Maya like Sony Studios do.

SebKaine

Thanks for your answer oglu, the problem is that the first option , is the only one i can 't afford !  
In fact you have the ability to display Maya scene directly in UE but not the other way around :   
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Animation/LiveLinkPlugin/ConnectingUnrealEngine4toMayawithLiveLink/index.html

Initially i tend to really love shaderfx, and base my workflow on it. but : 
- i find AD default workflow base on stingray really bad. Stingray context is very restricted, it is kinda legacy as LUT and logics were created to have a perfect Match with stingray engine. Substance tools works only with this context.
- shaderfx in itself is beautiful , but the tools looks to be doom to be the next abandonware, cause there are very very few effort done on the shaderfx workflow (No PBR shading model for ex , Main dev has leave AD, bugs take a LOT of time to be corrected ).
- Most of the Viewport work at AD is done on Arnold viewport preview and the new MaterialX / LookdevX / Hydra workflow, but arnold is more vfx oriented and the new material editor is not there yet.

So i am curious to know how they do in AAA studios !

oglu

If you go the Unreal route just preview in Unreal. You need all the stuff Unreal provides to have the real deal.

SebKaine

Yes i agree Oglu it tends to be my conclusion for the moment, why bother to create material preview inside Maya, better do it directly in UE. 

zachagreg

I don't work a lot in Maya but at least for previews I only worry about general shades and colors when im in Max. The HQ viewport is decent but its never accurate to what will be shown in Unreal so i dont bother. It helps me though to just know the pieces which i intend to be different colors and using a rough approximation of specular.

SebKaine

Thanks for your feedback zachagreg !