Bevel tool in maya

vahl

This may already have been asked but does anyone know a good (read "at least like the one in max") bevel tool for maya (plugin, script, whatever) because the one bundled in maya is just...well...crap.

I'm just fed up with having to weld and move almost all the beveled verts each time I use it on an organic type mesh...

thomasp

there is/was one as a freebie plugin accompanying byron's poly tools. it behaved like a good boy, not like maya's little builtin retard. no idea if it's still maintained and available for the current maya versions.

vahl

http://www.byronimo.de/mainpage.htm

thanks Thomasp, I'll try these (hopefully I still use maya 5).

thomasp

does that mean you don't know what version of maya you are using or are you preparing for an upcoming job? if the latter, maya 5 is at least two years old, i wouldn't bet on it...

vahl

nah ,I'm using maya 5, still haven't updated

malcolm

Maya7 ships with a better out of the box bevel tool which is closer to how max's works, you are really out of date there are a tonne of other useful poly tools in the newer mayas.

thomasp

that's interesting. does it finally work like, well, a bevel tool in any other app? or is there still some unusual alias-weirdness in it's behaviour you have to deal with?
by any chance: did they add non-script-based (fast!) connect/divide tools, pretty please? what about sliding components along any other component's normals?

the project i'm on uses maya 6 so i don't get to see anything newer but i haven't heard rumours about a bevelling revolution either. with every maya release since 6.0 there have been reports about poly toolset improvements yet soon after the release, everyone was cursing or still using max, wings, modo to do the groundwork. i so don't get how they failed to make it work right from the start - in maya 1.

Daz

It's always sucked in Maya. I swear by BPT bevel. Couldn't do without it. But to be honest I don't have 7.0 so I don't know If the one that always shipped with Maya suddenly works or not.

thomasp

i'd LOVE to be able to model in maya and there's only a small but crucial amount of tools that it has been missing like forever and that i refuse to live without (i started in nendo/mirai and moved to max only when it got similar stuff, totally circumventing the "classic" toolset, that's probably why).
but: my requirement is that this toolset has to work without plugins - scripts and anything platform- and version- independent would be fine though as long as the performance is right. but there's no way i'd rely on someone to compile his closed source tool for the maya version i use.
i want to avoid at all costs to be dependant on a plugin.

btw. i once had byrons poly tools (the commercial thing) demonstrated to me - and while the functionality was great and almost anything i could have wanted, even in that short demo it made maya crash boom bang quickly. grrrrreat!

Daz

Maya's out of the box poly tools suck. No argument.

As an fyi, you dont need the full suite of BPT just for the bevel. The bevel is available as a free standalone. I actually overwrote the standard one with it. It's on highend3d.

Marine

byrons bevel doesn't work with 6.5

malcolm

thomasp

1. the bevel tool is better but still not as good as max.

2. connect divide tools have been there since maya 2.5.

3. move components along its normal has been added to maya7 and is really fucking handy.

malcolm

Maya7 poly tools own, no need for any secret mel scripts, also that marking menu system for modeling polys and smooth proxie is fucking ingenious. I barely have buttons on the shelf any more it's all on the right shift click.

malcolm

bevel example for those interested, I find this much better than the byron.

Lee3dee

i agree the bevel sucks in maya 6.5, compared to Max 7. I wish Maya had a chamfer tool like in max

thomasp

malcolm: where do the connect/divide tools hide in maya? i can't find anything inside the edit poly menu, that seems to do that job.

so far i've used subdivide on edges to work around this but as for connect - moving with snap and welding afterwards, bleh, have nightmares from doing that.

malcolm

chamfer vertex? that junk is in maya now but I find it at leat 99% useless. You can connect two open edges with geo between the two, just use the append to polygon tool? Maybe or terminology is confusing me.

Steve Schulze

So what does Max's bevel tool do that's so much better than Maya's. I can't honestly say I've ever really used either but on brief experimentation, Maya's tool seems to do exactly what I expect it to - split an edge neatly into two parallel edges. How does Max improve on this?

[ QUOTE ]
connect - moving with snap and welding afterwards, bleh, have nightmares from doing that.

[/ QUOTE ]There was a nice target weld script floating around a while back. Might have been Daz's.

thomasp

c'mon, connect is used to draw an edge between selected vertices, in more advanced implementations it accepts selected faces and edges, too - subdivides and conncets accordingly. it's used to build up geometry, not to reduce it like target weld.

btw. maya's bevel - at least in the versions people complain about here - simply requires a lot of manual cleanup, turning it's use into a very timeconsuming and frustrating process. and it's not max's bevel that is so much better, everyone else's bevel is so much better

heck it's so bad that it's actually a great timesaver to export your mesh out of maya, bevel in any other app and import back if you have to detail something for subd.... now that's workflow, eh?

but hey, seems in maya 7 they actually improved something. pity that studios will hardly upgrade for that in the middle of production.

Steve Schulze

Yeah, I thought connect wasn't what you sounded like you were describing. I don't think that tool was implemented when I used to use Max or perhaps it was and I just never found a use for it like 90% of the other tools in either program. I say if you're using more than the translate tools, cut, target weld and extrude on a frequent basis then you're overcomplicating your tool set.

Append polygon will likely have an effect more like what you're after.