haaa snap tried it again, it worked :P so I think my problem came from back edges being selected.
Which also means ... that if the edges are not 'linkable' the script operates only on one set of edges. Like :
It is fine for the tool to not try and link the two sets with an ugly split; however it could be handy to have it able to perform on the two separate set of edges at once... Hope this helps. Maya2008 64.
Well actually that would be a good idea, but I neither wrote nor programmed it, what I did was take the line of code out of the insert edgeloop tool that connects the edges together...so no idea there.
Pior same thing happens when you try to use the function that selects an entire row of edges. You can only do it one row at a time .. not multiple rows at once..
So I got up this morning and went to school on autopilot only finding out my classes didn't start until 1,5 hours later, so I decided to venture into the game department and try out max again. After having had a chance to try out max again (v. 9) I actually think max is a terrible mess.
First of all, there seems to be far too much going on on the right, without anything actually be powerful, save perhaps the modifier stack. Most of these tab have specific functions, for specific tasks and stages of production and they all seem to work completely different.
The utilities tab seems to be overkill, as most of those are useless functions you rarely use. The motion tab is totally useless when not working with biped. You would expect there to be stuff actually relevant to motion like... xyz and other keyable values of the selected object, rather than stuff you neither understand nor need. The display tab shouldn't be in the same space all your working tools are located. The hierarchy tab doesn't contain that much functionality either. Then they make the give the few mostly useless functions a giant button so it actually fills up the space. I have always liked the modifier stack system though.
It gets worse when you animate something and try to tweak it. You open the graph editor and there are 15 million different attributes of the object visible, so first you have to filter everything. So with the move tool still selected, you tweak the keys and then when you want to scale them it doesn't work. As it turns out, the graph editor needs a special kind of scale. But not one, two special kinds of scaling. One that scales vertically and one horizontally, but only from the current frame in the timeline. That of course doesn't really matter since you generally don't want to edit any currently selected keyframes. The navigation also suddenly seems to have changed because for some reason they figured when I switch a million times between graph editor and viewport I really wouldn't want to be able to use the same controls.
The material editor is where max really loses everything. A tiny space for all your material previews and you had better hope they all look different enough because the main screen doesn't even show the material names. Of course in terms of navigation, this pretty much doesn't have any, you just click a lot of buttons before you get to the values you want to tweak and once again the interface is totally different from the rest. Why doesn't it just show every type of object, material or node in the same way in the same place with the same controls?
While I sincerely hope there is a better system in max I haven't found, the select by name is useless compared to the outliner in maya. Also now that maya has renderman available, max isn't the one with all the fancypants renderers anymore either.
Of course max does have some aspects its better in. The poly modeling workflow along with the stack system make it great to work on single objects. It probably has more area's it excells in, but I don't know which. Max seems to be a series of independantly created modules that form a single program, but while it has all of the drawbacks, it doens't even begin to hold up to the customisability of maya.
Max does have considerably prettier buttons and better aligned menus.
... just a useless rant to back up what I was saying earlier about maya kicking ass, and I had 1,5 hours to kill.
There were some really kick-ass tools for Maya in the Making some Years ago, long before NEX, called Byron's PolyTools.
There was so much great stuff in these, but they seem to be abandoned now, for whatever reason.
At first when he was still developing these, he had planned to make them available for free to everyone, but then some people convinced him that he should make them only available in a closed manner.
So now there is just a rotting carcass of a website for these tools, and apparently 0 updates. Wonder if it would have taken off if it had initially been free ( and maybe later gone "full retail", or have some kind of free test-period ), ah well ...
With regards to Outliner being better than Select By Name, they fixed this in Max 2008 with the Scene Explorer, which is way more powerful than both. It has collapsible groups like Outliner, and a bunch of filtering options, and easy toggles for freezing/hiding/setting render properties on objects.
Personally my main gripe with Maya's interface is that everything has a "script name" and a "pretty name" that's displayed in the menus, so sometimes it's really hard to find the right command in the hotkey list, since it doesn't have the same name as shown in the menus... gah.
With regards to poly modelling and non-destructive workflow, though, Max has Maya beat easily. 10x faster viewport display of high-poly objects, polygon subdivision that can be customised between viewport and render all in one object (instead of having duplicate objects for all your subdivided objects, or having to switch between methods of subdividing between render and viewport), modifier stack for performing different functions on instanced/referenced objects and copy/pasting between those.
Ambient-occlusion generation that is basically 1-click, same with fancy renders - I haven't used Renderman for Maya but I highly doubt it's as straightforward as Max's "Advanced Lighting" setup.
Maya always fills the screen with checkboxes, sliders, text-boxes, horrible layout that's hard to read and understand, and pretty much nothing is previewable ... in Max if you're performing an operation, it gives you an interactive preview before you accept or cancel the operation... no such thing in Maya. This leads to a lot of guesswork and going back over things.
Also Max has way more options for pivot point editing - Maya's only redeeming feature is the fast "Insert" button to snap pivot to stuff (you can do this in Max 2008 now too), but Max also has all the various options for world/local/parent/view/screen/gimbal/grid, and all can be set to use the selection centre, the average of the selection, each element or object's centre, or the world origin. That looks like something else I'll have to script for Maya...
I can't comment on the animation side of things, I can only assume that Maya is better since that's what most people say. I have never had trouble animating in Max though, and tweaking a model after rigging/skinning it is dead easy.
It's painfully easy to create non-manifold "evil" geometry in Maya, too (extrude an edge from a solid set of faces!? Gah!).
I agree that Hypershade is considerably more powerful than Max's material editor, but for the vast majority of game-art related work, Max's material editor is fine and tends to be more straightforward. Also the previews of materials in Max's viewport are way better than what Maya manages.
Oh, and ... Preserve UVs
SkullboX, I actually agree with you that a lot of Max's interface is a bit weird and unnecessary, and would probably benefit from a reshuffle. However most of the issues you raise about the tab panels on the right, I never come across, since I pretty much only ever have the Modify panel open there, and any commands from the other panels I need are on hotkeys or quad menus.
I think in summary, both apps suck, but in different areas. As a highpoly modeller, I'd hate to be stuck in Maya. I assume that you as an animator would hate to be stuck in Max
Fortunately it sounds like we're both using the apps we prefer for the type of work we prefer! Hooray!
I was using max/maya/xsi for different things, and now i only use Modo exclusively, and i know it very well .
All programs have its own flaws, if you like Maya.. well, it's only a question of taste, nothing more, nothing less. I dropped the use of max because compared to Modo is a Shit of program when we talk about subdiv modelling (hi-poly modelling). And of course, this is only my opinion :P.
There are multiple plugins to make animation a peace of cake in Max. Try CAT and you will smile :P.
[ QUOTE ]
So basically you don't like Max's interface?
[...]
SkullboX, I actually agree with you that a lot of Max's interface is a bit weird and unnecessary, and would probably benefit from a reshuffle. However most of the issues you raise about the tab panels on the right, I never come across, since I pretty much only ever have the Modify panel open there, and any commands from the other panels I need are on hotkeys or quad menus.
I think in summary, both apps suck, but in different areas. As a highpoly modeller, I'd hate to be stuck in Maya. I assume that you as an animator would hate to be stuck in Max
[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah I realise that most of the beefs I have with max compared to maya are specific to larger animation projects. Indeed I do use the software I like best, but I figured after my raving review of maya's awesomeness I'd throw in some max harrasment to boot, just because I tried it and didn't get any of it. :P
Also I am fully aware that 'discussions' such as this one are pretty pointless but it's good to summarize what I like and dislike about either package. I am indeed using the package best tailored to my needs and the more time I spent with it the faster everything goes. In max it just seemed to stagnate after a while because nothing worked. Of course, this was because I was primairily animating.
[ QUOTE ]
well, it's only a question of taste
[/ QUOTE ]
I actually think it's more a matter of needs, at least in initially picking the software. There's a reason maya has always been bigger in films, and Max has always been bigger in Arch Vis. Surely both can do either, but you don't use a bugatti to plow a field do you. :P
Max and Maya can be modified to make all the things needed, that's something all of us know. There are plenty of plugins for almost all (and if not, mel or maxscript can help a lot).
Spiderman 3, for example is a great movie that have used Max for its most advanced visual effects, oh no! it's MAX lol
Bugatti or not, you can transform your program with add-ons to fit all the needs and "plow a mountain", without buying another expensive app hehehe.
Yup, both suck! If you guys want to nitpick about interface design you know I am always your man. Try this at home kids, and bang your head as I do (in style):
I just can't believe that kind of things really. Max has it's own share but I find myself accessing these menus like dozens time a day with MayaTheBee hence it can get quite frustrating.
Maya2008 has some cool stuff tho (modelling point of view, again), like the slide edge tool that I think is still not in max9 (had to get the CSslide script for this). BUT! No average verts/polies to planar in Maya? WHAT haha! I had to download a Makeplanar script from Highend3D, it works okay but needs 3 verts to snap to (can't average by itself) and only works on faces, haaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Anyways I can now print that one save/close image on my wall now, might come in handy :P
Heh Pior, that gets me every time - sometimes I'll click a "Save" button and the panel disappears, sometimes it doesn't - I think in some of the panels they add an "Apply" button which does the same as "Save" but doesn't close the window ... consistency, what's that?!
I'll tell you something that does boil my piss, sometimes after running maya for a while it just gets bugged or something and certain tabs or windows just wont open, the render globals being the main offender, forcing a close and reopen of maya. GRR
Replies
Also what version of Maya?
Which also means ... that if the edges are not 'linkable' the script operates only on one set of edges. Like :
It is fine for the tool to not try and link the two sets with an ugly split; however it could be handy to have it able to perform on the two separate set of edges at once... Hope this helps. Maya2008 64.
So I got up this morning and went to school on autopilot only finding out my classes didn't start until 1,5 hours later, so I decided to venture into the game department and try out max again. After having had a chance to try out max again (v. 9) I actually think max is a terrible mess.
First of all, there seems to be far too much going on on the right, without anything actually be powerful, save perhaps the modifier stack. Most of these tab have specific functions, for specific tasks and stages of production and they all seem to work completely different.
The utilities tab seems to be overkill, as most of those are useless functions you rarely use. The motion tab is totally useless when not working with biped. You would expect there to be stuff actually relevant to motion like... xyz and other keyable values of the selected object, rather than stuff you neither understand nor need. The display tab shouldn't be in the same space all your working tools are located. The hierarchy tab doesn't contain that much functionality either. Then they make the give the few mostly useless functions a giant button so it actually fills up the space. I have always liked the modifier stack system though.
It gets worse when you animate something and try to tweak it. You open the graph editor and there are 15 million different attributes of the object visible, so first you have to filter everything. So with the move tool still selected, you tweak the keys and then when you want to scale them it doesn't work. As it turns out, the graph editor needs a special kind of scale. But not one, two special kinds of scaling. One that scales vertically and one horizontally, but only from the current frame in the timeline. That of course doesn't really matter since you generally don't want to edit any currently selected keyframes. The navigation also suddenly seems to have changed because for some reason they figured when I switch a million times between graph editor and viewport I really wouldn't want to be able to use the same controls.
The material editor is where max really loses everything. A tiny space for all your material previews and you had better hope they all look different enough because the main screen doesn't even show the material names. Of course in terms of navigation, this pretty much doesn't have any, you just click a lot of buttons before you get to the values you want to tweak and once again the interface is totally different from the rest. Why doesn't it just show every type of object, material or node in the same way in the same place with the same controls?
While I sincerely hope there is a better system in max I haven't found, the select by name is useless compared to the outliner in maya. Also now that maya has renderman available, max isn't the one with all the fancypants renderers anymore either.
Of course max does have some aspects its better in. The poly modeling workflow along with the stack system make it great to work on single objects. It probably has more area's it excells in, but I don't know which. Max seems to be a series of independantly created modules that form a single program, but while it has all of the drawbacks, it doens't even begin to hold up to the customisability of maya.
Max does have considerably prettier buttons and better aligned menus.
... just a useless rant to back up what I was saying earlier about maya kicking ass, and I had 1,5 hours to kill.
There was so much great stuff in these, but they seem to be abandoned now, for whatever reason.
At first when he was still developing these, he had planned to make them available for free to everyone, but then some people convinced him that he should make them only available in a closed manner.
So now there is just a rotting carcass of a website for these tools, and apparently 0 updates. Wonder if it would have taken off if it had initially been free ( and maybe later gone "full retail", or have some kind of free test-period ), ah well ...
With regards to Outliner being better than Select By Name, they fixed this in Max 2008 with the Scene Explorer, which is way more powerful than both. It has collapsible groups like Outliner, and a bunch of filtering options, and easy toggles for freezing/hiding/setting render properties on objects.
Personally my main gripe with Maya's interface is that everything has a "script name" and a "pretty name" that's displayed in the menus, so sometimes it's really hard to find the right command in the hotkey list, since it doesn't have the same name as shown in the menus... gah.
With regards to poly modelling and non-destructive workflow, though, Max has Maya beat easily. 10x faster viewport display of high-poly objects, polygon subdivision that can be customised between viewport and render all in one object (instead of having duplicate objects for all your subdivided objects, or having to switch between methods of subdividing between render and viewport), modifier stack for performing different functions on instanced/referenced objects and copy/pasting between those.
Ambient-occlusion generation that is basically 1-click, same with fancy renders - I haven't used Renderman for Maya but I highly doubt it's as straightforward as Max's "Advanced Lighting" setup.
Maya always fills the screen with checkboxes, sliders, text-boxes, horrible layout that's hard to read and understand, and pretty much nothing is previewable ... in Max if you're performing an operation, it gives you an interactive preview before you accept or cancel the operation... no such thing in Maya. This leads to a lot of guesswork and going back over things.
Also Max has way more options for pivot point editing - Maya's only redeeming feature is the fast "Insert" button to snap pivot to stuff (you can do this in Max 2008 now too), but Max also has all the various options for world/local/parent/view/screen/gimbal/grid, and all can be set to use the selection centre, the average of the selection, each element or object's centre, or the world origin. That looks like something else I'll have to script for Maya...
I can't comment on the animation side of things, I can only assume that Maya is better since that's what most people say. I have never had trouble animating in Max though, and tweaking a model after rigging/skinning it is dead easy.
It's painfully easy to create non-manifold "evil" geometry in Maya, too (extrude an edge from a solid set of faces!? Gah!).
I agree that Hypershade is considerably more powerful than Max's material editor, but for the vast majority of game-art related work, Max's material editor is fine and tends to be more straightforward. Also the previews of materials in Max's viewport are way better than what Maya manages.
Oh, and ... Preserve UVs
SkullboX, I actually agree with you that a lot of Max's interface is a bit weird and unnecessary, and would probably benefit from a reshuffle. However most of the issues you raise about the tab panels on the right, I never come across, since I pretty much only ever have the Modify panel open there, and any commands from the other panels I need are on hotkeys or quad menus.
I think in summary, both apps suck, but in different areas. As a highpoly modeller, I'd hate to be stuck in Maya. I assume that you as an animator would hate to be stuck in Max
Fortunately it sounds like we're both using the apps we prefer for the type of work we prefer! Hooray!
All programs have its own flaws, if you like Maya.. well, it's only a question of taste, nothing more, nothing less. I dropped the use of max because compared to Modo is a Shit of program when we talk about subdiv modelling (hi-poly modelling). And of course, this is only my opinion :P.
There are multiple plugins to make animation a peace of cake in Max. Try CAT and you will smile :P.
Anyone knows polyboost? http://polyboost.com/
You don't need anything more!
So basically you don't like Max's interface?
[...]
SkullboX, I actually agree with you that a lot of Max's interface is a bit weird and unnecessary, and would probably benefit from a reshuffle. However most of the issues you raise about the tab panels on the right, I never come across, since I pretty much only ever have the Modify panel open there, and any commands from the other panels I need are on hotkeys or quad menus.
I think in summary, both apps suck, but in different areas. As a highpoly modeller, I'd hate to be stuck in Maya. I assume that you as an animator would hate to be stuck in Max
[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah I realise that most of the beefs I have with max compared to maya are specific to larger animation projects. Indeed I do use the software I like best, but I figured after my raving review of maya's awesomeness I'd throw in some max harrasment to boot, just because I tried it and didn't get any of it. :P
Also I am fully aware that 'discussions' such as this one are pretty pointless but it's good to summarize what I like and dislike about either package. I am indeed using the package best tailored to my needs and the more time I spent with it the faster everything goes. In max it just seemed to stagnate after a while because nothing worked. Of course, this was because I was primairily animating.
[ QUOTE ]
well, it's only a question of taste
[/ QUOTE ]
I actually think it's more a matter of needs, at least in initially picking the software. There's a reason maya has always been bigger in films, and Max has always been bigger in Arch Vis. Surely both can do either, but you don't use a bugatti to plow a field do you. :P
Surely both can do either, but you don't use a bugatti to plow a field do you. :P
[/ QUOTE ]
Haha, awesome analogy!
Spiderman 3, for example is a great movie that have used Max for its most advanced visual effects, oh no! it's MAX lol
Bugatti or not, you can transform your program with add-ons to fit all the needs and "plow a mountain", without buying another expensive app hehehe.
I just can't believe that kind of things really. Max has it's own share but I find myself accessing these menus like dozens time a day with MayaTheBee hence it can get quite frustrating.
Maya2008 has some cool stuff tho (modelling point of view, again), like the slide edge tool that I think is still not in max9 (had to get the CSslide script for this). BUT! No average verts/polies to planar in Maya? WHAT haha! I had to download a Makeplanar script from Highend3D, it works okay but needs 3 verts to snap to (can't average by itself) and only works on faces, haaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Anyways I can now print that one save/close image on my wall now, might come in handy :P