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Of course, instancing stack entries is GOLD...
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Damn, yeah... I love being able to control the same parameters across multiple objects without worrying about keeping stuff synced ... got two different objects that need to bend the same way? Instance the bend, then they'll always match and you only need to edit one set of parameters!
Most of my highpoly stuff has instanced Turbosmooth modifiers so I can toggle them on or off or change the level of detail globally. Such a time sink in Maya, insanely easy in Max.
.."Maya is a good advanced modeling program and better for rigging and animation."..
I absolutely hate skinning in maya...why can I not just simply select a vert and assign it a weight?..( the only way I know of doing this in maya is through the component editor which is not an efficient work flow )_ ...Also....if you say have a character built out of intersecting meshes, why do i have to take my viewport inside of the mesh to paint weights?...
what's wrong with the component editor? select a vert, type in numeric values.... you can also do it on multiple vertecies from different objects at once.
you can also select vertecies before going in to the paint tool to mask that selection for painting. Or use the isolate select on faces to make the painting easier.
I don't know, I personally like the skinning in Maya better than Max.... but maybe that's just me. Also 2k8 has alot of improvements to the whole skinning process.
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Not entirely helpfull when adding things to your selection, though
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ahh true that is a pain, and I've hit it a few times. I end up having to deselect everything select that one piece (click click click...click now I have it) then select the other pieces and hope it doesn't bug when selecting something else.
OR rotating the viewport so nothing is behind the object/face, works.
OR when that isn't possible, create a named selection set with the objects/faces already selected, deselect, then select the face/object you're having trouble with and append it to the selction set.
OR drag a selection and deselect what you don't want.
All Silly work around really, I totally agree if you click on something it should select it. It seems to be a common problem with both Max and Maya and both have a few ways to work around what should be fixed.
So one concession: skinning in Maya before 2008 (or 8.5? can't remember) sucked. Even though the skin scripting sucks for Max, its basic workflow and capabilities was/is much better. I know Maya redid their entire skinning system to make it non-destructive, like Max's is, in 8 or 2008, and from what I hear this made it much much better. The Skin Tools are much better than the component editor, but you shouldn't really be using the component editor, you should be using one of the many skinning tools available (max's Skin Tools are a plugin and maxscript anyway, keep in mind). But Maya also has Artisan for painting weights. Ultimately, in my mind at least, for a technical job like rigging and skinning, Maya wins because of its flexibility (because if you haven't been able to guess by now, I don't judge based on default tools, because 'default' is a very arbitrary thing, see an earlier post). But up until 2008, I would have to say Max for skinning. Though now and before, Maya for rigging. Strange conflict there...
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All Silly work around really, I totally agree if you click on something it should select it. It seems to be a common problem with both Max and Maya and both have a few ways to work around what should be fixed.
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Maya doesn't have the selection problem (its selection can be improved and has some problems at glancing angles, but not anywhere close to the problem Max has). Its selection also works 'logically'- alt+click or drag removes, ctrl adds, shift toggles. Max's selections follow max's way of doing things... Like I've said elsewhere, Max broke their selection when they added their transform gizmos, so Bobo says.
In fairness, Maya does have the annoying 'grey viewport when you open a file' problem which has been around forever and I can't believe hasn't been fixed. But really, it is easy enough to script around (that was a joke).
Also, MoP, going through the rest of Blizzard's job ads, it looks like they are moving over to Maya for their upcoming MMO (Starcraft 2 is still using 3dsmax).
I also have no idea about the questions regarding Maya hard-surface workflow. I can say that Nurbs/Surfaces are actually a usable tool in Maya and work very well with history. But I am not a very good hard-surface modeler so I must defer.
Yeah, I can see why you think like that, and since you're more of a programming type anyway, I imagine it makes sense. I can totally understand wanting to have open scripting flexibility.
However, my argument has always been that, out-of-the-box, Maya pretty much just sucks for current-gen game based modelling. Incredibly poor viewport speeds, multiple driver-related issues with consumer NVidia cards, woefully outdated polygon editing tools.
While it is possible to spend time scripting fixes/improvements for many of the modelling tools most other app-users would find "standard", my point is that most artists do not have the time to do that, or the resources/contacts to get someone else to do it, unless they're at a big company with a dedicated tools scripter.
If I gave a Maya veteran modeller and a Max veteran modeller a sheet of concept art for a highpoly character (mix of hard-surface stuff, armour/weapons etc and organic stuff which may be worked on in ZBrush), and they were only allowed to use the default tool sets (allowing user hotkey or menu customizations, but no scripting), I can almost guarantee that the Max modeller would be finished LONG before the Maya modeller, and the finished highpoly model would be much more non-destructively editable and revisable in Max than in Maya.
Plus the Max guy's finished model would be displaying at 100fps, while the Maya guy's model would be chugging along at about 5fps on the same system
It would be interesting to see a head-to-head challenge like that actually, heh. Just out of the box tools, no custom scripts, and 2 modellers roughly on the same skill/experience level with the two packages.
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Its selection also works 'logically'- alt+click or drag removes, ctrl adds, shift toggles
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Ctrl+click/drag adds, removes and toggles. (so instead of 3 keys it does it with one selection key, working contextually like 99% of all other apps do)
Alt+click/drag only removes. (just like Maya)
Shift+drag inverts the selection. (very handy, but not found in Maya?)
I also prefer Max's pivot system I really like being able to pick my pivot point, set it locally, and toggle the pivot when I have multiple objects selected to use a shared pivot or their own local pivot. Which I haven't found a replacement for inside of Maya, yet. Anyone have any suggestions?
hmm vig if I understand you right i suppose i would group the objects and use either the group's pivot or the objects pivot when tranforming. not as versatile tho..
nex does have custom pivots althoug I dont think its per object its just either use the object pivot or the set custom one
I don't have any problems with selecting stuff in Maya or Max, besides that Maya's default "Select All" hotkey command will actually select EVERY OBJECT even if you're in vertex/edge/face mode (although I think if you go through the menu, it is context sensitive - still, inconsistent).
Max's "Select All" being context-sensitive, so it will select all of whatever relevent things you're selecting at the time, which seems much more sensible.
Also Max's pivot/axis controls are much more varied and useful than Maya's, as Vig says - not only can you quickly transform from averages, local centres, or object/parent/world points, but you can do that in any local/world/screen/parent space too. Maya has about 1/3 of those, NEX adds a couple more but still doesn't match up.
I guess I might start having to write MEL scripts to emulate Max's pivot system because it's so much faster and more accurate than hitting Insert and manually positioning/snapping the pivot point.
just a tip: hold down "d" instead of insert. it toggles pivot mode.
Also worth mentioning is that pivot points for component selections can be moved the same way (very handy).
And finally, wich is also very usefull, is the "retain component spacing option in the move tool settings
Vig: I think an example would be worth 1000 words. Make a 16-sided cylinder in Max, delete the caps, duplicate and flip the normals of all remaining faces, then try to select all the outer faces by face. Odds are if you are able to do it, it will be by rotating the cylinder almost to the top, and very likely you won't be able to do it, because each time you press 'ctrl' to add to your selection, it will only choose one of the two faces, so you need to select both then remove one and hope it removes the right one. Why would you have a selection mode (Ctrl) that behaves differently whether you click (toggles) or drags (adds)?? And NOT have a selection mode that only adds? And yes Maya's shift does toggle as I stated, and it is shift+ctrl not just ctrl to add as ivars pointed out (sorry). It is fine you like Max but it doesn't mean you have to be an apologist for everything in it- selection is broken and even Autodesk employees agree. I think you (and MoP) may be so used to Max's broken selection you aren't conscious of it anymore...
MoP: I think that comparison is a bit of a farce, between stock programs. Take two equally skilled modelers with their comfortable workstations and see who gets things done faster is much more pertinent. Maya gives you much more workflow customization, so stripping out most of that by restricting a 'contest' to default tools doesn't really make sense. And as I've said before in regards to animation for Vig, the lack of what you may want as 'standard' maya features (like a Biped) I see as a conscious choice and not very important, since so many quality alternatives are available. Nor do you need to work a big studio, though that helps, you just need to be willing to look on highend3d and maybe even learn a few lines of MEL. And I think as an artist who knows MXS and a bit of MEL, you, MoP, will certainly say that knowing some scripting/macro recording will speed up the workflow of any artist.
And Max's viewport speeds were as bad or worse as Maya's until Max 2008's improvements (which weren't really improvements as much as they were hiding the problem of bad performance, by asking it to perform less- I will find the post once CGTalk goes back up). And I really don't agree on its lack of poly tools since, what, Maya 6 or 7?
As far as pivots, ivars and rooster have it covered. And if you do write a MEL script for pivots, MoP, don't forget that Maya's Groups are nothing like Max's and you WANT to use them when you work and script.
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And Max's viewport speeds were as bad or worse as Maya's until Max 2008's improvements (which weren't really improvements as much as they were hiding the problem of bad performance, by asking it to perform less- I will find the post once CGTalk goes back up).
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Heh, I don't care how or why they did it, all I know is that I can smoothly work on a 2-3 million poly mesh in Max, without any troubles. I have to hide about 90% of it if I want the same performance in Maya. Doesn't matter that Max8 didn't have the same speed as 2008, it was still at least 50% faster at displaying highpoly object than Maya 2008 even manages now.
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And I really don't agree on its lack of poly tools since, what, Maya 6 or 7?
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Do you even do much modelling?
Pre-emptively, YES it does have modelling tools that get the job done, provided you stick rigidly to the workflow that Maya wants. Try to use any other workflow and you're screwed. All of the modelling tools that Maya has, Max has too - so you can use the Maya workflow in Max if you want, OR you can use any of the other tools as well. Try to bring a different workflow into Maya and you're going to find yourself cutting back and slowing down a lot. Any Maya modeller moving over to Max would find the same tools (maybe in different places with different names, but same functionality and workflow), but any Max modeller moving over to Maya is suddenly going to find themselves having to use the Split Polygon and Insert Edge Loop tool for pretty much everything, which is just silly
So you say selection is broken because you have trouble selecting though the back of a face? Right click the viewport and toggle on/off ignore backface.
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selection is broken and even Autodesk employees agree
[/ QUOTE ] I'd like to see what employee said selection is broken. Are you talking about Bobo the MaxScripting guru?
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As far as pivots, ivars and rooster have it covered.
[/ QUOTE ] Yes they did. Its not as robust as max and takes 3x more clicks to hack your way around it and just as many clicks to put it back.
I think an interesting twist to MoP comparison would be starting both artists off with fresh installs and allow them to customize, create, install and use any plug-in/script available, even at cost. Any scripts they have written and not released publicly would need to be rewritten from scratch. Then track cost and time taken.
The less customization each artist has to do, the more portable and stable the workflow is between artists/work stations. If plug-ins are required so 'standard' features can be included into the package and these plug-ins must be purchased then installed for every artist thats an added cost you may not want to deal with. Not to mention your pipeline is now dependent on a 3rd party who may or may not be around to respond to changes or fix bugs. I would rather check the documentation that came with the app rather then look on a 3rd party website for a hack fix that kind of suits my needs that someone cobbled together with MEL script.
When going from Maya -> Max, Maya users need to learn the names of the tools.
When going from Max -> Maya, Max users need to learn MEL and spend weeks building in standard features, a few of which you'll never be able to create.
Previously you complained that 3dsMax is bloated and cobbled together. Isn't it more dangerous to bloat Maya with user made content?
Isn't Max about $3.700 and Maya $2.000 ?
I think you can get quite a few plugins for those $1.700
Mop: I remember missing alot of modeling tools when switching to Maya, but most of them have been implemented since, so I'm just curious as to what tools you're missing (not trying to argue or anything, just wanna see if I can help)
Last time I checked it was 7k for Maya Unlimited...
Heres my list of things I would like to know how to do in Maya.
I'm not saying these don't exist, I'm saying I don't know how to do them in Maya.
Core functionality:
History stack
Modifiers
Pivots
Selection sets
Modeling tools:
Bridge
Outline
Chamfer edges
Edit triangulation/retriangluate
Slice plane
Preserve UV
View align, make planar XYZ
Hinge from edge
Create shape(spline) from edge selection
Extrude along spline
Constrain along edge, face normal
Target weld
ivars: Since I got the NEX plugin, I'm not really missing anything any more when it comes to modelling. "Connect" and "Target Weld" were the main culprits, although Maya's default Collapse (or Merge to Centre) can get a bit flaky now and then.
Also a good Max-style "Relax UVs" is missing, Unfold UVs sometimes gets mostly there with some settings fiddling, but mostly produces stuff you have to tweak a lot by hand anyway. Map Edge Border and Relax usually works fairly well but again isn't as versatile or elegant as Max's solution.
Something I can't seem to find in default Maya (although is in NEX) is a good "constrain to faces/edges" mode (so moving verts/edges/faces will keep them locked to the surrounding geometry). The Slide Edge Tool seems to be the closest thing, and that only works on edges, which makes it pretty useless 1/3 of the time.
Again, my arguments here in this thread are at the core of Maya - I love NEX, and it has added back most of what I missed when coming over from Max, but still my point is that it shouldn't be necessary to pay for plugins to do simple poly-modelling operations that most 3D apps have been doing for years.
Mainly the thing I still can't do which is taking up more time in Maya than Max would is that when subdividing objects for highpoly, you either have to apply a Smooth function to all the objects and remove it to continue working, or use the High Quality Preview while working then do the Smooth function in the end (or Convert Smooth Preview to Polys and have to undo it to get the control mesh back), or use Smooth Proxy and end up with double the amount of objects in the scene. While all of those are workable solutions, none of them are as elegant as Max's "Turbosmooth" modifier on the stack, which allows you to set different subdivision levels for viewport and render, and allows you to toggle it on and off on a keypress without ever having to undo anything or double up your object count. As far as I can tell that sort of functionality would be a nightmare to script.
"History stack": please don't call Max's stack a "history stack", because it's not - it's a modifier stack! Maya has a "history stack", but it is far less flexible than the Modifier Stack, and I've noticed that when objects build up a big history you have to delete it all to speed up Maya's response time when editing the object. As far as I can tell, you can't move functions from the history up or down a level to change what they affect, although you can tweak their parameters after the fact.
Modifiers: Maya has mostly the same modifiers as Max, and in general they work the same way - you add one to the History, and you get an editable gizmo that will remain editable for as long as you keep the History intact. Not much difference between Max and Maya there, as far as I can see.
Pivots: Maya doesn't have as many pivot options as Max does, mostly pivot things are done manually by the user, toggling Edit Pivot mode and moving the pivot to a new location manually (rather than Max's method of being able to choose from a drop-down how to be affected). You can achieve the same results as Max, it just takes a bit longer for some things. It is a bit faster for other things (like if you want to rotate using a specific vert for a pivot point, just toggle edit pivot mode and snap the pivot to that vert).
Selection sets: Probably better than Max's - as has been mentioned, Maya's groups are a bit better than Max's, and generally it's easy to keep your scene organised and easily editable using groups, parents, children and the Outliner. Also the Rename tool is pretty handy, easier than Max's.
I haven't found a way to do something like set a specific selection of faces into a named selection set yet, but I assume it's possible.
<u>Modeling tools</u>
Bridge: Yep, it's in Maya 2008. Although according to Rooster it can be a bit flaky (marking edges as open on a bridge boundary even if they're not, in some cases, leading to trouble later).
Outline: Not sure what you mean by that, I don't recall using an Outline tool in Max.
Chamfer edges: Yep, it's called Bevel, and it allows you to tweak bevel width after the fact in the History. It also has a nice "Roundness" and "Segments" setting which is better than what Max can do. However the stupid thing is, it's not an interactive preview as you change settings when first applying it, which seems really weird since you get interactive updates when you tweak attributes in the history.
In fact this is one of my main beefs with a lot of Maya's poly modelling tools, there's no interactive preview before you "accept" the function, so you can't be quite sure if it's right or not until you actually apply it, so it wastes some time going into the history and tweaking it if it wasn't right first time. Seems like something they really should have added many versions ago.
NEX has an interactive preview on its bevel/chamfer tool.
Edit triangulation/retriangluate: No, you have to actually triangulate your whole mesh and then manually turn edges. Once you apply this, there is no way to go back to quads without deleting the Triangulate function from the History, which means that Maya goes back to triangulating stuff its own way, so when you come to Triangulate again, you might have to turn the same edges back to the way you want again. So frustrating, and no way around it. Max's way is roughly a billion times better than this.
Slice plane: Yep, works same as Max's. NEX has a nice one too.
Preserve UV: Bonus Tools has one, but it's way flakier than Max's and generally not very good.
View align, make planar XYZ: Nope, and there's no "Make planar" either, so you can't just quickly make a selection of faces perfectly planar on their average axis.
Can probably get scripts to do this, although I haven't looked yet. Making planar on XYZ would be easy enough to write as scripts, and I assume the other two functions would be fairly easy too. Again, not in default Maya toolset though.
Hinge from edge: I don't use this in Max so I don't really know what it does. Sounds like you can probably do it in Maya though.
Create shape(spline) from edge selection: You can download scripts to do this properly, but it isn't in Maya by default as far as I can tell. The closest I got with a default Maya function ended up creating separate single splines for each selected edge, rather than a continuous spline.
Extrude along spline: Yep, that's in Maya 2008.
Constrain along edge, face normal: Only along edges, in a limited fashion. You can probably download scripts to do this for free, or buy NEX.
Target weld: No, you will have to get a script or buy NEX for this.
If any Maya gurus would like to point out any mistakes here, you're welcome - I still haven't looked in every single menu and hotkey, so I might have missed some stuff, but I've spent a while searching all of these functions in Maya and have come up with what I've written here.
MoP, thanks, lots of good info! Thanks for taking the time to type it up.
Hinging polygons rotates them around an edge and creates new polygons that form the sides of the hinge, connecting the selection to the object. Great for things like making alcoves in walls.
Outline lets you increase or decrease the outside edge of each contiguous group of selected polygons. If you scale a selection it only effects the outer-most edge, it doesn't scale the inside polys.
Edit: Mop im only in 8.5 so I dont know if theyve fixed it or not. I suspect not
About bridge, I decided to make a quick example of the problem to see if anyone can help with it. Imo this seems like a really shit way for the tool to work, I'm not wrong am i? I mean, in panel 2 there are no double verts but maya still thinks there are open edges for some stupid reason.
View align, make planar XYZ: Nope, and there's no "Make planar" either, so you can't just quickly make a selection of faces perfectly planar on their average axis.
Can probably get scripts to do this, although I haven't looked yet. Making planar on XYZ would be easy enough to write as scripts, and I assume the other two functions would be fairly easy too. Again, not in default Maya toolset though.
Hinge from edge: I don't use this in Max so I don't really know what it does. Sounds like you can probably do it in Maya though.
Extrude along spline: Yep, that's in Maya 2008.
Constrain along edge, face normal: Only along edges, in a limited fashion. You can probably download scripts to do this for free, or buy NEX.
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Ok.
First off, the align to axis, is done by snapping in one axis only, just select whatever component and make sure "retain component spacing" isn't turned on and snap to either a vertex, edge, grid point or whatever. it's a simple 2 click step.
Hinge from edge's been in maya forever. One of the features that made it´s way in to max.
Extrude along spline has also been in maya for as long as I can remember. Just select what you're about to extrude, add a spline to that selection and hit extrude.
Take a look at the custom axis orientation in the move tool settings, might help with some of the constraint problems.
Not sure what the outline tool does, but check out "move component" or maybe the offset-attribute in the extrude-node.
Edit:
Rooster: Have you tried doing the whole length at once? Select all edges on both sides and bridge it.
Vig:
I think what you're looking for in maya is "move component" it moves edges, verts or faces along their respective normals.
Rooster: Why do you have to use Bridge on each pair? Can't you just Bridge with both entire sides selected?
Ivars: Thanks, checking out the custom axis orientation stuff in move tool now.
Edit: Checked it out, and it does help a bit, but I remember why I just stopped using it (especially since getting NEX) - because you actually have to click a "set to point" or "set to edge" button, then click on the edge you want to align the manipulator to, then do your translation.
In Max you just set the translation mode to "local", and it will automatically align the manipulator to the local axis of whatever element you have selected (vertex, edge, face, object). It is much faster and more elegant - NEX adds a manipulator mode like this.
Additionally, that doesn't actually help when wanting to move a single vert (or selection of verts) along any edges surrounding them, snapping them to the path of the edge. Similarly sliding a face around, constrained to the edges around it, seems to be impossible. I can post an image of how Max would handle it if you're not sure what I mean.
MoP: Yes the viewport speed is improved and 2k8 and I didn't mean the comment to come off as degrading it for the user, even though that is how it did. The fact is that the viewport is faster, that is what matters for most people. It was more meant to demonstrate it wasn't any significant refactoring of the codebase but another 'hack' piled on top of existing hacks.
"Do you even do much modelling? " As I said earlier, almost none now, and before that, not nearly as much mechanical stuff as you guys.
Vig:
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So you say selection is broken because you have trouble selecting though the back of a face? Right click the viewport and toggle on/off ignore backface.
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But I don't want to ignore backfaces. Also, ignore backfaces is per-object AFAIK, so I'd need to toggle it manually. And since you also cannot set 'defaults' for objects (like setting extrude length to be 0, weld thresholds, etc), I'd need to do it for every one, every time, or write a script to do it. I just want to select the face staring directly fucking at me, not the one behind that, or the one behind that facing in the opposite direction, and then finally the last one selected is the one looking right at me. Which is also impossible to select if clicking the face to add to the selection. Seriously, discreet/Autodesk knew it broke its selection tool when they added gizmos, you do not have to keep coming up with excuses for it.
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I'd like to see what employee said selection is broken. Are you talking about Bobo the MaxScripting guru?
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Actually he has been the writer for maxscript help since version 5 or 6 or so. And there was also some discussion about it in the Max 2009 announcement thread, if I have some time later today or tommorrow and CGTalk is working again, I will look. But seriously, the selection is broken, why do you keep having to defend it?
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The less customization each artist has to do, the more portable and stable the workflow is between artists/work stations. If plug-ins are required so 'standard' features can be included into the package and these plug-ins must be purchased then installed for every artist thats an added cost you may not want to deal with. Not to mention your pipeline is now dependent on a 3rd party who may or may not be around to respond to changes or fix bugs. I would rather check the documentation that came with the app rather then look on a 3rd party website for a hack fix that kind of suits my needs that someone cobbled together with MEL script.
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Almost every single thing you stated in that quote is either absurd or backwards logic.
Portability: you want to talk about script portability? Max's is an absolute mess whether you use one or a hundred scripts, because they are run from your script, then each macro is parsed and put in another folder, that the user doesn't even realize is going on, so they may edit and run the wrong one, copy the wrong one, etc. MEL, AFAIK, is all contained in the same directory and is MUCH more straightforward in installing and using scripts. And the use of plugins, which are much more invasive, is less and more easily monitored (Maya has what, 2 dozen plugins in its plugin loader? Max has a few hundred in its browser?). Yes the less scripts the easier it would be for artists to 'swap' workstations, but is this a realistic advantage or disadvantage in common work? Would you tell your artists not to customize their hotkeys so they can swap workstations without loading a couple files and a folder that contain ALL their settings and scripts (true for both programs)?
Added plugin cost: (I will ignore the absurd 'extra install time for plugins) A few hundred dollars for plugins for improved artist efficiency is a cost that any company will absorb, and if it doesn't, your company sucks and you should leave. A team of 20 artists at $200 a plugin is $4000, which is what, a month's salary for a junior artist? Don't be ridiculous.
3rd party responsiveness: Do you want to compare the stability and responsiveness of Autodesk compared with Lumonix, Polyboost, etc., any of the other central plugin creators? Relying on Autodesk is a crap shoot (hello multiple undos in mxs editor for 2k8!), while you can have a direct input towards plugin manufacturers. Devs for free or smaller scripts this isn't true with for either program, but generally what is released is pretty stable and if it sucks an alternative will be developed. The above is true in Max and Maya.
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I would rather check the documentation that came with the app rather then look on a 3rd party website for a hack fix that kind of suits my needs that someone cobbled together with MEL script.
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I will say again, I don't think you are really aware of how insignificant 'default' is. When CS was a 3DS plugin, and not integrated as Biped, would you still talk about its instability or lack of docs? How about Hair and Fur, which was a plugin (originally for Maya!) that was integrated in Max in 9 or 2K8? These distinctions are meaningless and I don't understand how you feel so reassured. The distinction is nonexistent and your reassurance because something is 'standard' or 'default' in EITHER of the programs is something completely irrational. When these plugins become integrated does Autodesk serve you warm milk and cookies with a bedtime story?
Pivots: I said they had them covered, not that it was an adequate replacement for Max's. In fact, rooster even said that- if I disagreed I would have said so.
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Stacks:There is no direct replacement for the stack- Maya is node based, max is stack based. The fundamental workflows surrounding them is different.
Modifiers:Again, the idea of a 'modifier' is a max idea (and a strange one at that, especially in their default layout of all one long list). The corresponding actions in Maya are located in what is a more logical layout, you know, like having Skinning on the Animation menu under Skin, or operations that deform the mesh like bend, twist, etc., under 'Deformers' in animation as well. The same is true of most Max modifiers.
Pivots: What about em? Also I always much preferred Maya's gizmo for its poly ops, something I think if Max implemented I would be far happier with it as a modeler. If I extrude a face, I can intuitively manipulate the extrusion, I know I can do something similar with Max's but it always felt more clunky and not as robust.
Selection sets: quick select sets.
As for modeling tools, I will let someone else handle that as I haven't modeled in Maya for a year.
MoP again: I on the other hand hate Max's Relax UV's, it never gives me the results I want. Maya's unfold gives me as mathematically correct a result as possible, while 'Relax', err, relaxes UV's? I guess it is UVing style which comes down to what tool you used to UV most, I started with a default Max 6 or 7 which was crap, went to Maya for UV's and never looked back. Lately Max I like as much or more except for its lack of a Maya-style Unfold.
Ultimately, there are hundreds of little things that are missing in both programs (no Quadrangulate for Max? No... lots of stuff for Maya). However I don't take it out on the program developers for it, because, well let me explain in more than the end of a compound sentence. Game development, hell 'interactive media', is placing such varied demands on these programs, that is it really impossible to expect them to keep up. Max proved itself as a 'game app' but as this classification has faded, Max has found itself hurting. Maya, likewise, in film- it was a great nurbs modeler and was great for rigging and animating, and now finds itself as a Max competitor in the gamespace and is having tons of problems, as very legitimately expressed in this thread. And the demand placed upon these programs will continue to grow and I cannot honestly expect them to keep up. The paradigm shift is going from 3dsmax or Maya as 'tools' and turning them into 'platforms.' We have seen 'component' and 'modular' as buzzwords in recent years, especially for things like game engines- they are just too big now to rewrite every few years and have a couple people maintain the whole thing. They are broken up into components, that are swapped and self-contained and you can even choose from in some instances. The engine becomes the 'glue' holding everything together. Well I see something similar happening with 3d software... eventually. You will have rigs you can choose from, modeling plugins, etc. Much as you do now. Hell, exactly as you do now. The difference will be people won't say "oh that isn't default so it isn't legitimate or as good." That is just not the way to see things. Things need to be understood, instead, as "why would Maya devs spend the time to develop a default rig when they can just integrate existing solutions better." It is not at all a matter of what is there, it is a matter of perception. Engineers realized that they simply cannot program their own components for every project. Oh, Havok, great, let's use that! FMOD, great, let's use that. IL Beast, great, let's use that. If you had a company who said 'We are going to build everything ourselves' they'd be a joke. Well why is that not true of 3d tools? Why do we expect them to do everything themselves and poo on them when they rely on a plugin?
I will assume money, because there is no other rational answer (docs, help, stability, etc). And you are completely right. It sucks you have to pay. I don't know what to say to that. It sucks Autodesk is ripping you off (I'm aware that because Maya 'requires' at least Nex, this is very true for Maya as much or moreso than Max). But, I guess, that is what you get for being a professional. A small studio licenses an engine or components and they don't use much of it, they use lots of defaults, because that are their needs. But the medium and big studios, they license new components, swap things out, etc., and it costs in time and money.
Ultimately it really comes down to how you think of content in game development. So you want to be an 'artiste' and make art and not have to worry about 'tech', you can do one of two things. First, get out of 3D game development because it probably isn't for you. Second, you can actually realize the way forward is not to try to make everything 'default', not to clamor for default tools and whine when a program isn't bloated enough. It is to embrace the change that needs to occur, embrace these programs as 'platforms' instead of one-stop 'tools', support and encourage plugin developers, and tell the big companies that what you want is a program environment that adapts to the changing realities of our field. Plugins are your friend, plugin developers are your friend, and when you find a great one, you should be happy, not upset. The more robust the tools are, the more extensible and flexible, the easier it is to develop tools, and the easier it is to learn how to use these tools. It is better to have a good flexible Curve Editor that tool devs can add and change than it is if they have to write their own.
Sorry for the gospel but what I see here is extremely backwards thinking that is propagating its own problems. Game development has changed since 1997 and we, and our programs, must change with it.
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MoP again: I on the other hand hate Max's Relax UV's, it never gives me the results I want. Maya's unfold gives me as mathematically correct a result as possible, while 'Relax', err, relaxes UV's?
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Can you tell me what settings you've been using for Max's Relax? And what settings you've been using for Maya's Unfold? Because I've tried a ton of combinations for both, and now have a set of values for Max's Relax which gives me a pretty much perfect and distortion-free unwrap every time, while Maya's Unfold has only worked in very few situations, and the majority of the time produces something very warped and barely useable. It seems to work best on really simple, right-angled objects. Give it a complex set of UVs and it just seems to tangle them up.
Again, tell me what settings you're using to get these "correct" results of which you speak, so I can try them out.
Edit: Just tried with a sample mesh in Max and Maya - Maya's Unfold seems to produce the exact same result as Max's Relax, when you use all default settings but set Weight Solver Towards 1.000.
The weird thing is, I'm sure I've tried this on some objects and they just end up getting mangled.
Here's the comparison (both objects started off with the checkered faces all planar mapped in one UV shell from the front, so they were pretty distorted and mangled to start with):
So uh ... that ends that argument I guess. I will research with more objects at some point.
Edit2: Heh, looks like Maya's Unfold actually dealt with the tip of the nose a bit better than Max's Relax
yeah I've sometimes had a hard time with unfold and sometimes it's worked fine. I can't figure out what causes the difference though. I use a combination of roadkill and smudge uvs and avoid it for the most part
Per, I actually have a script set to do 250 iterations of those settings, set to SHIFT+R, and just do it a few times if the first one doesn't relax right. That screenshot was just for demonstration purposes really
I find that for some complex or troublesome parts (especially large terrain meshes with troublesome nooks and crannies), doing a single By Face Angles relax over the whole planar map is a good start, then on areas of high stretching, use By Edge Angles with soft selection falloff to keep it as even as possible.
It's true that Max's relax will start to get less accurate if you have lots of, say, 5-sided polys in your mesh, and also if you have very long thin parts, it will tend to tangle them up at one point, but that's easy to fix just by flipping the tangled section and relaxing the whole thing again.
Yea not even going to bother reading the rest of that. It's insulting, inflammatory and not even remotely useful. Its a backlash to an attack that never happened. Prof you didn't actually understand what I was trying to get across, but instead thought I was attacking Maya and in doing so you switched on your Max hate and cranked it to 11.
I've hit that attitude more then a few times with fanboi Maya users and its a bigger turn off then the apple crowd. I might actually like Mac's and buy one if I wasn't required to buy a lifestyle along with it, its like the start screen for Maya is a brainwashing anti-3dsMax ad or something.
I don't understand why some Maya users feel so threatened when someone suggests there might be a better way to work and Maya may not be doing it 100% efficiently?
It's cool that you love it so much and fly the Maya flag so proudly but you don't need to call other packages broken because you don't really understand how they work. At some point in the future when your not blinded rage we can pick this back up.
Another thing to keep in mind that if I do decide to learn Maya it won't be to "switch" but to learn another popular 3D package and add it as ANOTHER tool to my arsenal but it isn't replacement. I would someday like to learn XSI also but that doesn't mean I'd burn my copies of Max and Maya as a sacrifice to the XSI gods.
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Edit: Mop im only in 8.5 so I dont know if theyve fixed it or not. I suspect not
About bridge, I decided to make a quick example of the problem to see if anyone can help with it. Imo this seems like a really shit way for the tool to work, I'm not wrong am i? I mean, in panel 2 there are no double verts but maya still thinks there are open edges for some stupid reason.
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I'm running 8.5 and I didn't get the extra edges inside, do you have "keep faces together" checked under edit mesh?
Hmm, something just struck me - how's Maya 2008's MEL script editor compared to Max 2008's Maxscript editor?
Oh, that's right ... one of them looks and functions pretty much like Windows Notepad but with line numbers, and the other is actually good.
Seriously, for an app that boasts script flexibility in the year 2008, do we really still have no syntax highlighting in Maya 2008? Ouch.
Mop to avoid those unwanted results I have had luck doing this
Have weight solver all the way at 0
use pin unselected uv's and this is the important part
for unfold constraint check vertical then apply then check horizontal and apply. This fix's the unwanted results you get when you simply have "none" checked.
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Yea not even going to bother reading the rest of that. It's insulting, inflammatory and not even remotely useful. Its a backlash to an attack that never happened. Prof you didn't actually understand what I was trying to get across, but instead thought I was attacking Maya and in doing so you switched on your Max hate and cranked it to 11.
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Then perhaps you should go back and read it again. Because it isn't max hate, it is hating on lots more than just max.
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I don't understand why some Maya users feel so threatened when someone suggests there might be a better way to work and Maya may not be doing it 100% efficiently?
It's cool that you love it so much and fly the Maya flag so proudly but you don't need to call other packages broken because you don't really understand how they work. At some point in the future when your not blinded rage we can pick this back up.
[/ QUOTE ]
Alright since this still doesn't seem to register: I use Max every single day. I actually know what I'm talking about. I understand how it works. I created the entire Max pipeline, from scratch, for my last job (edit: except for our gr2 exporter from rad). As I said, I wouldn't recommend one over the other for modeling. But for animation, rigging, and pipeline, Max is to quote an earlier post 'somewhat of a joke.' You keep 'waving the max flag' in the face of every reason and experience riggers and animators have with Max compared to Maya. You have asked exceedingly simple Maya questions that make me wonder if you have ever opened up the program to give it an honest try. Every one of your concerns I've addressed. So I agree with, what, 90% of the film industry and maybe half of the game industry, that Maya is superior for rigging, animation, and pipeline- you're right, I must be a fanboy.
When you ask a question and it is answered or make an argument and it is bested, don't throw up your hands and say 'I won't bother responding to that' or 'you are just a fanboi and don't understand what you're talking about.' You can afford to say that when you've established some credit in this discussion. All I see is me and others responding to your concerns and then you abandoning whatever you were talking about.
MoP: I'm sure I wasn't using Relax with the correct parameters. I came from Maya's Unfold where it would always give me the results I wanted, where Max's had more options which I never bothered to get working correctly. Good to know they are about the same.
MoP: Harharhar, you conveniently annoy the lack of, well, anything except broken syntax highlighting in the maxscript editor until 2008. The 2008 editor is awesome though. That said, I spent a day trying to get Ultraedit working as a maxscript editor in max 9 but never got it, was very confusing (had to set up a com bridge, install syntax definitions, it just never worked and I gave up). When I first MEL'ed it took me about 5 minutes to install a fully featured MEL editor (I can't remember what I used but I'm sure I can find it) and there are a number of options. Programmers tend to have an IDE they like and use that and Maya has more options. And if coders could use Maxscript's lame editor to write tools until last year, an artist can use Maya's almost equally bad default editor to write some macros (not to mention that Maya's macro recorder actually works- I've gone over how broken Max's is before, especially for older things). This is actually a very good microcosm for the larger themes running throughout the discussion...
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MoP: I'm sure I wasn't using Relax with the correct parameters. I came from Maya's Unfold where it would always give me the results I wanted, where Max's had more options which I never bothered to get working correctly.
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Uh, did you look at my screenshot? Not sure what you mean by "more options" - Max has 1 drop-down, 2 spinners and a checkbox. You can explore the extent of its functionality in about 10 minutes.
Maya has about double that amount of things to click/set/tweak, half of which don't appear to do anything. I've been trying multiple combinations of parameters repeatedly, some of which appear to have no effect at all, and Maya modellers I know who have been working with it for years are equally clueless about which slider controls what.
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MoP: Harharhar, you conveniently annoy the lack of, well, anything except broken syntax highlighting in the maxscript editor until 2008. The 2008 editor is awesome though.
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For once can you please just acknowledge that something of Maya's is utter crap? Maya's script editor is Notepad with line numbers. It has been for years. That's very poor, especially when scripting is supposed to be a strong point.
You're trying to back out of it by complaining that Max's syntax highlighting (a basic but useful feature) was somehow broken in past versions (I assume you mean the block comment and copy and pasted text not being picked up correctly?). Even a mildly bugged syntax highlighter is streets ahead of pure black text.
I've noticed this as a theme of your replies - you've never once acknowledged a fault in Maya, even if it's true - you just trumpet the flexibility of the backend, and wheel out issues with old versions of Max. That's not debating, that's being blinkered, and I'd appreciate it if you'd face up to that, it's only fair. I have regularly acknowledged Max's failings (there are many), but I don't try to sidestep a genuine complaint by calling out the failings of another app. Keep it straight please.
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But I don't want to ignore backfaces. Also, ignore backfaces is per-object,It AFAIK, so I'd need to toggle it manually.
[/ QUOTE ] I still think you're using it incorrectly but maybe thats just a difference in workflow. anywho bind this to a key.
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>if $.ignoreBackfacing == true then
(
$.ignoreBackfacing = off
)
else
(
$.ignoreBackfacing = on
)
</pre><hr />
It wouldn't be too hard to write a loop to check each object and toggle it on/off making it a global switch, but I would actually have to test it, the above I know will work without having to open 3dsMax.
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Vig wrote: The less customization each artist has to do...
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Almost every single thing you stated in that quote is either absurd or backwards logic.
Portability: you want to talk about script portability?
[/ QUOTE ] Not really what I was talking about. I was talking about loading a file that another artist worked on. It becomes much more problematic to swap working files back and forth when different people have different plug-ins installed. It's even more of a hassle to research and screen these plug-ins and require everyone have them installed. Talking about plug-ins like puppetshop, it takes extra time when 3dsMax loads, and it costs extra, BUT if the character needs to be rendered on a machine that does not have puppetshop it even load the file.
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A few hundred dollars for plugins for improved artist efficiency is a cost that any company will absorb, and if it doesn't, your company sucks and you should leave. A team of 20 artists at $200 a plugin is $4000, which is what, a month's salary for a junior artist? Don't be ridiculous.
[/ QUOTE ] And when you bring on contractors for 6mo you end up buying them plugins also then not using them half the time. Its easier if its just included. Asking a company to drop 3,500 for 3dsmax full featured, and if they are going to switch they need to blow 7k ultimate, but its not actually ultimate because you need more plug-ins on top of that. Sweet deal...
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3rd party responsiveness: Do you want to compare the stability and responsiveness of Autodesk compared with Lumonix, Polyboost, etc., any of the other central plugin creators? Relying on Autodesk is a crap shoot (hello multiple undos in mxs editor for 2k8!), while you can have a direct input towards plugin manufacturers. Devs for free or smaller scripts this isn't true with for either program, but generally what is released is pretty stable and if it sucks an alternative will be developed. The above is true in Max and Maya.
[/ QUOTE ]I and many others have asked Kees to add an undo function to the setup portion of PuppetShop, to date, none as been added. Your answer for adding in modeling tools that are not in Maya was to troll Highend3d.com and look for free scripts that will more then likely be out-dated, broken or only half work.
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When these plugins become integrated does Autodesk serve you warm milk and cookies with a bedtime story?
[/ QUOTE ] More like hot sex in a back alley. I know that their intrated plug-ins have been tested and will work. I don't have to email someone informing them that a new version of 3dsMax has shipped and that their plug-in doesn't work. Then I put everything I'm working on, in limbo for 3 weeks while they hack in a work around, then I end up beta testing it. So you ask why I feel reassured and prefer to have things as part of the main app, I'll tell you I've been bitten by the 3rd party devs and it isn't as rosey as you make out to be. There is very little recourse if they choose to just stop supporting it, hopefully you have something to fall back on, or figure out a quick solution.
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Selection sets: quick select sets.
[/ QUOTE ] I use sub-object selection sets (selections of verts or faces) while modeling/unwrapping/skinning/rigging and animating. MoP covered this and its not in native Maya unless he just hasn't found it. Hopefully it wouldn't be hard MEL it.
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Ultimately, there are hundreds of little things that are missing in both programs (no Quadrangulate for Max? No... lots of stuff for Maya).
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"why would Maya devs spend the time to develop a default rig when they can just integrate existing solutions better." It is not at all a matter of what is there, it is a matter of perception.
[/ QUOTE ] Its great to have options, but its also great to have a starting point, a spring board, something to fall back on when the plug-in rig you're using goes tits up. I guess creating a bone rig from scratch is the default fall back, but would it really be that hard to snatch up one of these prebuilt rigs look it over and include it, or just code up something simple? If they do ncloth, they can do a simple prebuilt biped rig...
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Maya has about double that amount of things to click/set/tweak, half of which don't appear to do anything.
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Exactly. Same result, every time, no matter what options you set (or maybe , for me it was the former)
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For once can you please just acknowledge that something of Maya's is utter crap? Maya's script editor is Notepad with line numbers. It has been for years. That's very poor, especially when scripting is supposed to be a strong point.
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Its skinning used to be crap as well, as I said earlier. Actually Maya's script editor has line numbers, multiple undos and redos, a search and replace- all things max's editor was missing until 2k8. Furthermore, as I've said before, the fact that it takes about 5 minutes to set up an editor for MEL is pretty key. Furthermore, it's MEL listener records everything and you can write some complex stuff with just that and some minor MEL knowledge to clean it up. Should their script editor be better? Absolutely. But if their script editor sucks and they have a very easy option to use your own, I am happy. Max's sucked FOREVER and there was no option to use your own until relatively recently, and only with one of two editors at least one of which costed money (search is down at CGTalk and can't find when people learned how to open it up with COM). Like I said, this is a good microcosm for what I think is the main disparity between the two programs and why I think Maya is superior.
And yes the 'broken' syntax highlighting was the copy and paste, and block comments, issue- you could block indent and undent(outdent?) to fix it, but really...
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I've noticed this as a theme of your replies - you've never once acknowledged a fault in Maya, even if it's true - you just trumpet the flexibility of the backend, and wheel out issues with old versions of Max.
[/ QUOTE ]
"It is about keeping things clean which (yes, MoP) Maya has a problem with (sp) too"
"Maya certainly has stability woes"
"I am sure MEL is not a perfect language and Maya not a perfect program."
"Lack of a standardized rig in Maya is a legitimate concern for you"
"skinning in Maya before 2008 (or 8.5? can't remember) sucked."
"Maya does have the annoying 'grey viewport when you open a file' problem"
"No... lots of stuff for Maya"
"I'm aware that because Maya 'requires' at least Nex"
I know Maya is not a perfect program, in fact in my very first post I said for modeling it comes down to preference (and I will say again what I said earlier, and I think many Maya users will agree, two equally skilled people working in their respective programs won't have a significant difference in quality or speed using any of the three major programs). But for rigging, animation, scripting, pipeline, I've yet to see any real arguments disputing Maya as superior to Max. The arguments so far have been how Maya is missing stuff, which is actually a testament to many of those areas.
Truth be told I was impressed with Max 2k8. They really fixed what were lots of seemingly absurd problems that hadn't been fixed yet (mxs editor, viewport speed, biped xtras, etc.). However, they then turn around and announce Max 2k9 with maybe 5 features worth listing, to release about 6 months after 2008. If Max 2009 and 2010 and 2011 all are the quality of the 2k8 release, I may be eating my words, feel free to throw them back at me if I am around and Max makes a full recovery from the slide some (including me) see it is on.
Furthermore, there are some fundamental issues on the backend that cannot be solved- there are deep-seated problems with Max either because of black boxes, or the way it was originally designed and written. The main issue with Maya, which I've acknowledged, is its lack of 'standard' features. But as I explained in a previous post, I question whether this should be an 'issue' at all. So yes, I can address many of these 'shortcomings' by touting the flexibility of the backend, because that is what matters- it doesn't matter that Maya doesn't have an equivalent of Biped, at least it shouldn't. It is the flexibility and breadth of options available. Why is it not perfectly legit to say 'oh well Maya's script editor isn't as good as Max's in 2008, it takes me 5 minutes to install one as good or better than max's'? Because it isn't the MoP-approved paradigm?
Vig:
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I still think you're using it incorrectly
[/ QUOTE ]
I know I can be hotheaded at times but I'm not a fucking idiot This is selection we're talking about here.
As for your backface toggle, just enclose that in an 'for g in geometry do' and change the $ to a g. Also you probably want to enclose your if/then/else in a try catch, or test if it is a classOf editable_mesh or editable_mesh. Selection is still broken.
Puppetshop: from the lumonix website: "Network Rendering Nodes are now available (for free) to customers."
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It's even more of a hassle to research and screen these plug-ins and require everyone have them installed.
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This mentality in your post is, again, what I see as very prevalent in many conservative areas of the industry. 'Oh, this will take too much time. This is easier.' 'Oh, we don't want to bother with that, just do this.' You know what? Getting someone to facilitate your team of artists will pay their worth back in spades; taking the time to actually research, plan, and execute correctly, will pay back in spades. I know you've worked mainly at small studios and I know this is the quintessential small studio experience. Take the time to research, plan, and execute, instead of doing everything at the same time, and you'll see how much more effective a team becomes. The same way people are waking up to how counterproductive and ineffective crunch for anything more than a couple weeks is, people are and will continue to wake up to how much these issues impact productivity and time management. The time of a skilled employee is so much more expensive than any hardware or software and we all need to start looking at the big picture and spending the proper time planning what is going to be most efficient. And guess what, spend a few extra days or weeks researching tools and pipeline before a project is committed to something and you will save that time back 100-fold by the end of even a few months.
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I and many others have asked Kees to add an undo function to the setup portion of PuppetShop, to date, none as been added.
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Your answer for adding in modeling tools that are not in Maya was to troll Highend3d.com and look for free scripts that will more then likely be out-dated, broken or only half work.
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No. It was to browse highend3d.com and look for free scripts that add the functionality you need and often work as well as needed. I think if you ask most Maya users they will say the vast majority of scripts they download work without any problems.
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More like hot sex in a back alley. I know that their intrated plug-ins have been tested and will work.
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I guess that depends on your definition of 'work.' I find it difficult to create a distinction between the functionality of any plugin I've tried in Max and Max itself, likewise in Maya.
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I don't have to email someone informing them that a new version of 3dsMax has shipped and that their plug-in doesn't work. Then I put everything I'm working on, in limbo for 3 weeks while they hack in a work around, then I end up beta testing it.
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This I think you are either lying or you are foolish. Why are you upgrading to a new version of 3dsmax when it ships mid-production, where you would need to put everything in limbo for 3 weeks? Very few studios ever risk upgrading for anything except bug fixes or service packs during production, certainly not a brand new point release.
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So you ask why I feel reassured and prefer to have things as part of the main app, I'll tell you I've been bitten by the 3rd party devs and it isn't as rosey as you make out to be. There is very little recourse if they choose to just stop supporting it, hopefully you have something to fall back on, or figure out a quick solution.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is true everywhere and hasn't stopped developers from adopting component technologies in game engines. Read what happened to Renderware during Crackdown's development- this is always a risk with middleware of any sort, but the risk is small enough and has a large enough payoff (all the time saved) that it is worth it. You seem to have gotten burned once and now close off much better opportunities.
Selection sets: Quick select sets work on sub-objects.
Quadrangulate: Obviously I know there are scripts for it in Max. My point is that, many things are missing from both programs (more from Maya). But my point in the context of that paragraph was, this is irrelevant- what is relevant is that the add-ons are there to fulfill this requirement, and for this, Maya is superior because of its backend.
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Its great to have options, but its also great to have a starting point, a spring board, something to fall back on when the plug-in rig you're using goes tits up. I guess creating a bone rig from scratch is the default fall back, but would it really be that hard to snatch up one of these prebuilt rigs look it over and include it, or just code up something simple? If they do ncloth, they can do a simple prebuilt biped rig...
[/ QUOTE ]
And as I said earlier, if it would make more people comfortable switching to Maya, it may be worth it. However, I would not want to see it come at the expense of anything else.
its not so much that your opinions are totally wrong, its just that you think maya is so much better than max that is causing this retarded argument. When you say things like "for animation, rigging, and pipeline, Max is to quote an earlier post 'somewhat of a joke.'", people get all testy because while a couple small things might be a bit smoother in maya in those areas, in the end, you can do the same things without a lot of extra effort.
The only place where maya really truly rocks the shit out of max is the reference system. For the rest, I can make do just fine in max in every area.
EDIT: feel the might of my 2000th post. Resistance to this post is futile!!
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Actually Maya's script editor has line numbers, multiple undos and redos, a search and replace- all things max's editor was missing until 2k8.
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Actually the Maxscript editor has had find/replace for quite a long time. It was definitely in 3dsmax8 and I'd assume it's been around since at least max5.
A single undo does suck, though. That's annoyed me on a number of occasions.
Oh yeah, does Maya have anything like Max's visual toolbar editor? That's pretty nifty for quickly throwing together a script UI.
Hinge from Edge is called "Wedge" in the Edit Mesh menu.
Selection Sets are called "Quick Select Set", to make one select what you want, then go Create > Sets > Quick Select Set. To select one, go Edit > Quick Select Sets, then select one of the ones you've made. It'll also appear in the outliner as a dark blue circle with yellow and blue objects inside.
dekard: sorry missed your post. keep faces together is on
edit: btw are you bridging them all at once? as that won't show the problem, its more the sort of situation where you have a couple quad holes and use bridge to fill them. The problem is there before the extrude, if you set maya to show edge boundaries, it highlights the sides of the bridged polys even though there are no double verts
hehe i knew someone would say that! that was another example.. i use bridge a lot when strip modelling, when sometimes half the model has exposed edges all over and fill hole would go nuts
edit: like so:
no duplicate verts or nothin. if I want to extrude this to give it thickness I can either extrude it and delete the bastard face inside the model, or export to obj and bring it back in
I think the animation and rigging discussion as been much covered... and when it comes to lowpoly modelling I think all programs are getting more and more equal these days. Yet there is one gripe I have about maya... take 'polychipoff' for instance. It's a powerful command for sure, but it has sooooo many parameters!!
I reckon this makes it extremely powerful, but also a pain in the ass. For instance a few weeks ago I wanted a polychipoff variant allowing me to select me a few faces from an object, hit a button, and bam I get a duplicate of the originally selected faces, with a bit more volume, with the newly created geometry being a new object in the scene. I know this takes a couple minutes for a technical guy to write, but from an artistic point of view it can be a blocker ... I have so many examples of this.
I think the modelling power of Max and Silo comes from the developpers thinking (to a certain extent) about the tools the artist need - and they implemented easy shortcuts to these, with easy spinners and such. The code behind it might be horrible, I can't tell ... but it works :P While maya is more like a library of commands. They are all there but man it can be a headache.
Which brings me again to the hardsurface question ... I am okay with the basic fonctionality of Maya for lowpoly modelling (many tools are missing but let's say it's okay-ish - with a few extra downloads it's getting there) but the 'command' vs 'tool' problem really increases when doing more complex modelling tasks. I am very curious about advanced Maya modelling techniques, so if someone has experience with that please let us know...
(also ... the argument stating that 'movie props are often done with Maya, so why complain? Pixar guys do their characters in Maya so it must be good enough for game stuff!' is invalid to me. As far as I can tell a movie CG character goes through many more validation steps than a game prop, so basically the modeller works from a precise blueprint kind of reference, which is rarely the case in games. Plus, modelling a few onscreen movie chars is quite different from producing tons of modular games assets at a fast pace... And on the other hand of the spectrum you have the Epic guys sending some of their Max-done models to an outsourcing studio for some texturing, and the studio replies that the assets are much more nicely constructed than most of the movie stuff they get...)
Rooster : You might want to use the 'append' command for that. In my experience it gives clean results, and I suspect that the bridge command is more for face components that are completely separated?
By the way ... Since the commands have soooo many parameters (rooster's case is another example of that), I am sure someone wrote some custom floating Maya UI with many shortcuts for useful command presets? I think the program would hugely benefit from that. Giving the option of running the prog as a comand library for the tech/pipeline guys OR running it with a special UI with different icons or shortcuts to variants of different tools. Because tweaking a command's parameter each time you want to get something different out of it is definately a time waster...
Replies
Of course, instancing stack entries is GOLD...
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Damn, yeah... I love being able to control the same parameters across multiple objects without worrying about keeping stuff synced ... got two different objects that need to bend the same way? Instance the bend, then they'll always match and you only need to edit one set of parameters!
Most of my highpoly stuff has instanced Turbosmooth modifiers so I can toggle them on or off or change the level of detail globally. Such a time sink in Maya, insanely easy in Max.
I absolutely hate skinning in maya...why can I not just simply select a vert and assign it a weight?..( the only way I know of doing this in maya is through the component editor which is not an efficient work flow )_ ...Also....if you say have a character built out of intersecting meshes, why do i have to take my viewport inside of the mesh to paint weights?...
you can also select vertecies before going in to the paint tool to mask that selection for painting. Or use the isolate select on faces to make the painting easier.
I don't know, I personally like the skinning in Maya better than Max.... but maybe that's just me. Also 2k8 has alot of improvements to the whole skinning process.
Not entirely helpfull when adding things to your selection, though
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ahh true that is a pain, and I've hit it a few times. I end up having to deselect everything select that one piece (click click click...click now I have it) then select the other pieces and hope it doesn't bug when selecting something else.
OR rotating the viewport so nothing is behind the object/face, works.
OR when that isn't possible, create a named selection set with the objects/faces already selected, deselect, then select the face/object you're having trouble with and append it to the selction set.
OR drag a selection and deselect what you don't want.
All Silly work around really, I totally agree if you click on something it should select it. It seems to be a common problem with both Max and Maya and both have a few ways to work around what should be fixed.
Let's make this sticky so we can keep the penis comparisons to one thread.
Max is great
Maya is great
move ON!
*sighs*
-R
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All Silly work around really, I totally agree if you click on something it should select it. It seems to be a common problem with both Max and Maya and both have a few ways to work around what should be fixed.
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Maya doesn't have the selection problem (its selection can be improved and has some problems at glancing angles, but not anywhere close to the problem Max has). Its selection also works 'logically'- alt+click or drag removes, ctrl adds, shift toggles. Max's selections follow max's way of doing things... Like I've said elsewhere, Max broke their selection when they added their transform gizmos, so Bobo says.
In fairness, Maya does have the annoying 'grey viewport when you open a file' problem which has been around forever and I can't believe hasn't been fixed. But really, it is easy enough to script around (that was a joke).
Also, MoP, going through the rest of Blizzard's job ads, it looks like they are moving over to Maya for their upcoming MMO (Starcraft 2 is still using 3dsmax).
I also have no idea about the questions regarding Maya hard-surface workflow. I can say that Nurbs/Surfaces are actually a usable tool in Maya and work very well with history. But I am not a very good hard-surface modeler so I must defer.
I don't judge based on default tools
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Yeah, I can see why you think like that, and since you're more of a programming type anyway, I imagine it makes sense. I can totally understand wanting to have open scripting flexibility.
However, my argument has always been that, out-of-the-box, Maya pretty much just sucks for current-gen game based modelling. Incredibly poor viewport speeds, multiple driver-related issues with consumer NVidia cards, woefully outdated polygon editing tools.
While it is possible to spend time scripting fixes/improvements for many of the modelling tools most other app-users would find "standard", my point is that most artists do not have the time to do that, or the resources/contacts to get someone else to do it, unless they're at a big company with a dedicated tools scripter.
If I gave a Maya veteran modeller and a Max veteran modeller a sheet of concept art for a highpoly character (mix of hard-surface stuff, armour/weapons etc and organic stuff which may be worked on in ZBrush), and they were only allowed to use the default tool sets (allowing user hotkey or menu customizations, but no scripting), I can almost guarantee that the Max modeller would be finished LONG before the Maya modeller, and the finished highpoly model would be much more non-destructively editable and revisable in Max than in Maya.
Plus the Max guy's finished model would be displaying at 100fps, while the Maya guy's model would be chugging along at about 5fps on the same system
It would be interesting to see a head-to-head challenge like that actually, heh. Just out of the box tools, no custom scripts, and 2 modellers roughly on the same skill/experience level with the two packages.
Its selection also works 'logically'- alt+click or drag removes, ctrl adds, shift toggles
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Ctrl+click/drag adds, removes and toggles. (so instead of 3 keys it does it with one selection key, working contextually like 99% of all other apps do)
Alt+click/drag only removes. (just like Maya)
Shift+drag inverts the selection. (very handy, but not found in Maya?)
I also prefer Max's pivot system I really like being able to pick my pivot point, set it locally, and toggle the pivot when I have multiple objects selected to use a shared pivot or their own local pivot. Which I haven't found a replacement for inside of Maya, yet. Anyone have any suggestions?
nex does have custom pivots althoug I dont think its per object its just either use the object pivot or the set custom one
Shift+drag inverts the selection. (very handy, but not found in Maya)
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Well, actually Shift+drag does exactly that in maya. Always have.
Ctrl = removes
Ctrl + shift = adds
Max's "Select All" being context-sensitive, so it will select all of whatever relevent things you're selecting at the time, which seems much more sensible.
Also Max's pivot/axis controls are much more varied and useful than Maya's, as Vig says - not only can you quickly transform from averages, local centres, or object/parent/world points, but you can do that in any local/world/screen/parent space too. Maya has about 1/3 of those, NEX adds a couple more but still doesn't match up.
I guess I might start having to write MEL scripts to emulate Max's pivot system because it's so much faster and more accurate than hitting Insert and manually positioning/snapping the pivot point.
Also worth mentioning is that pivot points for component selections can be moved the same way (very handy).
And finally, wich is also very usefull, is the "retain component spacing option in the move tool settings
MoP: I think that comparison is a bit of a farce, between stock programs. Take two equally skilled modelers with their comfortable workstations and see who gets things done faster is much more pertinent. Maya gives you much more workflow customization, so stripping out most of that by restricting a 'contest' to default tools doesn't really make sense. And as I've said before in regards to animation for Vig, the lack of what you may want as 'standard' maya features (like a Biped) I see as a conscious choice and not very important, since so many quality alternatives are available. Nor do you need to work a big studio, though that helps, you just need to be willing to look on highend3d and maybe even learn a few lines of MEL. And I think as an artist who knows MXS and a bit of MEL, you, MoP, will certainly say that knowing some scripting/macro recording will speed up the workflow of any artist.
And Max's viewport speeds were as bad or worse as Maya's until Max 2008's improvements (which weren't really improvements as much as they were hiding the problem of bad performance, by asking it to perform less- I will find the post once CGTalk goes back up). And I really don't agree on its lack of poly tools since, what, Maya 6 or 7?
As far as pivots, ivars and rooster have it covered. And if you do write a MEL script for pivots, MoP, don't forget that Maya's Groups are nothing like Max's and you WANT to use them when you work and script.
And Max's viewport speeds were as bad or worse as Maya's until Max 2008's improvements (which weren't really improvements as much as they were hiding the problem of bad performance, by asking it to perform less- I will find the post once CGTalk goes back up).
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Heh, I don't care how or why they did it, all I know is that I can smoothly work on a 2-3 million poly mesh in Max, without any troubles. I have to hide about 90% of it if I want the same performance in Maya. Doesn't matter that Max8 didn't have the same speed as 2008, it was still at least 50% faster at displaying highpoly object than Maya 2008 even manages now.
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And I really don't agree on its lack of poly tools since, what, Maya 6 or 7?
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Do you even do much modelling?
Pre-emptively, YES it does have modelling tools that get the job done, provided you stick rigidly to the workflow that Maya wants. Try to use any other workflow and you're screwed. All of the modelling tools that Maya has, Max has too - so you can use the Maya workflow in Max if you want, OR you can use any of the other tools as well. Try to bring a different workflow into Maya and you're going to find yourself cutting back and slowing down a lot. Any Maya modeller moving over to Max would find the same tools (maybe in different places with different names, but same functionality and workflow), but any Max modeller moving over to Maya is suddenly going to find themselves having to use the Split Polygon and Insert Edge Loop tool for pretty much everything, which is just silly
(Or you buy NEX, which is what I've done).
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selection is broken and even Autodesk employees agree
[/ QUOTE ] I'd like to see what employee said selection is broken. Are you talking about Bobo the MaxScripting guru?
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As far as pivots, ivars and rooster have it covered.
[/ QUOTE ] Yes they did. Its not as robust as max and takes 3x more clicks to hack your way around it and just as many clicks to put it back.
I think an interesting twist to MoP comparison would be starting both artists off with fresh installs and allow them to customize, create, install and use any plug-in/script available, even at cost. Any scripts they have written and not released publicly would need to be rewritten from scratch. Then track cost and time taken.
The less customization each artist has to do, the more portable and stable the workflow is between artists/work stations. If plug-ins are required so 'standard' features can be included into the package and these plug-ins must be purchased then installed for every artist thats an added cost you may not want to deal with. Not to mention your pipeline is now dependent on a 3rd party who may or may not be around to respond to changes or fix bugs. I would rather check the documentation that came with the app rather then look on a 3rd party website for a hack fix that kind of suits my needs that someone cobbled together with MEL script.
When going from Maya -> Max, Maya users need to learn the names of the tools.
When going from Max -> Maya, Max users need to learn MEL and spend weeks building in standard features, a few of which you'll never be able to create.
Previously you complained that 3dsMax is bloated and cobbled together. Isn't it more dangerous to bloat Maya with user made content?
Then track cost and time taken.
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Isn't Max about $3.700 and Maya $2.000 ?
I think you can get quite a few plugins for those $1.700
Mop: I remember missing alot of modeling tools when switching to Maya, but most of them have been implemented since, so I'm just curious as to what tools you're missing (not trying to argue or anything, just wanna see if I can help)
Heres my list of things I would like to know how to do in Maya.
I'm not saying these don't exist, I'm saying I don't know how to do them in Maya.
Core functionality:
History stack
Modifiers
Pivots
Selection sets
Modeling tools:
Bridge
Outline
Chamfer edges
Edit triangulation/retriangluate
Slice plane
Preserve UV
View align, make planar XYZ
Hinge from edge
Create shape(spline) from edge selection
Extrude along spline
Constrain along edge, face normal
Target weld
Also a good Max-style "Relax UVs" is missing, Unfold UVs sometimes gets mostly there with some settings fiddling, but mostly produces stuff you have to tweak a lot by hand anyway. Map Edge Border and Relax usually works fairly well but again isn't as versatile or elegant as Max's solution.
Something I can't seem to find in default Maya (although is in NEX) is a good "constrain to faces/edges" mode (so moving verts/edges/faces will keep them locked to the surrounding geometry). The Slide Edge Tool seems to be the closest thing, and that only works on edges, which makes it pretty useless 1/3 of the time.
Again, my arguments here in this thread are at the core of Maya - I love NEX, and it has added back most of what I missed when coming over from Max, but still my point is that it shouldn't be necessary to pay for plugins to do simple poly-modelling operations that most 3D apps have been doing for years.
Mainly the thing I still can't do which is taking up more time in Maya than Max would is that when subdividing objects for highpoly, you either have to apply a Smooth function to all the objects and remove it to continue working, or use the High Quality Preview while working then do the Smooth function in the end (or Convert Smooth Preview to Polys and have to undo it to get the control mesh back), or use Smooth Proxy and end up with double the amount of objects in the scene. While all of those are workable solutions, none of them are as elegant as Max's "Turbosmooth" modifier on the stack, which allows you to set different subdivision levels for viewport and render, and allows you to toggle it on and off on a keypress without ever having to undo anything or double up your object count. As far as I can tell that sort of functionality would be a nightmare to script.
<u>Core functionality</u>
"History stack": please don't call Max's stack a "history stack", because it's not - it's a modifier stack! Maya has a "history stack", but it is far less flexible than the Modifier Stack, and I've noticed that when objects build up a big history you have to delete it all to speed up Maya's response time when editing the object. As far as I can tell, you can't move functions from the history up or down a level to change what they affect, although you can tweak their parameters after the fact.
Modifiers: Maya has mostly the same modifiers as Max, and in general they work the same way - you add one to the History, and you get an editable gizmo that will remain editable for as long as you keep the History intact. Not much difference between Max and Maya there, as far as I can see.
Pivots: Maya doesn't have as many pivot options as Max does, mostly pivot things are done manually by the user, toggling Edit Pivot mode and moving the pivot to a new location manually (rather than Max's method of being able to choose from a drop-down how to be affected). You can achieve the same results as Max, it just takes a bit longer for some things. It is a bit faster for other things (like if you want to rotate using a specific vert for a pivot point, just toggle edit pivot mode and snap the pivot to that vert).
Selection sets: Probably better than Max's - as has been mentioned, Maya's groups are a bit better than Max's, and generally it's easy to keep your scene organised and easily editable using groups, parents, children and the Outliner. Also the Rename tool is pretty handy, easier than Max's.
I haven't found a way to do something like set a specific selection of faces into a named selection set yet, but I assume it's possible.
<u>Modeling tools</u>
Bridge: Yep, it's in Maya 2008. Although according to Rooster it can be a bit flaky (marking edges as open on a bridge boundary even if they're not, in some cases, leading to trouble later).
Outline: Not sure what you mean by that, I don't recall using an Outline tool in Max.
Chamfer edges: Yep, it's called Bevel, and it allows you to tweak bevel width after the fact in the History. It also has a nice "Roundness" and "Segments" setting which is better than what Max can do. However the stupid thing is, it's not an interactive preview as you change settings when first applying it, which seems really weird since you get interactive updates when you tweak attributes in the history.
In fact this is one of my main beefs with a lot of Maya's poly modelling tools, there's no interactive preview before you "accept" the function, so you can't be quite sure if it's right or not until you actually apply it, so it wastes some time going into the history and tweaking it if it wasn't right first time. Seems like something they really should have added many versions ago.
NEX has an interactive preview on its bevel/chamfer tool.
Edit triangulation/retriangluate: No, you have to actually triangulate your whole mesh and then manually turn edges. Once you apply this, there is no way to go back to quads without deleting the Triangulate function from the History, which means that Maya goes back to triangulating stuff its own way, so when you come to Triangulate again, you might have to turn the same edges back to the way you want again. So frustrating, and no way around it. Max's way is roughly a billion times better than this.
Slice plane: Yep, works same as Max's. NEX has a nice one too.
Preserve UV: Bonus Tools has one, but it's way flakier than Max's and generally not very good.
View align, make planar XYZ: Nope, and there's no "Make planar" either, so you can't just quickly make a selection of faces perfectly planar on their average axis.
Can probably get scripts to do this, although I haven't looked yet. Making planar on XYZ would be easy enough to write as scripts, and I assume the other two functions would be fairly easy too. Again, not in default Maya toolset though.
Hinge from edge: I don't use this in Max so I don't really know what it does. Sounds like you can probably do it in Maya though.
Create shape(spline) from edge selection: You can download scripts to do this properly, but it isn't in Maya by default as far as I can tell. The closest I got with a default Maya function ended up creating separate single splines for each selected edge, rather than a continuous spline.
Extrude along spline: Yep, that's in Maya 2008.
Constrain along edge, face normal: Only along edges, in a limited fashion. You can probably download scripts to do this for free, or buy NEX.
Target weld: No, you will have to get a script or buy NEX for this.
If any Maya gurus would like to point out any mistakes here, you're welcome - I still haven't looked in every single menu and hotkey, so I might have missed some stuff, but I've spent a while searching all of these functions in Maya and have come up with what I've written here.
Hinging polygons rotates them around an edge and creates new polygons that form the sides of the hinge, connecting the selection to the object. Great for things like making alcoves in walls.
Outline lets you increase or decrease the outside edge of each contiguous group of selected polygons. If you scale a selection it only effects the outer-most edge, it doesn't scale the inside polys.
About bridge, I decided to make a quick example of the problem to see if anyone can help with it. Imo this seems like a really shit way for the tool to work, I'm not wrong am i? I mean, in panel 2 there are no double verts but maya still thinks there are open edges for some stupid reason.
View align, make planar XYZ: Nope, and there's no "Make planar" either, so you can't just quickly make a selection of faces perfectly planar on their average axis.
Can probably get scripts to do this, although I haven't looked yet. Making planar on XYZ would be easy enough to write as scripts, and I assume the other two functions would be fairly easy too. Again, not in default Maya toolset though.
Hinge from edge: I don't use this in Max so I don't really know what it does. Sounds like you can probably do it in Maya though.
Extrude along spline: Yep, that's in Maya 2008.
Constrain along edge, face normal: Only along edges, in a limited fashion. You can probably download scripts to do this for free, or buy NEX.
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Ok.
First off, the align to axis, is done by snapping in one axis only, just select whatever component and make sure "retain component spacing" isn't turned on and snap to either a vertex, edge, grid point or whatever. it's a simple 2 click step.
Hinge from edge's been in maya forever. One of the features that made it´s way in to max.
Extrude along spline has also been in maya for as long as I can remember. Just select what you're about to extrude, add a spline to that selection and hit extrude.
Take a look at the custom axis orientation in the move tool settings, might help with some of the constraint problems.
Not sure what the outline tool does, but check out "move component" or maybe the offset-attribute in the extrude-node.
Edit:
Rooster: Have you tried doing the whole length at once? Select all edges on both sides and bridge it.
Vig:
I think what you're looking for in maya is "move component" it moves edges, verts or faces along their respective normals.
Ivars: Thanks, checking out the custom axis orientation stuff in move tool now.
Edit: Checked it out, and it does help a bit, but I remember why I just stopped using it (especially since getting NEX) - because you actually have to click a "set to point" or "set to edge" button, then click on the edge you want to align the manipulator to, then do your translation.
In Max you just set the translation mode to "local", and it will automatically align the manipulator to the local axis of whatever element you have selected (vertex, edge, face, object). It is much faster and more elegant - NEX adds a manipulator mode like this.
Additionally, that doesn't actually help when wanting to move a single vert (or selection of verts) along any edges surrounding them, snapping them to the path of the edge. Similarly sliding a face around, constrained to the edges around it, seems to be impossible. I can post an image of how Max would handle it if you're not sure what I mean.
"Do you even do much modelling? " As I said earlier, almost none now, and before that, not nearly as much mechanical stuff as you guys.
Vig:
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So you say selection is broken because you have trouble selecting though the back of a face? Right click the viewport and toggle on/off ignore backface.
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But I don't want to ignore backfaces. Also, ignore backfaces is per-object AFAIK, so I'd need to toggle it manually. And since you also cannot set 'defaults' for objects (like setting extrude length to be 0, weld thresholds, etc), I'd need to do it for every one, every time, or write a script to do it. I just want to select the face staring directly fucking at me, not the one behind that, or the one behind that facing in the opposite direction, and then finally the last one selected is the one looking right at me. Which is also impossible to select if clicking the face to add to the selection. Seriously, discreet/Autodesk knew it broke its selection tool when they added gizmos, you do not have to keep coming up with excuses for it.
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I'd like to see what employee said selection is broken. Are you talking about Bobo the MaxScripting guru?
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Actually he has been the writer for maxscript help since version 5 or 6 or so. And there was also some discussion about it in the Max 2009 announcement thread, if I have some time later today or tommorrow and CGTalk is working again, I will look. But seriously, the selection is broken, why do you keep having to defend it?
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The less customization each artist has to do, the more portable and stable the workflow is between artists/work stations. If plug-ins are required so 'standard' features can be included into the package and these plug-ins must be purchased then installed for every artist thats an added cost you may not want to deal with. Not to mention your pipeline is now dependent on a 3rd party who may or may not be around to respond to changes or fix bugs. I would rather check the documentation that came with the app rather then look on a 3rd party website for a hack fix that kind of suits my needs that someone cobbled together with MEL script.
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Almost every single thing you stated in that quote is either absurd or backwards logic.
Portability: you want to talk about script portability? Max's is an absolute mess whether you use one or a hundred scripts, because they are run from your script, then each macro is parsed and put in another folder, that the user doesn't even realize is going on, so they may edit and run the wrong one, copy the wrong one, etc. MEL, AFAIK, is all contained in the same directory and is MUCH more straightforward in installing and using scripts. And the use of plugins, which are much more invasive, is less and more easily monitored (Maya has what, 2 dozen plugins in its plugin loader? Max has a few hundred in its browser?). Yes the less scripts the easier it would be for artists to 'swap' workstations, but is this a realistic advantage or disadvantage in common work? Would you tell your artists not to customize their hotkeys so they can swap workstations without loading a couple files and a folder that contain ALL their settings and scripts (true for both programs)?
Added plugin cost: (I will ignore the absurd 'extra install time for plugins) A few hundred dollars for plugins for improved artist efficiency is a cost that any company will absorb, and if it doesn't, your company sucks and you should leave. A team of 20 artists at $200 a plugin is $4000, which is what, a month's salary for a junior artist? Don't be ridiculous.
3rd party responsiveness: Do you want to compare the stability and responsiveness of Autodesk compared with Lumonix, Polyboost, etc., any of the other central plugin creators? Relying on Autodesk is a crap shoot (hello multiple undos in mxs editor for 2k8!), while you can have a direct input towards plugin manufacturers. Devs for free or smaller scripts this isn't true with for either program, but generally what is released is pretty stable and if it sucks an alternative will be developed. The above is true in Max and Maya.
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I would rather check the documentation that came with the app rather then look on a 3rd party website for a hack fix that kind of suits my needs that someone cobbled together with MEL script.
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I will say again, I don't think you are really aware of how insignificant 'default' is. When CS was a 3DS plugin, and not integrated as Biped, would you still talk about its instability or lack of docs? How about Hair and Fur, which was a plugin (originally for Maya!) that was integrated in Max in 9 or 2K8? These distinctions are meaningless and I don't understand how you feel so reassured. The distinction is nonexistent and your reassurance because something is 'standard' or 'default' in EITHER of the programs is something completely irrational. When these plugins become integrated does Autodesk serve you warm milk and cookies with a bedtime story?
Pivots: I said they had them covered, not that it was an adequate replacement for Max's. In fact, rooster even said that- if I disagreed I would have said so.
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Core functionality:
History stack
Modifiers
Pivots
Selection sets
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Stacks:There is no direct replacement for the stack- Maya is node based, max is stack based. The fundamental workflows surrounding them is different.
Modifiers:Again, the idea of a 'modifier' is a max idea (and a strange one at that, especially in their default layout of all one long list). The corresponding actions in Maya are located in what is a more logical layout, you know, like having Skinning on the Animation menu under Skin, or operations that deform the mesh like bend, twist, etc., under 'Deformers' in animation as well. The same is true of most Max modifiers.
Pivots: What about em? Also I always much preferred Maya's gizmo for its poly ops, something I think if Max implemented I would be far happier with it as a modeler. If I extrude a face, I can intuitively manipulate the extrusion, I know I can do something similar with Max's but it always felt more clunky and not as robust.
Selection sets: quick select sets.
As for modeling tools, I will let someone else handle that as I haven't modeled in Maya for a year.
MoP again: I on the other hand hate Max's Relax UV's, it never gives me the results I want. Maya's unfold gives me as mathematically correct a result as possible, while 'Relax', err, relaxes UV's? I guess it is UVing style which comes down to what tool you used to UV most, I started with a default Max 6 or 7 which was crap, went to Maya for UV's and never looked back. Lately Max I like as much or more except for its lack of a Maya-style Unfold.
Ultimately, there are hundreds of little things that are missing in both programs (no Quadrangulate for Max? No... lots of stuff for Maya). However I don't take it out on the program developers for it, because, well let me explain in more than the end of a compound sentence. Game development, hell 'interactive media', is placing such varied demands on these programs, that is it really impossible to expect them to keep up. Max proved itself as a 'game app' but as this classification has faded, Max has found itself hurting. Maya, likewise, in film- it was a great nurbs modeler and was great for rigging and animating, and now finds itself as a Max competitor in the gamespace and is having tons of problems, as very legitimately expressed in this thread. And the demand placed upon these programs will continue to grow and I cannot honestly expect them to keep up. The paradigm shift is going from 3dsmax or Maya as 'tools' and turning them into 'platforms.' We have seen 'component' and 'modular' as buzzwords in recent years, especially for things like game engines- they are just too big now to rewrite every few years and have a couple people maintain the whole thing. They are broken up into components, that are swapped and self-contained and you can even choose from in some instances. The engine becomes the 'glue' holding everything together. Well I see something similar happening with 3d software... eventually. You will have rigs you can choose from, modeling plugins, etc. Much as you do now. Hell, exactly as you do now. The difference will be people won't say "oh that isn't default so it isn't legitimate or as good." That is just not the way to see things. Things need to be understood, instead, as "why would Maya devs spend the time to develop a default rig when they can just integrate existing solutions better." It is not at all a matter of what is there, it is a matter of perception. Engineers realized that they simply cannot program their own components for every project. Oh, Havok, great, let's use that! FMOD, great, let's use that. IL Beast, great, let's use that. If you had a company who said 'We are going to build everything ourselves' they'd be a joke. Well why is that not true of 3d tools? Why do we expect them to do everything themselves and poo on them when they rely on a plugin?
I will assume money, because there is no other rational answer (docs, help, stability, etc). And you are completely right. It sucks you have to pay. I don't know what to say to that. It sucks Autodesk is ripping you off (I'm aware that because Maya 'requires' at least Nex, this is very true for Maya as much or moreso than Max). But, I guess, that is what you get for being a professional. A small studio licenses an engine or components and they don't use much of it, they use lots of defaults, because that are their needs. But the medium and big studios, they license new components, swap things out, etc., and it costs in time and money.
Ultimately it really comes down to how you think of content in game development. So you want to be an 'artiste' and make art and not have to worry about 'tech', you can do one of two things. First, get out of 3D game development because it probably isn't for you. Second, you can actually realize the way forward is not to try to make everything 'default', not to clamor for default tools and whine when a program isn't bloated enough. It is to embrace the change that needs to occur, embrace these programs as 'platforms' instead of one-stop 'tools', support and encourage plugin developers, and tell the big companies that what you want is a program environment that adapts to the changing realities of our field. Plugins are your friend, plugin developers are your friend, and when you find a great one, you should be happy, not upset. The more robust the tools are, the more extensible and flexible, the easier it is to develop tools, and the easier it is to learn how to use these tools. It is better to have a good flexible Curve Editor that tool devs can add and change than it is if they have to write their own.
Sorry for the gospel but what I see here is extremely backwards thinking that is propagating its own problems. Game development has changed since 1997 and we, and our programs, must change with it.
MoP again: I on the other hand hate Max's Relax UV's, it never gives me the results I want. Maya's unfold gives me as mathematically correct a result as possible, while 'Relax', err, relaxes UV's?
[/ QUOTE ]
Can you tell me what settings you've been using for Max's Relax? And what settings you've been using for Maya's Unfold? Because I've tried a ton of combinations for both, and now have a set of values for Max's Relax which gives me a pretty much perfect and distortion-free unwrap every time, while Maya's Unfold has only worked in very few situations, and the majority of the time produces something very warped and barely useable. It seems to work best on really simple, right-angled objects. Give it a complex set of UVs and it just seems to tangle them up.
Again, tell me what settings you're using to get these "correct" results of which you speak, so I can try them out.
Edit: Just tried with a sample mesh in Max and Maya - Maya's Unfold seems to produce the exact same result as Max's Relax, when you use all default settings but set Weight Solver Towards 1.000.
The weird thing is, I'm sure I've tried this on some objects and they just end up getting mangled.
Here's the comparison (both objects started off with the checkered faces all planar mapped in one UV shell from the front, so they were pretty distorted and mangled to start with):
So uh ... that ends that argument I guess. I will research with more objects at some point.
Edit2: Heh, looks like Maya's Unfold actually dealt with the tip of the nose a bit better than Max's Relax
1) set the selection tool so that it with standard left-click works like it normally would with Ctrl + Shift + LMB?
2) rotate the camera from a side or top view? I hate having to go Perspective mode first to look around my model.
I find that for some complex or troublesome parts (especially large terrain meshes with troublesome nooks and crannies), doing a single By Face Angles relax over the whole planar map is a good start, then on areas of high stretching, use By Edge Angles with soft selection falloff to keep it as even as possible.
It's true that Max's relax will start to get less accurate if you have lots of, say, 5-sided polys in your mesh, and also if you have very long thin parts, it will tend to tangle them up at one point, but that's easy to fix just by flipping the tangled section and relaxing the whole thing again.
I've hit that attitude more then a few times with fanboi Maya users and its a bigger turn off then the apple crowd. I might actually like Mac's and buy one if I wasn't required to buy a lifestyle along with it, its like the start screen for Maya is a brainwashing anti-3dsMax ad or something.
I don't understand why some Maya users feel so threatened when someone suggests there might be a better way to work and Maya may not be doing it 100% efficiently?
It's cool that you love it so much and fly the Maya flag so proudly but you don't need to call other packages broken because you don't really understand how they work. At some point in the future when your not blinded rage we can pick this back up.
Another thing to keep in mind that if I do decide to learn Maya it won't be to "switch" but to learn another popular 3D package and add it as ANOTHER tool to my arsenal but it isn't replacement. I would someday like to learn XSI also but that doesn't mean I'd burn my copies of Max and Maya as a sacrifice to the XSI gods.
Edit: Mop im only in 8.5 so I dont know if theyve fixed it or not. I suspect not
About bridge, I decided to make a quick example of the problem to see if anyone can help with it. Imo this seems like a really shit way for the tool to work, I'm not wrong am i? I mean, in panel 2 there are no double verts but maya still thinks there are open edges for some stupid reason.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm running 8.5 and I didn't get the extra edges inside, do you have "keep faces together" checked under edit mesh?
Oh, that's right ... one of them looks and functions pretty much like Windows Notepad but with line numbers, and the other is actually good.
Seriously, for an app that boasts script flexibility in the year 2008, do we really still have no syntax highlighting in Maya 2008? Ouch.
Have weight solver all the way at 0
use pin unselected uv's and this is the important part
for unfold constraint check vertical then apply then check horizontal and apply. This fix's the unwanted results you get when you simply have "none" checked.
hope that was helpful.
Yea not even going to bother reading the rest of that. It's insulting, inflammatory and not even remotely useful. Its a backlash to an attack that never happened. Prof you didn't actually understand what I was trying to get across, but instead thought I was attacking Maya and in doing so you switched on your Max hate and cranked it to 11.
[/ QUOTE ]
Then perhaps you should go back and read it again. Because it isn't max hate, it is hating on lots more than just max.
[ QUOTE ]
I don't understand why some Maya users feel so threatened when someone suggests there might be a better way to work and Maya may not be doing it 100% efficiently?
It's cool that you love it so much and fly the Maya flag so proudly but you don't need to call other packages broken because you don't really understand how they work. At some point in the future when your not blinded rage we can pick this back up.
[/ QUOTE ]
Alright since this still doesn't seem to register: I use Max every single day. I actually know what I'm talking about. I understand how it works. I created the entire Max pipeline, from scratch, for my last job (edit: except for our gr2 exporter from rad). As I said, I wouldn't recommend one over the other for modeling. But for animation, rigging, and pipeline, Max is to quote an earlier post 'somewhat of a joke.' You keep 'waving the max flag' in the face of every reason and experience riggers and animators have with Max compared to Maya. You have asked exceedingly simple Maya questions that make me wonder if you have ever opened up the program to give it an honest try. Every one of your concerns I've addressed. So I agree with, what, 90% of the film industry and maybe half of the game industry, that Maya is superior for rigging, animation, and pipeline- you're right, I must be a fanboy.
When you ask a question and it is answered or make an argument and it is bested, don't throw up your hands and say 'I won't bother responding to that' or 'you are just a fanboi and don't understand what you're talking about.' You can afford to say that when you've established some credit in this discussion. All I see is me and others responding to your concerns and then you abandoning whatever you were talking about.
MoP: I'm sure I wasn't using Relax with the correct parameters. I came from Maya's Unfold where it would always give me the results I wanted, where Max's had more options which I never bothered to get working correctly. Good to know they are about the same.
MoP: Harharhar, you conveniently annoy the lack of, well, anything except broken syntax highlighting in the maxscript editor until 2008. The 2008 editor is awesome though. That said, I spent a day trying to get Ultraedit working as a maxscript editor in max 9 but never got it, was very confusing (had to set up a com bridge, install syntax definitions, it just never worked and I gave up). When I first MEL'ed it took me about 5 minutes to install a fully featured MEL editor (I can't remember what I used but I'm sure I can find it) and there are a number of options. Programmers tend to have an IDE they like and use that and Maya has more options. And if coders could use Maxscript's lame editor to write tools until last year, an artist can use Maya's almost equally bad default editor to write some macros (not to mention that Maya's macro recorder actually works- I've gone over how broken Max's is before, especially for older things). This is actually a very good microcosm for the larger themes running throughout the discussion...
MoP: I'm sure I wasn't using Relax with the correct parameters. I came from Maya's Unfold where it would always give me the results I wanted, where Max's had more options which I never bothered to get working correctly.
[/ QUOTE ]
Uh, did you look at my screenshot? Not sure what you mean by "more options" - Max has 1 drop-down, 2 spinners and a checkbox. You can explore the extent of its functionality in about 10 minutes.
Maya has about double that amount of things to click/set/tweak, half of which don't appear to do anything. I've been trying multiple combinations of parameters repeatedly, some of which appear to have no effect at all, and Maya modellers I know who have been working with it for years are equally clueless about which slider controls what.
[ QUOTE ]
MoP: Harharhar, you conveniently annoy the lack of, well, anything except broken syntax highlighting in the maxscript editor until 2008. The 2008 editor is awesome though.
[/ QUOTE ]
For once can you please just acknowledge that something of Maya's is utter crap? Maya's script editor is Notepad with line numbers. It has been for years. That's very poor, especially when scripting is supposed to be a strong point.
You're trying to back out of it by complaining that Max's syntax highlighting (a basic but useful feature) was somehow broken in past versions (I assume you mean the block comment and copy and pasted text not being picked up correctly?). Even a mildly bugged syntax highlighter is streets ahead of pure black text.
I've noticed this as a theme of your replies - you've never once acknowledged a fault in Maya, even if it's true - you just trumpet the flexibility of the backend, and wheel out issues with old versions of Max. That's not debating, that's being blinkered, and I'd appreciate it if you'd face up to that, it's only fair. I have regularly acknowledged Max's failings (there are many), but I don't try to sidestep a genuine complaint by calling out the failings of another app. Keep it straight please.
But I don't want to ignore backfaces. Also, ignore backfaces is per-object,It AFAIK, so I'd need to toggle it manually.
[/ QUOTE ] I still think you're using it incorrectly but maybe thats just a difference in workflow. anywho bind this to a key.
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>if $.ignoreBackfacing == true then
(
$.ignoreBackfacing = off
)
else
(
$.ignoreBackfacing = on
)
</pre><hr />
It wouldn't be too hard to write a loop to check each object and toggle it on/off making it a global switch, but I would actually have to test it, the above I know will work without having to open 3dsMax.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Vig wrote: The less customization each artist has to do...
[/ QUOTE ]
Almost every single thing you stated in that quote is either absurd or backwards logic.
Portability: you want to talk about script portability?
[/ QUOTE ] Not really what I was talking about. I was talking about loading a file that another artist worked on. It becomes much more problematic to swap working files back and forth when different people have different plug-ins installed. It's even more of a hassle to research and screen these plug-ins and require everyone have them installed. Talking about plug-ins like puppetshop, it takes extra time when 3dsMax loads, and it costs extra, BUT if the character needs to be rendered on a machine that does not have puppetshop it even load the file.
[ QUOTE ]
A few hundred dollars for plugins for improved artist efficiency is a cost that any company will absorb, and if it doesn't, your company sucks and you should leave. A team of 20 artists at $200 a plugin is $4000, which is what, a month's salary for a junior artist? Don't be ridiculous.
[/ QUOTE ] And when you bring on contractors for 6mo you end up buying them plugins also then not using them half the time. Its easier if its just included. Asking a company to drop 3,500 for 3dsmax full featured, and if they are going to switch they need to blow 7k ultimate, but its not actually ultimate because you need more plug-ins on top of that. Sweet deal...
[ QUOTE ]
3rd party responsiveness: Do you want to compare the stability and responsiveness of Autodesk compared with Lumonix, Polyboost, etc., any of the other central plugin creators? Relying on Autodesk is a crap shoot (hello multiple undos in mxs editor for 2k8!), while you can have a direct input towards plugin manufacturers. Devs for free or smaller scripts this isn't true with for either program, but generally what is released is pretty stable and if it sucks an alternative will be developed. The above is true in Max and Maya.
[/ QUOTE ]I and many others have asked Kees to add an undo function to the setup portion of PuppetShop, to date, none as been added. Your answer for adding in modeling tools that are not in Maya was to troll Highend3d.com and look for free scripts that will more then likely be out-dated, broken or only half work.
[ QUOTE ]
When these plugins become integrated does Autodesk serve you warm milk and cookies with a bedtime story?
[/ QUOTE ] More like hot sex in a back alley. I know that their intrated plug-ins have been tested and will work. I don't have to email someone informing them that a new version of 3dsMax has shipped and that their plug-in doesn't work. Then I put everything I'm working on, in limbo for 3 weeks while they hack in a work around, then I end up beta testing it. So you ask why I feel reassured and prefer to have things as part of the main app, I'll tell you I've been bitten by the 3rd party devs and it isn't as rosey as you make out to be. There is very little recourse if they choose to just stop supporting it, hopefully you have something to fall back on, or figure out a quick solution.
[ QUOTE ]
Selection sets: quick select sets.
[/ QUOTE ] I use sub-object selection sets (selections of verts or faces) while modeling/unwrapping/skinning/rigging and animating. MoP covered this and its not in native Maya unless he just hasn't found it. Hopefully it wouldn't be hard MEL it.
[ QUOTE ]
Ultimately, there are hundreds of little things that are missing in both programs (no Quadrangulate for Max? No... lots of stuff for Maya).
[/ QUOTE ]There are quite a few ways to quadrangulate a triangulated mesh.
http://andrew.cmu.edu/user/beiy/tutorials/quadrangulate.html
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/detriangulator-0
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/hide-longest-edges
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/sled-select-long-edges
[ QUOTE ]
"why would Maya devs spend the time to develop a default rig when they can just integrate existing solutions better." It is not at all a matter of what is there, it is a matter of perception.
[/ QUOTE ] Its great to have options, but its also great to have a starting point, a spring board, something to fall back on when the plug-in rig you're using goes tits up. I guess creating a bone rig from scratch is the default fall back, but would it really be that hard to snatch up one of these prebuilt rigs look it over and include it, or just code up something simple? If they do ncloth, they can do a simple prebuilt biped rig...
A lot of people use MELstudio for serious scripting, or jEDIT with MEL syntax : http://www.digimation.com/V2/SoftwareDetail.aspx?ProductCode=SD402
Maya has about double that amount of things to click/set/tweak, half of which don't appear to do anything.
[/ QUOTE ]
Exactly. Same result, every time, no matter what options you set
[ QUOTE ]
For once can you please just acknowledge that something of Maya's is utter crap? Maya's script editor is Notepad with line numbers. It has been for years. That's very poor, especially when scripting is supposed to be a strong point.
[/ QUOTE ]
Its skinning used to be crap as well, as I said earlier. Actually Maya's script editor has line numbers, multiple undos and redos, a search and replace- all things max's editor was missing until 2k8. Furthermore, as I've said before, the fact that it takes about 5 minutes to set up an editor for MEL is pretty key. Furthermore, it's MEL listener records everything and you can write some complex stuff with just that and some minor MEL knowledge to clean it up. Should their script editor be better? Absolutely. But if their script editor sucks and they have a very easy option to use your own, I am happy. Max's sucked FOREVER and there was no option to use your own until relatively recently, and only with one of two editors at least one of which costed money (search is down at CGTalk and can't find when people learned how to open it up with COM). Like I said, this is a good microcosm for what I think is the main disparity between the two programs and why I think Maya is superior.
And yes the 'broken' syntax highlighting was the copy and paste, and block comments, issue- you could block indent and undent(outdent?) to fix it, but really...
[ QUOTE ]
I've noticed this as a theme of your replies - you've never once acknowledged a fault in Maya, even if it's true - you just trumpet the flexibility of the backend, and wheel out issues with old versions of Max.
[/ QUOTE ]
"It is about keeping things clean which (yes, MoP) Maya has a problem with (sp) too"
"Maya certainly has stability woes"
"I am sure MEL is not a perfect language and Maya not a perfect program."
"Lack of a standardized rig in Maya is a legitimate concern for you"
"skinning in Maya before 2008 (or 8.5? can't remember) sucked."
"Maya does have the annoying 'grey viewport when you open a file' problem"
"No... lots of stuff for Maya"
"I'm aware that because Maya 'requires' at least Nex"
I know Maya is not a perfect program, in fact in my very first post I said for modeling it comes down to preference (and I will say again what I said earlier, and I think many Maya users will agree, two equally skilled people working in their respective programs won't have a significant difference in quality or speed using any of the three major programs). But for rigging, animation, scripting, pipeline, I've yet to see any real arguments disputing Maya as superior to Max. The arguments so far have been how Maya is missing stuff, which is actually a testament to many of those areas.
Truth be told I was impressed with Max 2k8. They really fixed what were lots of seemingly absurd problems that hadn't been fixed yet (mxs editor, viewport speed, biped xtras, etc.). However, they then turn around and announce Max 2k9 with maybe 5 features worth listing, to release about 6 months after 2008. If Max 2009 and 2010 and 2011 all are the quality of the 2k8 release, I may be eating my words, feel free to throw them back at me if I am around and Max makes a full recovery from the slide some (including me) see it is on.
Furthermore, there are some fundamental issues on the backend that cannot be solved- there are deep-seated problems with Max either because of black boxes, or the way it was originally designed and written. The main issue with Maya, which I've acknowledged, is its lack of 'standard' features. But as I explained in a previous post, I question whether this should be an 'issue' at all. So yes, I can address many of these 'shortcomings' by touting the flexibility of the backend, because that is what matters- it doesn't matter that Maya doesn't have an equivalent of Biped, at least it shouldn't. It is the flexibility and breadth of options available. Why is it not perfectly legit to say 'oh well Maya's script editor isn't as good as Max's in 2008, it takes me 5 minutes to install one as good or better than max's'? Because it isn't the MoP-approved paradigm?
Vig:
[ QUOTE ]
I still think you're using it incorrectly
[/ QUOTE ]
I know I can be hotheaded at times but I'm not a fucking idiot
As for your backface toggle, just enclose that in an 'for g in geometry do' and change the $ to a g. Also you probably want to enclose your if/then/else in a try catch, or test if it is a classOf editable_mesh or editable_mesh. Selection is still broken.
Puppetshop: from the lumonix website: "Network Rendering Nodes are now available (for free) to customers."
[ QUOTE ]
It's even more of a hassle to research and screen these plug-ins and require everyone have them installed.
[/ QUOTE ]
This mentality in your post is, again, what I see as very prevalent in many conservative areas of the industry. 'Oh, this will take too much time. This is easier.' 'Oh, we don't want to bother with that, just do this.' You know what? Getting someone to facilitate your team of artists will pay their worth back in spades; taking the time to actually research, plan, and execute correctly, will pay back in spades. I know you've worked mainly at small studios and I know this is the quintessential small studio experience. Take the time to research, plan, and execute, instead of doing everything at the same time, and you'll see how much more effective a team becomes. The same way people are waking up to how counterproductive and ineffective crunch for anything more than a couple weeks is, people are and will continue to wake up to how much these issues impact productivity and time management. The time of a skilled employee is so much more expensive than any hardware or software and we all need to start looking at the big picture and spending the proper time planning what is going to be most efficient. And guess what, spend a few extra days or weeks researching tools and pipeline before a project is committed to something and you will save that time back 100-fold by the end of even a few months.
[ QUOTE ]
I and many others have asked Kees to add an undo function to the setup portion of PuppetShop, to date, none as been added.
[/ QUOTE ]
http://lumonixsoftware.com/yabb/YaBB.pl?action=search2
And the problem is - no surprise here- Max's undo system not working correctly!
[ QUOTE ]
Your answer for adding in modeling tools that are not in Maya was to troll Highend3d.com and look for free scripts that will more then likely be out-dated, broken or only half work.
[/ QUOTE ]
No. It was to browse highend3d.com and look for free scripts that add the functionality you need and often work as well as needed. I think if you ask most Maya users they will say the vast majority of scripts they download work without any problems.
[ QUOTE ]
More like hot sex in a back alley. I know that their intrated plug-ins have been tested and will work.
[/ QUOTE ]
I guess that depends on your definition of 'work.' I find it difficult to create a distinction between the functionality of any plugin I've tried in Max and Max itself, likewise in Maya.
[ QUOTE ]
I don't have to email someone informing them that a new version of 3dsMax has shipped and that their plug-in doesn't work. Then I put everything I'm working on, in limbo for 3 weeks while they hack in a work around, then I end up beta testing it.
[/ QUOTE ]
This I think you are either lying or you are foolish. Why are you upgrading to a new version of 3dsmax when it ships mid-production, where you would need to put everything in limbo for 3 weeks? Very few studios ever risk upgrading for anything except bug fixes or service packs during production, certainly not a brand new point release.
[ QUOTE ]
So you ask why I feel reassured and prefer to have things as part of the main app, I'll tell you I've been bitten by the 3rd party devs and it isn't as rosey as you make out to be. There is very little recourse if they choose to just stop supporting it, hopefully you have something to fall back on, or figure out a quick solution.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is true everywhere and hasn't stopped developers from adopting component technologies in game engines. Read what happened to Renderware during Crackdown's development- this is always a risk with middleware of any sort, but the risk is small enough and has a large enough payoff (all the time saved) that it is worth it. You seem to have gotten burned once and now close off much better opportunities.
Selection sets: Quick select sets work on sub-objects.
Quadrangulate: Obviously I know there are scripts for it in Max. My point is that, many things are missing from both programs (more from Maya). But my point in the context of that paragraph was, this is irrelevant- what is relevant is that the add-ons are there to fulfill this requirement, and for this, Maya is superior because of its backend.
[ QUOTE ]
Its great to have options, but its also great to have a starting point, a spring board, something to fall back on when the plug-in rig you're using goes tits up. I guess creating a bone rig from scratch is the default fall back, but would it really be that hard to snatch up one of these prebuilt rigs look it over and include it, or just code up something simple? If they do ncloth, they can do a simple prebuilt biped rig...
[/ QUOTE ]
And as I said earlier, if it would make more people comfortable switching to Maya, it may be worth it. However, I would not want to see it come at the expense of anything else.
The only place where maya really truly rocks the shit out of max is the reference system. For the rest, I can make do just fine in max in every area.
EDIT: feel the might of my 2000th post. Resistance to this post is futile!!
Actually Maya's script editor has line numbers, multiple undos and redos, a search and replace- all things max's editor was missing until 2k8.
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually the Maxscript editor has had find/replace for quite a long time. It was definitely in 3dsmax8 and I'd assume it's been around since at least max5.
A single undo does suck, though. That's annoyed me on a number of occasions.
Oh yeah, does Maya have anything like Max's visual toolbar editor? That's pretty nifty for quickly throwing together a script UI.
Hinge from Edge is called "Wedge" in the Edit Mesh menu.
Selection Sets are called "Quick Select Set", to make one select what you want, then go Create > Sets > Quick Select Set. To select one, go Edit > Quick Select Sets, then select one of the ones you've made. It'll also appear in the outliner as a dark blue circle with yellow and blue objects inside.
edit: btw are you bridging them all at once? as that won't show the problem, its more the sort of situation where you have a couple quad holes and use bridge to fill them. The problem is there before the extrude, if you set maya to show edge boundaries, it highlights the sides of the bridged polys even though there are no double verts
edit: like so:
no duplicate verts or nothin. if I want to extrude this to give it thickness I can either extrude it and delete the bastard face inside the model, or export to obj and bring it back in
I think the animation and rigging discussion as been much covered... and when it comes to lowpoly modelling I think all programs are getting more and more equal these days. Yet there is one gripe I have about maya... take 'polychipoff' for instance. It's a powerful command for sure, but it has sooooo many parameters!!
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
attraction,
constructionHistory,
duplicate,
gravity,
gravityX, gravityY, gravityZ,
keepFacesTogether,
localDirection, localDirectionX, localDirectionY, localDirectionZ,
localRotate, localRotateX, localRotateY, localRotateZ,
localScale, localScaleX, localScaleY, localScaleZ,
localTranslate, localTranslateX, localTranslateY, localTranslateZ,
magnX, magnY, magnZ,
magnet,
name,
offset,
pivot, pivotX, pivotY, pivotZ,
random,
rotate, rotateX, rotateY, rotateZ,
scale, scaleX, scaleY, scaleZ,
translate, translateX, translateY, translateZ,
weight,
worldSpace
</pre><hr />
I reckon this makes it extremely powerful, but also a pain in the ass. For instance a few weeks ago I wanted a polychipoff variant allowing me to select me a few faces from an object, hit a button, and bam I get a duplicate of the originally selected faces, with a bit more volume, with the newly created geometry being a new object in the scene. I know this takes a couple minutes for a technical guy to write, but from an artistic point of view it can be a blocker ... I have so many examples of this.
I think the modelling power of Max and Silo comes from the developpers thinking (to a certain extent) about the tools the artist need - and they implemented easy shortcuts to these, with easy spinners and such. The code behind it might be horrible, I can't tell ... but it works :P While maya is more like a library of commands. They are all there but man it can be a headache.
Which brings me again to the hardsurface question ... I am okay with the basic fonctionality of Maya for lowpoly modelling (many tools are missing but let's say it's okay-ish - with a few extra downloads it's getting there) but the 'command' vs 'tool' problem really increases when doing more complex modelling tasks. I am very curious about advanced Maya modelling techniques, so if someone has experience with that please let us know...
(also ... the argument stating that 'movie props are often done with Maya, so why complain? Pixar guys do their characters in Maya so it must be good enough for game stuff!' is invalid to me. As far as I can tell a movie CG character goes through many more validation steps than a game prop, so basically the modeller works from a precise blueprint kind of reference, which is rarely the case in games. Plus, modelling a few onscreen movie chars is quite different from producing tons of modular games assets at a fast pace... And on the other hand of the spectrum you have the Epic guys sending some of their Max-done models to an outsourcing studio for some texturing, and the studio replies that the assets are much more nicely constructed than most of the movie stuff they get...)
By the way ... Since the commands have soooo many parameters (rooster's case is another example of that), I am sure someone wrote some custom floating Maya UI with many shortcuts for useful command presets? I think the program would hugely benefit from that. Giving the option of running the prog as a comand library for the tech/pipeline guys OR running it with a special UI with different icons or shortcuts to variants of different tools. Because tweaking a command's parameter each time you want to get something different out of it is definately a time waster...