going from maya to max
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Hi i have had a hard time going from maya to max and i just have some questions regarding tools.
1. snap: i used snaping for everything in maya, to align vert etc to heights of other verts and snapping to other verts just to move objects and well u name it, everything, but since i came into max nothing seems to work, doesnt seem to be able to aling to heights or align to anything especially not fast, and not even snaping to verts seem to work perfect sometimes it just goes somewhere else, is there any functions that i dont know of? or scripts maybe?
2. uvw: couldnt get a good workflow at all in the uv editor in max so i just went over to unfold3d but atleast i need some basic understanding. in maya i just planar mapped everything, did my cuts and then unfolded from straight verts and everything was perfect.
everyone was saying relax worked the same way,, but i cant seem to get it to work at all as i want, it seems like i have to mark every vert to be able to use relax, and how do i then get any say on how it will turn out?
sorry for the screaming and yelling, just a bit frustrated when i cant get any speed.
please tell me of any usefull scripts or plugins. would be really helpful.
1. snap: i used snaping for everything in maya, to align vert etc to heights of other verts and snapping to other verts just to move objects and well u name it, everything, but since i came into max nothing seems to work, doesnt seem to be able to aling to heights or align to anything especially not fast, and not even snaping to verts seem to work perfect sometimes it just goes somewhere else, is there any functions that i dont know of? or scripts maybe?
2. uvw: couldnt get a good workflow at all in the uv editor in max so i just went over to unfold3d but atleast i need some basic understanding. in maya i just planar mapped everything, did my cuts and then unfolded from straight verts and everything was perfect.
everyone was saying relax worked the same way,, but i cant seem to get it to work at all as i want, it seems like i have to mark every vert to be able to use relax, and how do i then get any say on how it will turn out?
sorry for the screaming and yelling, just a bit frustrated when i cant get any speed.
please tell me of any usefull scripts or plugins. would be really helpful.
Replies
1) Quick Align for objects, Shift-A + click.
It will snap the selected object to the pivot of the clicked object. Other options for alignment are in the tool bar under what looks like two little boxes falling down a hill.
The pivot system in max is really different. I suggest investing some time tinkering with it and trying several different option.
Working Pivot is very handy.
MoP had great image outline of the pivot system and how it differs from Maya's, but can't find it right now... Some of those things have been since rolled into Maya.
For snaps be sure to turn on 3D snap as well as what you want to snap too. Scale of the scene also matters quite a bit and you might need to adjust the snap threshold. Right click the Little magnet snap icon, and check out the options tab, might need to play with those numbers to better refine your snapping, but its very scene scale dependent.
UV-mapping organic stuff in Max is super fast:
1. Add unwrap UVW modifier
2. Select all faces (face mode, then CTRL+A) and hit Quick Planar Map to "reset" all UVs
3. Mark out seams by selecting edges (in 3d view or uv editor) and hit CTRL+B to "break" them (same as cut uvs in maya)
4. Select entire UV shells (turn on Select By Element checkbox in UV editor) and use Relax, just set the Strength (i think) which defaults to 0.1, to 1.0 instead and hit Relax, this usually gives me a perfect organic unwrap first time. Click again if you need to relax more.
Also an AWESOME thing to do with UVs (which i hate not being able to do in maya) is turn on Soft Selection and do a Relax, it will nicely smooth out your UVs from the selection point, falling off to the edges.
edit: after some quick googling, it doesn't look like there are many new 3dsmax unwrapping tutorials available, i might do a quick step-through or even video since it seems a lot of people don't know some of the really fast tricks for getting a nice UV map.