Does Maya have an equivalent to Softimage Prop Model Tool?

praxedes

As the title- does Maya (I have 2009) have an equivalent to XSi's Proportional Modeling tool? I have *found* a tool named proportional modification tool in maya but it doesn't appear to do anything

Thanks for the help!

~P~

MoP

I have no idea what tool you're talking about - have you got any links to videos of it in action or can you give a description of what the tool does?

Mark Dygert

I think P is looking for soft select?


http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/xsidocs/sculpting_UsingProportionalModeling.htm

If you're running 2008 extended (I think it was rolled into 2009), you can toggle it on/off by pressing B. You can hold down B and drag left or right to increase or decrease the falloff. There might be some scripts floating around that mimic that behavior for previous releases.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoXGyKe3YPU[/ame]
Long intro video about soft select.

Ark

As Vig says, is what you want.

MoP

Yep, and you can tweak the falloff etc. in the tool settings.

praxedes

ah ok cool. The tool i was talking about is referred to as proportional modeling in The gnomon DVD by Vitaly Bugerov (I think that's right...) but may in fact be something else in XSI itself- and yes, it's basically an interactive soft select.

Thanks for the "B" info- I've avoided soft-select cos it didn't seem very intuitive. This'll help. Back to the DVD- in his "look how great XSI is" style tools intro, he combines soft select, move and something he calls "slide on" which constrains the vertices he moves to the overall surface of the shape- e.g, with a sphere, he can slide groups of vertices around, with a proportional falloff, and the sphere remains spherical as the vertices move (presumably) along normals.

Sorry to keep asking questions but does anyone know how to create a toggle that would allow these features to be hotkeyed on and off? I know where all of those features (soft select, move along normal) are individually, but don' know how one would combine them. Thanks again

~P~

praxedes

oop- nvm- marking menus are the way I guess...can these be hotkeyed? The mysteries of the Maya interface...I am now beginning to realise I'm getting good at the hardest way of doing everything...:P

~P~

Mark Dygert

Edge constrain. You hold C while moving verts and it constrains the edges to move along edges. I'm not sure if this works with soft select or not. Don't have Maya open to check.

praxedes

cool cheers vig

~P~

malcolm

The soft select in maya 2009 is not interactive, you will have to use the soft mod tool the one that makes the S node appear on your mesh if you want to adjust your falloff after moving the verts. They changed the way soft mod works in 2009 I remember it being quite tricky to figure out how it works. As I remember the trick is double click the softmod tool icon in the tool box and tweak the settings before you use it on a model.

usersen

Hey all, I registered to polycount just to ask this question

I’m in the same situation as praxedes. I am a Maya user and just watched the exact same gnomon DVD (Character Design and Modeling for Next-Gen Games with Vitaly Bulgarov) and I am searching for a function in Maya that I saw demonstrated in XSI.

As praxedes mentioned Vitaly expresses the importance of the “slide on” tool in his workflow. It allows you to slide vertices along the surface of an object without disturbing the shape of the object.

In my scouring of the net I believe the actual name of the tool in XSI may be ‘Tweak/Slide Components’. Here is an excerpt from a softimage wiki:

You can slide components with the Tweak tool. This helps to preserve the contours of objects as you tweak them.

• Sliding an edge moves its endpoints along the adjacent edges by an equal percentage.

• Sliding a point or a polygon clamps the associated points to the nearest location on the surface of the mesh, as if they had been shrinkwrapped to the original untweaked object.

To activate or deactivate sliding, press m to activate the Tweak tool, then press j or right-click and choose Slide Components.

When doing hard surface modeling the lack of this function has frustrated me immensely.
Can anyone point me to a similar function in Maya?

MoP

usersen: As someone already mentioned, when holding down C (default hotkey for Snap To Curve), your selection should slide along the edges.
Not sure about sliding along faces in Maya, I've never tried that myself.

Gilgamesh

You can make an object 'live' which you can then slide stuff across the face of the live object, I'm not sure if that's what you are looking for though?

Ark

In XSI it lets you slide any component (points, edges and polygons) while preserving the shape of the mesh.

Don't think it's posable in Maya. Edge slide is the closest tool, but as the name suggests it only works on edges.

Using Edge slide is really your only option.

The curve snap method doesn't really work in the same way as XSI's.

MoP

Ah yeah Make Live will probably do a decent job.

elte

It can be achieved, but using nex if what you're after are similar to xsi slide tweak tool.

usersen

Thanks to everyone for the replies

Snapping to curves & points and sliding edges or objects across other objects is not what I’m after.

Sliding a vertex across geometry while preserving the mesh it is apart of is what I was looking for (almost like retopologizing, to help you visualize it). I think Ark understands the functionality I’m after.

Thank you elte for pointing me toward nex, the slide command in the move box was exactly what I was looking for!
I’m still experimenting with it and learning all the functions but I love my new tool already, thanks!

poopinmymouth

It's one of the things I hated the most about working in maya. Constrain to edge is it in max, and every vertex moves along it's own edges, and you don't have to have an entire ring selected like in NEX to get it to work.

The last I checked in maya, constrain to edge works only along one edge, so you'd have to move every vertex on it's own to achieve what constrain to edge in max functions as.

Mark Dygert

I agree with poop on this one, the tools you're after have been in 3dsmax for a long time. They're easy to get to and work a lot more like you want. What you're asking Maya to do, can only sort of be done and not nearly as quickly and easily.

Nex raises the bar a bit, not really enough. If you're going to buy plug-ins for modeling 3dsmax has polyboot which was rolled into 2010.

praxedes

gah I say! Curse Maya and it's works...well, maybe not exactly but it's a bummer when Maya is the package that roled with my PC purchase and I can't afford max or XSI

That said, setting the move tool to "average normals" seems to present the option to slide around whilst broadly keeping the surface intact. But I do say "seems" and "broadly" with good reason!

Thanks all for the replies. Maybe I should buy Nex...

Mark Dygert

For me I can't use Maya without Nex. I take it for granted most of the time and forget how naked Maya is without it, I don't regret it. But then again it might get bought and rolled into Maya 2011, since that's what Autodesk seems to really like doing and they did it with polyboost.

renderhjs

yeah and then ignore users comments when bugs are not getting fixed yet again. But swallowing yet another 3rd party code is no problem, its part of the reason why booth packages are so inconsistent in many aspects. Booth max and maya are big incomplete products (with bugs / feature holes) with hilarious prices.

Sage

While slide is powerful there are ways around it. Try adding a loop where you wanted to to slide the old loop that already exists then remove (dissolve) the old one. I would hope Maya has the ability to remove loops like XSI and Max can. If not you just have to do it with brute force.

usersen

Praxedes: I would suggest trying nex (you can download the 30 trial for free)
The slide tool was exactly what I was looking for in improving my hard surface workflow and works very similarly to the xsi tool demonstrated in the dvd.

Sage: That is pretty much the method I was using before. It can be very slow going and usually not as effective either, it certainly zaps creativity and spontaneity while modeling. It is really no substitute for a slide tool, which I will no probably never be able to go without again

praxedes

Have installed Nex. Quad Draw fookin rocks!

~P~