mudbox:
external texture files that can be directly edited, used and refreshed.
stencils
painting on my low res model with the normal map loaded and seeing my final result.
then exporting it with FBX straight in unreal
(this now will also apply for rigged models)
ofc vector displacement features
3dsmax
quad menus
symmetry tool (nope it's not just instanced mirror)
Modifier Stack Cut and Paste Feature
Lighting
wire parameters
Viewport real time lighting\shading and true directX display
proOptimizer
Graphite tools
classic nice clean material editor
(nodal interfaces take too much space or feel like suffocating)
Viewport Canvas
Character Studio
and more but i will be hunted down and murdered in a gruesome manner
Rhino3d + Grasshopper: Visual programming of surfaces and models is just so awesome! Make holes in my building depending on the direction of the sun and the angle of the surface, no problem
max custom toolbars/quad menus. luv them
max's materials editor. always liked it from the start
maya - painting smooth skin weights. very satisfying when you do it right
phew thankfully not everyone thinks like you and the editor gets nodejoe implemented
hehe look in the thread you will find at least one. and there are more.
I agree with you though, that it should be in max for those who like that workflow.
it looks and from the video it seems that it works great too.
The search feature in Blender 2.5 is pretty sweet. As far as I can tell, it opens up a search for every action in the program, and is intended to be used to find objects and materials as well, like an extensive command prompt / address bar for the entire program.
Know what you want to do but don't want to dig it out? Search!
Lets you transfer date between meshes. From materials, uv's, weightmaps etc. It can also mirror properties across, like if you were doing morph targets on a head and did 'right eye brow up' you can transfer the shape across to the other side with a click.
I use it a fair bit for transfering uv's, - you can project uv's from a low poly cage object onto a higher poly more complicated object. Actually they theres some cool info on it from the metal gear making of! http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4735&page=2#5
drag and drop images from windows explorer into hypershade to import whole folders of textures at once. This is much better than having to browse to find textures. so many maya features i love but that one saves me soooooooo much time.
Sorry for the old thread bump, I just found this searching to see who else models in Modo around here. Great thread, nice to talk about the positives of programs since I feel like I sometimes spend half my day complaining about problems with whatever I'm using.
A couple things about Modo:
1.) By far the smartest camera I have used in a 3D app (with trackball rotation turned off, for my preference). It does a great job tracking geo so you almost never have to center your view. It seems like a minor thing but speeds up workflow a lot. Basically, if you're zoomed out and looking at your whole mesh you can rotate around the whole thing, but if you then zoom in on a bolt or something your camera rotation automatically adjusts so it is centered on the detail in focus. No clicking a face/object and hitting the frame hotkey to reset the camera. 95% of the time if figures it out for you, which really helps if you're panning around the surface of a complicated object and always want your rotation set on what you're working on (which is pretty much always).
It's worth noting that Maya has a setting that allows the camera to track geo when rotating, but based on my experience it seems to be too literal and rotates around the exactly point on the mesh that you click with your alt+lmb (which is unweildly at times). It's still worth trying out though, and I think could be more useful than the default camera rotation in Maya in some ways.
2.) Someone mentioned Modo selection already, which is awesome, but to expand on that they give you access to mouse clicks in the key binding options which allows for some creative hotkeys.
For example, by default if you shift + double-left-click on an edge in modo it'll select the edge loops for every edge you have selected. Sometimes that's good, but lots of times I want to leave my current selection as-is and only select the edge loop of the edge I'm about to click on. So I got a script somewhere that selects only the edge loop of the edge you run it on and assigned that script to shift + double-right-click, adding the new functionality without overwriting the original funtionality.
Here's the basic functionality. Simple but very useful, especially when making complex selections for UV seams.
Selection in general is great as well, with LMB being standard raycast selection that you can single-click or click-drag to select multiple faces, RMB creates a box selection that ignores backfaces, and MMB creates a box selection that selects through the mesh. It's great to be able to select anything intuitively without switching the core selection tool's mode.
XSI: Different colored UV lines, instead of just on/off color. Makes it so much easier and faster to locate the matching edges.
XSI: The chamfer tool works better in XSI, you can change the hardness of the edge, plus corners is better created (compared to 3ds max, at least the 2009 version Im using)
Max: Polygon Modeling with a stack.. awesome!
Silo: Super fast, easy and direct. Everything just feels right
Uvlayout: does an hours work in max in about 10 minutes
mightyPea: totally. all those fecking triangles are a killer.
Maya: Smooth Mesh Preview 1 base - 3 smooth (honestly I never use 2).
There are differences in shading results between preview and true smooth, but after a while you know what and where to expect the differences. So helpful for HP work and much less outliner/hypershader crowding than smooth proxy used to be (not bashing, just noting the tool upgrade.)
i wonder no one already postet this, but the most awesmoe feature max has is that you can instant undo while transforming or changing parameters or whatever when you rightclick while still having the lmb pressed.
max: autoback - every app should have this feature imho
they really needed it badly though. I usually disable it because it slows down everything instead I save every few minutes and every 30 min a new version manually.
Autobak is nice... but sometimes saves you, then overwrites the one that saved you and you're still fucked. I just save stuff off on my own since I don't trust technology enough yet. But it's getting better.
Autobak is nice... but sometimes saves you, then overwrites the one that saved you and you're still fucked. I just save stuff off on my own since I don't trust technology enough yet. But it's getting better.
just increase the number of autoback files. If max reaches the end of that number, it starts over and overwrites old files.
slowdown of autoback can be annoying.
I just wish more people would get into the habit of saving regularly, but many people just get carried away when working and never save. Then they come to us with puppy eyes and beg us to "restore" their work *SIGH!* as if it were that easy...
zBrush: Their viewport navigation and how it differentiates between silhouette clicks, and negative space clicks. Works so nice with a tablet. I freakin' hate having to waste my wacom pen buttons in any and all other 3D programs just for viewport navigation. All 3D programs should have at least the option for silhouette/negative-space navigation. Also how it rotates around where you last clicked is awesome.
i wonder no one already postet this, but the most awesmoe feature max has is that you can instant undo while transforming or changing parameters or whatever when you rightclick while still having the lmb pressed.
I didn't even think of it until I read it in this post. Yeah, being able to right-click out of an action is priceless. Such a neat little undo function, and it's streamlined right in there.
Maya: Smooth Mesh Preview 1 base - 3 smooth (honestly I never use 2).
There are differences in shading results between preview and true smooth...
Really? I think it's identical... the smooth preview is by default set to 2 subdivisions though (might be what's different). But you can change that using PgUp / PgDn when in smooth preview.
Replies
Could not live without it :P
what a glorious improvement. they make you dig for the temp file, but it's always there and 90% of the time it is uncorrupted.
mudbox:
external texture files that can be directly edited, used and refreshed.
stencils
painting on my low res model with the normal map loaded and seeing my final result.
then exporting it with FBX straight in unreal
(this now will also apply for rigged models)
ofc vector displacement features
3dsmax
quad menus
symmetry tool (nope it's not just instanced mirror)
Modifier Stack Cut and Paste Feature
Lighting
wire parameters
Viewport real time lighting\shading and true directX display
proOptimizer
Graphite tools
classic nice clean material editor
(nodal interfaces take too much space or feel like suffocating)
Viewport Canvas
Character Studio
and more but i will be hunted down and murdered in a gruesome manner
oh oh autoback and hold\fetch! life savers!!!
That shit is awesome and probably literally saves me hours.
phew thankfully not everyone thinks like you and the editor gets nodejoe implemented
ok adding to the thread
3dcoat:
spline tool in retopo, thats dope
max's materials editor. always liked it from the start
maya - painting smooth skin weights. very satisfying when you do it right
hehe look in the thread you will find at least one. and there are more.
I agree with you though, that it should be in max for those who like that workflow.
it looks and from the video it seems that it works great too.
maya - decent selection tool, doesnt select the poly next to, or behind the camera, pretyy rock solid all the time
Know what you want to do but don't want to dig it out? Search!
awwww man thats what i want for max for ages
i was never really able to make anything useful with maxscript, but i have written lots of tools i use all the time with mel
strechmesh
the setup machine
face machine
Maya, UV editor, ncloth TSM (technically a plug-in)
Silo, everything when it works.
Crazybump, everything.
XnView, batch rename.
MotionBuilder, crazy easy to clean up mocap and do rig to rig linking, full body IK, and physics.
Lets you transfer date between meshes. From materials, uv's, weightmaps etc. It can also mirror properties across, like if you were doing morph targets on a head and did 'right eye brow up' you can transfer the shape across to the other side with a click.
I use it a fair bit for transfering uv's, - you can project uv's from a low poly cage object onto a higher poly more complicated object. Actually they theres some cool info on it from the metal gear making of! http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4735&page=2#5
drag and drop images from windows explorer into hypershade to import whole folders of textures at once. This is much better than having to browse to find textures. so many maya features i love but that one saves me soooooooo much time.
maya 2009 and up, can do this for edges and for face loops. along with numerous other double click actions for selecting contiguous geo.
Roadkill: Roadkill! This plus Maya's or Silo's UV editors, and I have great UV layouts in minutes!
A couple things about Modo:
1.) By far the smartest camera I have used in a 3D app (with trackball rotation turned off, for my preference). It does a great job tracking geo so you almost never have to center your view. It seems like a minor thing but speeds up workflow a lot. Basically, if you're zoomed out and looking at your whole mesh you can rotate around the whole thing, but if you then zoom in on a bolt or something your camera rotation automatically adjusts so it is centered on the detail in focus. No clicking a face/object and hitting the frame hotkey to reset the camera. 95% of the time if figures it out for you, which really helps if you're panning around the surface of a complicated object and always want your rotation set on what you're working on (which is pretty much always).
It's worth noting that Maya has a setting that allows the camera to track geo when rotating, but based on my experience it seems to be too literal and rotates around the exactly point on the mesh that you click with your alt+lmb (which is unweildly at times). It's still worth trying out though, and I think could be more useful than the default camera rotation in Maya in some ways.
2.) Someone mentioned Modo selection already, which is awesome, but to expand on that they give you access to mouse clicks in the key binding options which allows for some creative hotkeys.
For example, by default if you shift + double-left-click on an edge in modo it'll select the edge loops for every edge you have selected. Sometimes that's good, but lots of times I want to leave my current selection as-is and only select the edge loop of the edge I'm about to click on. So I got a script somewhere that selects only the edge loop of the edge you run it on and assigned that script to shift + double-right-click, adding the new functionality without overwriting the original funtionality.
Here's the basic functionality. Simple but very useful, especially when making complex selections for UV seams.
Selection in general is great as well, with LMB being standard raycast selection that you can single-click or click-drag to select multiple faces, RMB creates a box selection that ignores backfaces, and MMB creates a box selection that selects through the mesh. It's great to be able to select anything intuitively without switching the core selection tool's mode.
Sorry again for being late to the party.
XSI: The chamfer tool works better in XSI, you can change the hardness of the edge, plus corners is better created (compared to 3ds max, at least the 2009 version Im using)
Silo: Super fast, easy and direct. Everything just feels right
Uvlayout: does an hours work in max in about 10 minutes
mightyPea: totally. all those fecking triangles are a killer.
There are differences in shading results between preview and true smooth, but after a while you know what and where to expect the differences. So helpful for HP work and much less outliner/hypershader crowding than smooth proxy used to be (not bashing, just noting the tool upgrade.)
Maya's UV Editor's ability to view UVs for any combination of selected objects.
Maya - crashing 10 times a day on simple tasks like extrude or bevel.
Modo = Awesome
Auto, it only does that because it knows its just your side bitch and that you really love that dirty tramp Max :poly129:
just increase the number of autoback files. If max reaches the end of that number, it starts over and overwrites old files.
slowdown of autoback can be annoying.
I just wish more people would get into the habit of saving regularly, but many people just get carried away when working and never save. Then they come to us with puppy eyes and beg us to "restore" their work *SIGH!* as if it were that easy...
And this about Max:
I didn't even think of it until I read it in this post. Yeah, being able to right-click out of an action is priceless. Such a neat little undo function, and it's streamlined right in there.
Really? I think it's identical... the smooth preview is by default set to 2 subdivisions though (might be what's different). But you can change that using PgUp / PgDn when in smooth preview.