New Job + Maya = I miss Max

mdeforge

Hey guys, I just landed an animation job at a company that creates medical products. I'll be working on modeling their products and making instructional video's for their clients and salesmen. It's my first real job, so I'm pretty fired up.

The thing is, they use Maya 2010... I've been doing a lot of self teaching this week with Maya, and the more I use it, the more I miss Max. I love the navigation aspects of Maya, but the UI is odd to me and I HATE looking at pictures of buttons instead of text. And I keep trying to use the number keys to switch between vertex, edge and face! Bah! I prefer Max's Modifiers over Maya's nodes too. Those things will just take time to get used to I suppose, but I'm finding modeling is much slower in Maya. There's little nuisances that just bug the crap out of me. And somehow I keep ending up with extra geometry double up on my edges after working with extrude. :poly127:

So beyond the "just getting used to it" problems, I'm wondering if there's anything out there that can help ease the pain in forms of plugins or configurations.

fade1

i had the same problem a couple of years ago. to be honest, it was pain in the ass. i first tried to keep my workflow as close to 3dmax as possible, but in the end it's about getting used to the way maya works. and after a couple of month you see that maya is at least as powerful as max, plus it's much easier to customize with mel.
the thing with the selection mode is something maya has on f8-f12. i went to hotkeys and put it on 1-5 just like max. i never used the shortcuts for subdvivs, so this was a good choice.
and you want come around to put your modeling tools to shortcuts or marking menus to get a "3smax" modeling speed. uv layout is a little different but when you learn the tools and make some shortcuts or marking menus it's about the same.
for animation maya is much better and easier to handle, so nothing to change here.
the only thing maya really misses, is the great stack frome max. haven't found a way to simulate this in a clean way.
i would advise to buy a basic tutorial cd and spend a day or two on this. this will give you the basics to build on.

mdeforge

Hey, thanks for the great tips. I'll definitely be switching my hotkeys around like you did. I didn't know F8-F12 did the same thing. I've already started mapping some other keys, including extrude and edge loop. Those two alone have sped things up a bit.

Yeah, I picked up a Max 2011 book and went through some tutorials in it using Max 2010. Not a whole lot of difference from what I can tell. Made this in about six hours, not bad considering today was the first day I really put my nose to the grindstone: http://www.screencast.com/users/SidSinister/folders/Jing/media/8c24166a-6763-46ee-bc3e-f83c9e56d7db

I also found a Max to Maya Transition Guide. That's been very helpful! I'll be pinning that up at work

Do you have any good resources on mel that you'd recommend? I'd like to look into that more.

I dislike trying to configure scale to work the way I want it to. In Max I could take four sides of a cube, extrude them and then scale them all outwards. In Maya it seems like I use the Move tool to do that. I'll then try and scale them all at the same time as if to bevel them, and it shifts everything. I tinkered with the options and found that Preserve Child Transform helps in some instances, but I haven't the slightest idea why, unless Child means child node and not a hierarchy.

Animation looks like a dream in Maya

r_fletch_r

you might find Nex usefull. it brings some of the nice things from max into maya

josh_lynch

I use both a lot. They both have this both have that.

Watch these it should help.

http://nickzucc.blogspot.com/search/label/tutorials

fade1

i started mapping modeling tools to keys in the beginning, but not enough keys to cover my workflow. so i build markingmenus, for example one for modeling, which i mapped "m" and left mouse button and one for "m" and mmb.
here's an example: nothing supercomplicated but it helps.

Instructions: (script: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/132816/popupMenu_modeling.mel )
1. copy the popupMenu_modeling.mel into your scripts directory
2. go to your hotkeys editor and map this command to a key "press":
source popupMenu_modeling.mel;
popupMenu_modeling;
3. and map this one to the same key as "release":
if ( `popupMenu -exists tempPopup` ) deleteUI tempPopup;
if ( `popupMenu -exists tempPopup2` ) deleteUI tempPopup2;
4.done.

if you press your key with left MB or middle MB, two popupMenus with modeling commands are created for your pleasure.

if you look at the file it should be easy to alter the commands, add new ones or even duplicate it and make another marking menu for uv's etc.

Ex-Ray

I recommend getting used to the default marking menu's when you press either 'space bar','Control' or 'Shift' (it's context sensitive). With experience and muscle memory you'll end up doing quick mouse gesture flicks as you don't have to wait for the menus to pop up. I find I'm much quicker in maya than max because of these mouse gestures.

Additionally as they are default hot keys you don't have to worry about using someone else's machine.

keres

Is there a way to get selection modes to switch between window/crossing like you can in Max? Maya is great, but this is probably the one reason why I prefer Max over it. I can't seem to find anywhere a way to change the selection mode to only select a component only if it is entirely within the marquee. There is that "select by polygon center" option, but it's lame and by no means a substitute for this kind of functionality.

fade1

keres wrote: »

Is there a way to get selection modes to switch between window/crossing like you can in Max? Maya is great, but this is probably the one reason why I prefer Max over it. I can't seem to find anywhere a way to change the selection mode to only select a component only if it is entirely within the marquee. There is that "select by polygon center" option, but it's lame and by no means a substitute for this kind of functionality.

yeah, that sucks. haven't found a option for this either. anybody can help?

fade1

Ex-Ray wrote: »

I recommend getting used to the default marking menu's when you press either 'space bar','Control' or 'Shift' (it's context sensitive). With experience and muscle memory you'll end up doing quick mouse gesture flicks as you don't have to wait for the menus to pop up. I find I'm much quicker in maya than max because of these mouse gestures.

this depends. i personally found the maya default marking menus just too slow and not specialized enough for my workflow. here is the link for the defaults: http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?157484-Maya-Demystified-The-Hidden-Marking-Menus

mdeforge

this depends. i personally found the maya default marking menus just too slow and not specialized enough for my workflow. here is the link for the defaults: http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showth...-Marking-Menus

Oh wow, thanks for that link. I didn't know about half of those menu's, including the Convert to menu's and scale/rotate menu's. Nice!

I recommend getting used to the default marking menu's when you press either 'space bar','Control' or 'Shift' (it's context sensitive). With experience and muscle memory you'll end up doing quick mouse gesture flicks as you don't have to wait for the menus to pop up. I find I'm much quicker in maya than max because of these mouse gestures

After seeing that link, I think I'll save my settings now and try the default menu's again. If it doesn't work out, I can always reload my old ones. I just need to figure this out fast. New job starts Monday!

fade1

especially when you start learning a new app, you should try to stick to the original layouts. it's so much easier to google for help and have everything on the right keys. there is a similar workflow for about everything in maya. the problem is how to find out.
after you get the base concept, adjust everything for your needs. by the way, it's the same with photoshop.

r_fletch_r

Super Happy Cow wrote: »

Try switching from Blender to both Maya and Max. >:/

Been there done that, Is painfull but well worth it.

keres

I couldn't figure out blender to save my life. The first program for modeling that I learned was AC3D. It's very simple (and therefor powerful, I guess) but it's essentially 3ds Max with no fancy functionality at all. No animation, poor rendering, poor file support but it still laid the foundation.

To this day, I have yet to model anything at all in Blender. That program makes no sense to me.

bugo

customization and marking menus, its all u need to know!