Tips on making the transition from Max to Maya

Chunkey · Sep 2008

hellos

I am having to make the transition from max 9 to Maya for a possible job and the only experience of maya was to look around some of the arenas for Table Tennis so no real practical experience as such. I've downloaded the 8.5 PLE edition and I was wondering if there are any useful tips to help ease the transition?

So far I've managed to do some of the more simple of tasks like extrudes, adding and removing of components but not been able to find the cut tool all that helpful as it's more like slice plane in max rather than having more finer control over the end result.

I'll probably find out a load of these things as I start reading through the documentation and getting my hands dirty, but hopefully this thread could help other artists make the transition over too

Cheers

Chris

Ryno · Sep 2008

Editable Poly is your friend. Avoid Editable Mesh, which is just legacy code. Within Editable Poly:

Cut tool: Is Max's equivalent of Split Polygon. It will snap to neighboring vertices or edges as you use it, or you can cut free-form right in the middle of a polygon with no snapping to edges.

Connect tool: Allows you to connect selected vertices with an edge. Connects selected Edge Rings with an extra loop, etc. (Edge Split in Maya) Connection of Edge Rings will be based off of the center of each edge segment.

Remove: Equivalent of center edge or Vertex deletion in Maya. Select edges, hit Ctrl+Backspace will remove both the edges and vertices, but keeps the surface intact unlike Delete which will punch a hole in it.

Constraints: Constrains movement of components to along Edges or Faces.

Chamfer: Bevel Edge in Maya. Splits an Edge into 2, 3, or more. Use the small settings box to control how many subsequent loops are added. (Max 2008 up)

MoP · Sep 2008

You probably want Split Polygon tool, the Cut tool in Maya is the same as Max's "Slice Plane", while the Split Polygon tool is the same as Max's "Cut" ... confusing, eh?

My advice is to set up hotkeys to be closer to Max-style ones, also get used to using marking menus more, they're pretty fast (ctrl+rightclick to convert selection, shift+rightclick for modelling menu, stuff like that).

If you can afford it, get a license of NEX, it's pretty nice, adds a lot of Max-style modelling functionality.

Chunkey · Sep 2008

cheers MoP

Well I've got a week and a half to do an art test in maya so hopefully I can get on top of things and see what happens

Funky Bunnies · Sep 2008

Yeah, NEX has taken some huge strides from when I first heard about it. It's a totally awesome toolset for maya now.
If you can't spend the cash, though, make highend3d's download section your first stop when you're looking for something to extend maya to be more familiar or intuitive for you.

nazeil · Sep 2008

MJPolyTools is a handy plug in that adds some tools that are closer to Max. Things like connect, edgeloop split, etc. There are tools that already do this in maya, but the work a bit different then the max version (at least as far as my memory can remember).

Oh, when you do UV work you're going to be sewing edges rather then welding UVs. Just a small difference, but it can certainly throw you off.

MoP · Sep 2008

Well, you can weld UVs too. Actually I really like most of Maya's UV tools better than Max - for example the Merge UVs tool works only on border UVs, so you can't accidentally weld together any stuff which doesn't belong together. Nice touch.

Toast · Sep 2008

The first thing you have to do when switching between the two is to not expect it to work the same way as Max does! Here's a great post from DJ_ on CGTalk, sums up everything beautifully:

I have too done that transition a couple of years ago and based upon that experience and watching other people doing that too I have a few advices for you.

1. Don't do the transition because "everybody else is talking about it". If you don't need to or if you don't see for yourself why you should learn Maya, then don't do it.

3. Maya is NOT Max. This is the hardest part... You are learning a new program, based upon a totally different core of logic and features. The only thing they have in common is that "they do 3D". You will find youself very often (probably 58 times a day) thinking "Maya sux, I can do this much easier in Max" and as long as you have that thougt, you are probably still thinking about it in the wrong way and you still haven't learned how to "think" when using Maya. Don't whine because you can't find "target weld" or because you don't know how to align 2 objects in Maya because as long as you are whining about that stuff, you are not learning how you should do that stuff in Maya (pointer, those 2 examples you use the snap).

learning-maya.com is also a great resource and try out all the basic tutorials there and if you want to get videos Digital-Tutors is very good.

All the best.

woogity · Sep 2008

thats a great quote toast, im currently making the transition in the other direction, and after 4 years of maya im pretty comfortable there, i find myself continueally hitting shift instead of ctrl and keep finding random faces everywhere its a trickey transition and i feel your pain chunkey. I hope you dont get discouraged tho maya is an amazing tool.

Funky Bunnies · Sep 2008

I've heard that said over and over again, but i disagree. I do agree that you shouldn't consider them the same app. and you should recognize differences and see the potential strengths and weaknesses of each setup. But to not learn from your experience in one program seems pretty foolish to me.

It's NOT a completely different application. Polygons are still polygons. Animation is still animation. Why should you not pursue tools that are more efficient for you to accomplish your work? Sure, recognize a lot of problems have alternate solutions than a certain tool, but I've never liked this argument that "It's not the same app so just do it"

To move the pivot of an object to a vertex, cut a similar vertex into another object, then snap to that vertex in order to align objects simply because 'it's a totally different app'
rather than creating/finding a script to align objects faster doesn't make sense when one way is much faster and more intuitive for you.

Chunkey · Sep 2008

Hmmmm that excerpt from DJ_'s post does in a lot of ways ring true- although the fundementals are the same i.e. a vert is a vert, etc, it's how you interact with them which is different- It's almost like knowing one language but then learning another from a neighbouring country- you could probably pick up on the basic diaglogue but lose out on the subtleties and quirks.

I started playing around the PLE version last night and ended up with what looked like a butt plug but the main thing was learning how the tools interact with the mesh- so I'm currently at learning how to say "hello" and "how are you?", next up is "hey beautiful, may I buy you a drink?"

MoP · Sep 2008

To follow that analogy to its logical conclusion:

Chunkey: "Hey beautiful, may I buy you a drink?"
Maya: *slurring speech* "Whaddayalookin'at?!" *falls over*

Chunkey · Sep 2008

fade1 · Sep 2008

i find that switcher from draster is a nice tool to get the basic handling streamlined. even if there's still some things to work on, workflow got much better. watch the videos on their site and you'll see.
and yeah, nex is nice too.

ivars · Sep 2008

Funky Bunnies wrote: »

To move the pivot of an object to a vertex, cut a similar vertex into another object, then snap to that vertex in order to align objects simply because 'it's a totally different app'

Maybe you should try the align tools?

Funky Bunnies · Sep 2008

yeah haha I guess that was a dumb example.
I was more exaggerating about what I thought DJ_ meant when he said to simply use 'snap' for both of his examples. I guess he could have meant snap align though...

But even if that's the case, my point was that you shouldn't just give up on a workflow that you find more efficient simply because it's a different 3d app. Big companies like autodesk aren't the only ones who create tools for their programs.

Tips on making the transition from Max to Maya

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