Also, although it might be a good thing for a transitionning rigger to
to know the "pluginless" basics,
but still don't forget Gear!
http://gear.jeremiepasserin.com/videos.html
On 21/01/2013 9:58 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote:
also:
- get the ribbon spine out of your head -- there are far better ways
to do a spine in Soft.
- you need not have UVs to save your weighting natively. :)
- IK comes "free" with any bonechain, you don't need to create an IK
handle.
- there are no "disconnected nodes" floating in your scene, except
possibly those in ICE or the rendertree. For example if you have
something constrained to another, and delete the other, your
constraint ops will disappear into the cosmos and not linger in your
scene.
- always use "2D" bone chains in Soft. the 3D one is for very rare cases.
- Maya's "history" concept = Softimage's "operator stack"
- Maya's "UV sets" = Softimage's "texture projections" and Maya's "UV
projection" = Soft's "texture subprojections"
- In Maya you have one history stack, in Softimage you do also BUT
it's split to several sections, Modeling, Shape Modeling, Animation,
Secondary Shape Animation and sometimes Simulation and
Post-Simulation. This lets you do witchcraft like have a finished rig
and modify your topology while having UVs, shapes, materials,
clusters, weight (influence) maps, etc. cleanly adjust to it
automagically. This feature will save your life.
- "Freeze" button will make all your operators permanent, and ruin
your rig. "Freeze M(odeling)" will only freeze below the Modeling
marker. As I recall, it's quite tricky in Maya to do the equivalent of
a freezing of the topology modifiers you may have applied after the
rig was done.
- Freeze Translation will reset your pivot to the parent's, or if no
parent, the world center. In Maya's equivalent it keeps the pivot in
place. To keep it in place, use Set Neutral Translation instead.
- You can't add more bones to an existing bonechain, or remove bones,
without having to recreate it completely. (Annoying, I know.) You can
always chain some chains together of course.
- Be aware that Neutral Pose is not the same as putting the object as
a child of a parent in the same transformation. For example if you
rotate a child and neutralposed, when you have animated it translating
around and expect to adjust the position curves, for example posY, to
actually go UP in the zeroed (neutralposed) orientation of your child,
it won't, it will always be relative to the parent's transform
regardless of what the neutral pose says. Also, FYI, neutralposes can
be undone (Transform->Remove Neutral Pose).
- ICE is awesome for custom deformers and many, many things.
That's all for now.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 4:51 AM, Michal Doniec <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I've trained many people back and forth, doesn't take long if a
person is open minded. Most people do't want to go back to Maya
after a while too :)
Main differences to point out:
- Softimage joints have no orientation in Maya sense
- anything can be enveloped
- pose deformers are built in
- FK chains are usually built from nulls
- explain how referencing and models work
- show them synoptic and animation mixer (export/import
animation/pose)
Other than that (and probably a few other things I forgot), it's
the same as in maya. Personally I tend to go back and forth and
most techniques apply to both packages.
On 21 January 2013 09:30, Enrique Caballero
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
I recently trained someone during their transition. And
basically, there are no useful tutorials that I could find.
The thing is though, once she gets her head around some of
the simple differences between Maya and Soft, it shouldn't be
that painful of a transition.
This is the path that I took recently.
The first mistake she will make is that she will start
enveloping everything to bones.
So let her know that we usually only use Bones if we need IK
and introduce her to Nulls and how to use the neutral pose for
rigging etc.
Then she will need to learn the curve deform and what happens
when you deform a curve with another curve.
A quick explanation about quaternions will be very helpful
And then the Pose constraint, and how it works with constraint
compensation.
But if you want her to be enthusiastic about the process.
Start with the strengths, show her ICE and the power that is
at her disposal, and how easy it is to link parameters with
expressions. Once she gets motivated by that stuff the rest
should go fairly easily.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 4:24 PM, Nick Angus <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Thanks Brad!, I need some selling points…
*From:* [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
[mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>] *On
Behalf Of *Bradley Gabe
*Sent:* Monday, 21 January 2013 6:11 PM
*To:* [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: Rigging resources
Funny, I had the opposite experience not long ago when I
convinced a Maya rigger who was transitioning into Soft
that he could build his hierarchy branches based on
whatever made the most sense as opposed to building them
around all or nothing visibility or branch selection. He
found it quite liberating.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 1:48 AM, Chris Gardner
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
i had an otherwise very chilled and genteel friend of mine
nearly hurl a chair through the wall because she couldn't
understand why soft didn't *just work like maya*. scary,
yet amusing.
an open mind is essential if you're transitioning software
packages...
cheers,
chrisg
On 21 January 2013 17:30, Sandy Sutherland
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
BUT it is likely to be a different method and if they get
stuck in the 'I would do it THIS way in Maya' rut, then
they start to blame and hate the Software
--
----------
Michal
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mdoniec
