Nice list Alan, some other neat features are the non-linear workflow (I see people really struggling in Maya with this) and also the 'shadow' display of rig elements is cool which works with nulls also, this saves you time and makes the scene lighter.
Manny Papamanos Autodesk 3D Graphics Specialist : Softimage | MotionBuilder | Mudbox From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jason S Sent: Monday, January 21, 2013 10:49 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Rigging resources 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
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