Modeling: I use Diamant Tools. The NEX Tools (I don't care what it's
called, it's bloody NEX tools) in 2014 do help a ton in making modeling
a lot more bearable. But Diamant Tools actually makes the experience a
lot less annoying. However nothing is going to give you the
interactivity/speed of XSI modeling workflow imho.
Animating: the actual UI transition itself shouldn't be too hard...
Riggers, however, I feel that's another story. There really isn't a
replacement for ICE in Maya, and you can't really work in a procedural
manner; even with the notion of everything being in a DAG, there is no
concept of operator stack regions like XSI has...the way I am working on
learning it is to start rigging and as you run into problems, try to
find ready-made scripts to solve such roadblocks or script your own
solution in MEL/Python...Additionally, while there's nothing even CLOSE
to what gear/gear_mc has done for us, there is creatureRigs which is
somewhat modular, and advancedSkeleton which is what I use when I'm on a
tight deadline and need a biped rig like, now.
Don't even get me started with nParticles/Dynamics, I find them super
annoying to use, slow, and worst of all: hard to customize behaviour. In
fact I find Nuke's particle system easier to use, which is saying
something. nCloth is alright, best part about it at least it's stable
enough to rely on as long as you're not doing some crazy simulation. But
overall I think it might be difficult for mograph people who are used to
ICE to come over to Maya and deal with all the new limitations on
workflow...hopefully you guys can find an autorigger that you like and
use that to solve most of your problems -_-"
HOWEVER: that being said I think there are some neat things in Maya that
people who are already very fluent in Python/C++ will find useful. I've
been watching CGCircuit Chad Vernon's tutorials on working with the Maya
API, and it's very helpful in understanding how to work with the API.
http://www.chadvernon.com/blog/resources/maya-api-programming/the-maya-dependency-graph/
is an example of one of his tutorials. While I started learning Python
in Maya first and only recently finally started learning XSI's API and
ICE to make my rigs more awesome (thanks Jeremie Passerin and Adam Sale
for your amazing tutorials!), I think actually overall ICE is easy to
understand, but working with the Softimage API is not as easy as in Maya.
^ My honest opinion, obviously I am a junior and not as experienced as a
real TD, so take my words with a grain of salt...just wanted to pipe in
if anyone needs help from basic XSI > Maya transition or other way
round, always willing to learn and share workflow tips! :D
Yours sincerely,
Siew Yi Liang
On 2/27/2014 2:21 PM, Tim Crowson wrote:
Blargh!
On 2/27/2014 3:53 PM, Eric Thivierge wrote:
Yes but not 100% there.
On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:49:25 PM, Tim Crowson wrote:
Does Maya have anything like Soft's Component Tweak Tool with all its
crazy awesomeness? I'll use anything that offers something like
that :-D
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