Hi Nicolas:
I'm just a student but I'll try to tackle these set of questions a
little more in-depth...
- Animation mixer: equivalent in Maya? move on the timeline a clip,
stretch a clip, mix the clips together? achievable in Maya?
Yes, it's called the Trax editor. However it requires you make your rigs
into character sets and those modified attrs are stored as clips, which
may/may not work depending on the rig setup you have. I personally
prefer XSI's actions/clips and the Mixer UI in this regard hands down,
but it's not impossible to do in Maya. Just might not be as simple as
you're used to...Most of the Trax UI is very similar to the Mixer in
XSI, though, so there's that. :)
- - Modeling: which tools in Softimage are NOT available in Maya? I
usually work A LOT with proportional modeling and adding edge looping (
both features shown in the new Maya videos ), bridge poligons, shrink
wrapping, smooth deform with weightmap, and so on...
Maya suffers from not having a proper tool for sliding components along
meshes while preserving volume until 2014 when NEX tools are finally in
it by default. I still use Diamant Tools (because I don't like the slow
interaction in NEX), but as of right now I feel XSI is still stronger
for modeling simply because of the non-destructive/procedural nature and
the way the UI supports really fast interaction. Maya has some cool
tools here and there (and combined with Diamant Tools, I feel like I'm
working in Mudbox) but overall I think while XSI is faster, you
shouldn't have any problems here.
- Corrective shapes: usually I work with the standard shape manager,
but the Paul Smith tutorial on corrective shape using ICE has become my
standard...and I read that shapes in Maya are a bit a pain in the ass...
There is no way to handle pose-space deformation OOTB in Maya,
unfortunately. However, I use Daniel S. Lima's corrective blendshape
manager, and as mentioned before there's the Rabbit Shapes plugin for
this specific purpose. You can make your own poseReaders/angleReaders as
well in Maya, but usually I just use the Michael Comet tools. And yes,
blendshapes are not as straightforward to work with in Maya, but I would
say that XSI has some quirks of its own in this regard as well...though
not as much as Maya. :P
- Epic released UE4 and with it there a pretty good rigging system which
will replace Species, but what I'll miss will be Facerobot and Gear for
facial rigging. What I would like to know is if I can build a facial rig
in Maya which coiould be reused for multiple characters. Previously I
used Gear and GATOR to quickly transfer the facial rig and the tweak
everything afterward, I wonder if this is possible in Maya...
I would say it depends. Of course you could make your own python modular
facial rig or use something like advancedSkeleton to handle this sort of
stuff, but for the most part the answer I would say is no, unless you're
doing a REALLY generic facial rig based off volume enveloping or
something similar. I've seen some really cool stuff in ICE where rigs
are done that way and weightmaps control the falloff of envelopes and
such...not as straightforward to achieve in Maya (there is no concept of
user-definable weightmaps being able to be connected to other attributes
willy-nilly via the GUI), and in some cases impossible afaik. The
closest thing to GEAR that I've found (modular autorigging) is
creatureRigs.
As far as GATOR goes, there is Transfer Attributes that will cover some
of GATOR's more important functions (UVs, skinClusters etc.), but it's
not perfect...
- Simple python scripts: as said I always hated scripting, but I was
quite surprised when I just did something within Softimage, then open
the script editor, copy all the content, make minor changes and then
save that as a script to use for other projects...something "artist
friendly python way to script" is available in Maya?
Personally I find Maya's API a lot less intimidating than XSI's, as far
as Python is concerned. If you've never done scripting before, you
should have less trouble learning Python with Maya than with (I did :P )
XSI imho due to a few hoops you have to jump through in XSI. Plus the
fact that XSI has its scripting name/actual name distinction is a little
annoying, and that the Maya docs are (not surprisingly, since their team
is probably bigger) more comprehensive and detailed with more examples.
Bad things, though, is that the more you deal with scripting in Maya,
the more you'll understand why the question of whether to learn
MEL/Python becomes a bit convoluted...there's straight-up MEL,
maya.cmds, pyMEL (two flavours O__o ), OpenMaya etc...but PyMEL is a
good place to start if you're completely new to scripting in general.
Yours sincerely,
Siew Yi Liang
On 3/20/2014 3:05 AM, Nicolas Esposito wrote:
I was tempted to buy Jeremie Passerin videos from cmiVFX and if I
remember correctly I watched the tutorials by Raffaele...but to be
honest I always hated coding...I know its always better to be able to
script, but I really hate it
What I want to do right now is to check if I'm able to "translate" my
workflow from Softimage to Maya without too much effort, means that if
Maya out of the box satisfy my needs I'll be happy enough....
Let me ask you guys a couple of focused questions related to Maya:
- Animation mixer: equivalent in Maya? move on the timeline a clip,
stretch a clip, mix the clips together? achievable in Maya?
- Modeling: which tools in Softimage are NOT available in Maya? I
usually work A LOT with proportional modeling and adding edge looping
( both features shown in the new Maya videos ), bridge poligons,
shrink wrapping, smooth deform with weightmap, and so on...
- Corrective shapes: usually I work with the standard shape manager,
but the Paul Smith tutorial on corrective shape using ICE has become
my standard...and I read that shapes in Maya are a bit a pain in the
ass...
- Epic released UE4 and with it there a pretty good rigging system
which will replace Species, but what I'll miss will be Facerobot and
Gear for facial rigging. What I would like to know is if I can build a
facial rig in Maya which could be reused for multiple characters.
Previously I used Gear and GATOR to quickly transfer the facial rig
and the tweak everything afterward, I wonder if this is possible in
Maya...
- Simple python scripts: as said I always hated scripting, but I was
quite surprised when I just did something within Softimage, then open
the script editor, copy all the content, make minor changes and then
save that as a script to use for other projects...something "artist
friendly python way to script" is available in Maya?
- Mel and Python...well...which one to use/learn?
Sorry for the long post
Cheers
Nicolas
2014-03-20 10:27 GMT+01:00 Oscar Juarez <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>:
Yes, scripting will make your life much easier in general. Even
just a little bit here and there, and also can vouch for Raff's
videos, they are great.
On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 10:23 AM, Cristobal Infante
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Learn how to script! never a bad skill to have. Get raffaels
python tutorials from cgsociety...
On Thursday, 20 March 2014, Nicolas Esposito <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I want to have a positive attitude regarding the switch to
Maya, but watching some videotutorials on modeling,
rigging, texturing, and so on, and reading what you guys
are saying I'm kinda scared...
Because what you're saying is that Maya out of the box is
kind of crappy if you don't script what you want...and
thats the bad part, I don't know sh*t about scripting, so
my only option is to use it as it is...and then buy
plugins...
It's Max all over again :(
2014-03-20 10:09 GMT+01:00 Mirko Jankovic
<[email protected]>:
Maya seems to be more and more do-it yourself kit..
it's price should reflect that as well....
Buy starter kit - only Maya UI, you script everything else
grade 1 kit - you have modeling plugins! etc...
On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:45 AM, denis-jose francois
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi All
So here's another ancient lurker suddenly rising
from the depths. It's been a while...
Alastair, it's definitely not you! For the last 3
years I have mostly worked in non XSI pipelines.
They include Modo, Houdini and more often than not
- Maya. Every now and then I get to work in XSI
again... but sadly this is less and less.
I had no trouble switching to Modo. I picked up
Houdini very very quickly. But Maya... its been 2
years and I am simply uncomfortable. I'm
definitely not an idiot (I tell myself this all
the time) and I've been working in CG since 1995.
Interestingly, even though I started with soft3D
back in the early days I very quickly progressed
to AW Power Animator. So I'm no stranger to 'the
other side'. Yet some how very simple things in
Maya allude me! And it's not helped by the
shockingly poor documentation either.
Last summer I worked for a short stint at Sky.
First time back on XSI (and Arnold) in a couple of
years. It was a really hard project, yet XSI made
it feel like I was on holiday compared to what I'd
been doing before that!
I mostly work in pipeline these days and it amazes
me how much work we have to do bring functionality
to Maya which is already there in XSI and other
packages. Of course, the fact that we *can* bring
this functionality to Maya is one of it's
strengths, but what's the point of spending loads
of money on something that you can't really use
without further modification? If you are a small
studio or a single user it just doesn't make sense.
I shall now return to the murky depths again...
Denis-Jose Francois
*
Denis-Jose François
Known to some as /@Hairytech/
Known to others as /+Denis-Jose/
Occasionally referred to as /Simon/
Always /*The Evil Hood*/
------------------------------------
https://soundcloud.com/infiniversemedia
On 19 March 2014 09:32, Alastair Hearsum
<[email protected]> wrote:
Folks
Here is a confession. I've never used Maya!
Not really. I've had a little poke every now
and again but no more than make a sphere and
spin round it.
Now, the lack of Maya knowledge may diminish
the value of my comments in some eyes but I
think that , on the contrary, it puts me in
quite a good position to appraise the software
at a certain level. Here is an example of the
trouble I'm having that may bring a smile to
people's faces. But first just a couple of
more sentences before I reveal my difficulty.
I like to bill myself as the sensitive
artist/animator who is technically all fingers
and thumbs, like the woman by the side of her
broken down car waiting on a big strong man to
help her out. The truth is that its not true.
I do have a degree in Fine Art but I also
studied maths and physics at university and
programmed extensively in Lisp in my first
job. So I'm not stupid BUT:
*I'm on my third night trying to adjust the
resolution of a sphere after I have applied
n-cloth to it!*
Isn't that incredible? Its one example
plucked from many experienced by people I work
with who can and have used Maya. Its
symptomatic of the all encompassing interface
workflow issues that Maya has that I think are
really fundamenta
