Thinking about changing to Maya
 

Hey guys!

As you can see, I'm new to the forum, and just as new to Maya!

I've been working in Cinema4D for the last year (don't laugh, it's the package that my college uses!), and to be honest, I'm getting frustrated with the lack of certain features that should be derigour by now, like a spinpoly function, for example. That, and the fact that the uni I'm heading too next year use Maya, has convinced me to broaden my horizons.

Two pronged post, one to say hiya to the forum, and the other to quesry whether or not my knowledge of Cinema will transfer easily, or am I going to have to learn a lot of the Maya fundemantals? I'm downloading the dog tutorial as I type, and I should have a copy of the excellent looking Game Character Development with Maya by Anthony Ward winging it's way to me by tomorrow. Will these two resources provide m with a good spring board? A friend of mine is lucky enough to have a very indulgent partner who hes bought him a book bundle from Alias, so I may be able to nick those from him for a couple of weeks...

Thanks for the time, and kudos on a very professional and esily navigated website! I use the Cinema Cafe a lot (c4dcafe.com), and it's nice to find another site that is so well organised! Oh, and if you chat to anybody from the Cafe, please don't tell them that I've turned to the darkside... ;)

Don't know Cinema that well.. so can't say how the transition will go but the modelling tools from maya are well how to put this nicely.. CRAP :p

You will need some scripts to make it all workable.. like MJ Poly Tools, Rage Merge Faces, Spin Faces to get some proper tools.. the strong point of maya is that it is easy to extend with these mel scripts though :bow:

Heh, damn, confused already! As far as I can see it, MEL scripts are essentially plugins built using the native Maya language?

Strange, I thought Maya had one of the most powerful toolsets as standard? Oh, well, beats learning Max!

I would recommend Cinema to anyone new to 3D, it's interface is untuitive, well laid out and easily customisable. To be honest, I've invested time and money in Cinema, so it seems a shame that it's one of the packages that has yet to be used for serious film and game work. Unlike Maya, to get a copy, even for learning (none of this PLE goodness!), you have to pay. My educational license set me back about £450 for Studio 9.1, and then they release a dedicated hair module! Gits!

Is Maya hair fast? I've used Joe Alteres Shave and a Haircut for Cinema, but my system specs aren't the best in the world (xp2600+, 1gig DDR 3100 RAM under WinXP Pro SPII), so Cinema really chugs under the strain.

Oh well, I'm sure once I worked through the tut's I'm downloading from here I'll have a better idea what I'm dealing with! At least I've got the hard part of the 3D theory (poly flow, how B-Splines work, etc) out of the way. To be perfectly honest, the thing I'm really looking forward to is borrowing one of my mates tutprial DVDS on patch NURBS modelling! Perfect poly-flow, here I come! Cinema has a plugin equivelant, but damned if I could ever get the thing working well enough for organic modelling!

In case you hadn't realised it yet, I could tlak for England! If I start waffling, just tell me to shut the hell up, eh!

hey welcome to the forums pal!
i have to say if ure already into 3d modeling etc i turnig to maya well help u no end. the interface is very easy to get to grips with couple of months and ull be fine i think.
just ask in these forums any questions u have u get lots of help in here :) i started using maya about 4 months ago and have got to grips with the stuff pretty easy :) so good luck and i look forward to seeing ure work.:beer:

Ritchie the Brit

Welcome dude. As for your transition from C4D I dont think it will be all bad as from what Ive seen of it its almost very Maya on the Mac, and obviously the terms and phrases are goingto differ here and there.

As for Maya being crap modelling tool wise, thats probably a little harsh for something so good, Ive been using Maya for a long time now since '99 and I can tell you its anything but crap, its improved in alot of areas and can still be improved in others. MJpolytools is a must as with spinfaces, although saying that MJPs are now included in Maya 7. (pixelsoul: are you a bitter and twisted Lighwave user LOL?)

As for speed, well like all other software its going to vary on scene size and all the other stuff thats going on at the time. Shave and Haircut is very good for Maya I have tried it, fur is good but Hair is better, but again all will come down to knowledge etc of how to handle such things along with a powerful pc/mac, but as Magicsy has said questions can be asked if you are completely stuck or cant find it in the help and there are plenty of good people about who Im sure will answer...


Good luck

Jay

Heh, okay, here's a typical newb question, then...

I was working through the dog tutorial, and I made a mistake on the rotation of a plane (instead of grabbing one of the rotate lines, I rotated the plane freely), and instinct drove me to press Ctrl+Z... and nothing happened! I checked the EDIT menu, and the UNDO shortcut is exactly as I thought, so why the hell didn't it work?!

Maya has a very similair interface, at first glance, but the materials manager, what the hell is going on there?! And the object manager? Arrrrgh! :headbang:

I think it seems as though every package has its good and bad points, and for me, it seems as though Maya is going to take a lot of digging around until I get the interface setup the way I like. Anyone who hasn't tried it yet, and is new to 3D, could do a lot worse than Cinema as an introduction. It's so uncluttered that it makes grasping the simple concepts a lot easier.

Thats bizarre!! try just z instead.

Also materials, easy!! object manager Hmmm? that will be the Outliner, couldnt be any easier.

Jay

Lol, I didn't say it wasn't easy, just that I don't quite 'get' it yet! Damn, I hate learning new packages!

I had this problem when I saw the light and went from FrontPage to DMX! ;) Damn, Frontpage... now that WAS crap!

Must admit, I'm seriously thinking about this little device...


http://www.worldtechdevices.com/maya.html

It would make using shortcuts a lot easier for a beginner!

Just outta curiousity, since this is in the loung, is anybody here an Urban Dead player?!

u dont have caps lock on do you, ctrl and Z dont work with caps on.

Yup, I think thats what happened! Went back last night and it seemed to work fine! I love the z shortcut working as redo, alot easier than ctrl+y!

Are there any goods links for a cribsheet on the toolset? I was looking for the likes of selection tools like loop secet and edge select?! I'm going to google it when I get a chance, I seem to have built up long list of Maya links when I was looking for a body modelling tutorial that I could use with Cinema4D...

heres a link to a thread on this site. a few good pointers and secrets in here. :)

http://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...threadid=15467

9 page thread.

:p Haha no lol.. maya is great that it is so wide an extendable.. but when i see a stand alone (cheap) modeller like silo. And see all the goodness it can be frustrating modelling in maya :bandit: I hope one bright and shiny day they will add edge, vertice, polygon highlighting... :beer:

I love the changing of viewports and imageplanes though they definitly got that one right :bow:

And fix the frick'n booleans.

Remember its all about the nodes in Maya.

Just watched the making of Matrix Revolution...omg, what the pipeline!

You can well see that all the animation was done in Maya.

The transition to Maya shouldnt be hard...you can use basic CG language in all 3D packages.

Well, I bought my mates copy of the Digital Tutors Introducion to Maya from him, and all I can say is WOW!

Any newbies reading this who can't fathom out the interface, get this set! The first disk is almost purely introucing the UI, and it makes so much sense!

I still think Maya is a little quirky compared to Cinema, but now at least I know what I'm looking at!

Digital Tutors - Introduction to Maya