Issues for max to maya users
 

Hello,

I'm a former 3D Studio Max user and I have been working in Maya for 2 months now.
I saved some questions during my learning experience in Maya to add them in this topic.
So others can learn from it.

First of all I love Maya. But sometimes I ran in some frustrating problems :help:

Problem 01 -> The bridge tool
When I select two edges in Maya and bridge between them (Lets say a linear bridge) Why oh why
Maya does strange things with the bridged edges when you smooth the mesh? (using numeric 3 button)
(I already tried welding the vertices, but without success!)

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/...psa85edaea.jpg
pic:01 Maya bridge problem in smooth: Red lines indicate bridged edges!


Problem 02 -> The manipulation handlers
I noticed strange behavior using the rotate and scale tool in Maya. When I make a selection in Max
and set the manipulator to local, the manipulator aligns himself to the selection using the normal and
centers automatically to the selection.
In Maya this behavior is not occurring? (even with the manipulator set to local in Maya)

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/...ps91c90182.jpg
pic:02 Manipulation behavior in Max

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/...psbf9cf226.jpg
pic:03 Max manipulator alignment options

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/...psd9cc95a4.jpg
pic:04 Manipulation behavior in Maya

I think it has something to do with the F8 button and the following buttons in the pictures below.
But I don't quite understand this principle. Can someone help me to figure this out?

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/...ps53d623ab.jpg
pic:05 Maya Not pressed F8

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3deb4d8d.jpg
pic:06 Maya pressed F8


Problem 03 -> Rotate tool
Why can't you align the Maya rotate tool to an edge in the same way the translate and scale tool does?

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/...ps8a22bcbc.jpg
pic:07 Maya rotate manipulation options



If you have/had other problems concerning Max to Maya.
Please, feel free to share!


Thanks

Bert

Problem 1 - when you bridge it does not merge the edges on the sides. Go to the polygon display options and turn on display border edges and make them thicker and you will see you have open edges after the bridge. A better way to do this in Maya, especially for just filling in one missing polygon is to use the Fill Hole command.

Problem 2. Maya axis orientation does not work anything like Max. If you want to change the orientation to normal to the selection goto the tools tab and and you will get several options including normal to selection.

Problem 3. I do not have access to Maya atm so I cannot recall if there is an option in the tools tab for scale to align to edge. You may have to use the parenting trick. You align a cube to the orientation you want and then parent your object to that cube and then reset the transforms on the object. It's local axis will now be aligned to the cube. You can unparent the object and delete the cube.

Thanks ctbram
I have some questions on your answers

Problem 1 - What's the purpose of the bridge tool if it doesn't weld the edges?

Problem 2 - Here my problem is the position of the rotation tool. Not so much the alignment.
If I make a selection I want the rotation tool to position himself in the
center (average) of the selection. At the moment my rotation tool in Maya
always seems to use the pivot position of the object.

Problem 3 - Oh my, aren't there any scripts that allow you to align the rotation tool
on a selected edge/face or vertex? It seems so devious!


Thanks for taking the time to come up with answers for my questions.

1. First of all you are going to be really frustrated if you try to make 1-to-1 comparisons to the way max does things and the way maya does. You just have to try to adapt and try to be flexible or you are going to be very unhappy.

Technically maya's bridge does merge the edges that you bridge between. It just does not weld the edges that happen to be on the ends. See the screen shot below.

Maya's bridge offers some options that Max's does not. For instance you can bridge following a curve (see the Bridge tool options).

To fill a hole in a mesh Fill Hole is a better choice in Maya. Another option is Append to Polygon. there are almost always several ways to accomplish the same task. You just have to adjust to Maya's workflow and not try to force it to be Max.

2. reset the tool because it should put the manipulator at the center of the selection (see screen shot below)

3. There might be a script. You can create a script or plugin to do just about anything in Maya. There are lots of sites on the web to find maya scripts a good one to start with is Creative Crash (http://www.creativecrash.com/).

Ok, thanks ctbram.
I will adapt :)

It's just strange to me that 3D terms used by the same company, do very different things. Par example: bridge

Thanks for the insight
Happy Holidays,

Bert

Yeah I had several guys complain to me about Maya and max differences when they came from Max backgrounds. You really cant compare the two in the toolset.

Dont forget Max was developed originally by someone else prior to Autodesk so terminology will be a little different

Jay

I am trying to learn max also bec of my work. Having many many problems. This thread is excellent and i will post questions under here to keep this alive.
But, i think it should be a different main forum tittle under the modeling section called ( Max to Maya, Maya to Max or something ) . So that we can see each max to maya or maya to max problem tittles by just scrolling a instead of checking the single thread pages to see what is written. It would provide some population also. What do you think? Is it a bad idea?

Fine for me :happy:

We are looking into putting it under the technical section, so bear with us, once its done I'll post a link

Jay

Any one got a bot remover:).................dave

In the future, please report the post so that we can clean it up quickly :)

In future I think I will leave it up to you guys to find and deal with them:)

I have no idea how you guys can tell if a message is from a bot.

Most of the time Rick they will say some thing that does not relate to the thread, I do not understand the mentality behind them I think I never will (hope I never do).........LOL........dave

It mainly comes down to their username, email address, and IP; but this is besides the point. Back on topic people! :happy: