AM Rigging vs Maya Rigging
 

As some people on the list might already know I come from an Animation Master Background, I have spent the last two years using the program to produce characters and learning to rig them.

I like AM because of it's (once learnt) simplicity and ease of character animation. I have dabled with Maya and it seems more complicated.

What I would like to know is how easy is it to rigg in Maya compared to AM, is there anyone out there who can tell me without me ploughing through shed loads of tutorials?

AM also has a neat feature called smartskining it is like paint weights in Maya how do these compare?

My main reason for asking is that AM isn't that stable and it's not a mainstream program like Maya and I love the thought of working on OSX with Maya 4.5 on the Mac.

Anyone out there?

it like anything gazz me lad..... once you rig a few times in maya, you will never go back.. just a case of sticking with it and going through the frustrations of things screwing up.. :)

kal is very good at rigging, maybe he can give some good tips

I put together a little video which goes through rigging a head (not in great detail.. just to show how some of the tools work and the workflow). Also I had just woken up when i did it so i make no promises about the quality of content ;) should give you an idea of how it compares to AM..
its about 7 minutes / 7mb - I'm uploading it right now and kevin is going to post the link to it once its done...

and heres the video which didnt show up in media player at the end :rolleyes:
http://www.visualmuffins.1hwy.com/yawn2.avi (1.4mb)

RIGHT ON!
 

Gee Fanks Man... I suppose I'll have to subscribe to the VIP bit now to see it!

gazz check your private message... movie link sent :)

Kevin could you please send me the video link.:)

MKess007 - when I get home tonight I will see if I havn`t deleted it... it was just a set up to help gazza out and we didnt want it to go out on public showing..

I will pm you tonight mate

rigging in A:M v Maya
 

It's a hard call. A:M has far more rigging tools (constraints) available to it than ANY other package out there. This wealth of constraints really makes it fast to rig up some quite complex and easy to use rigs.

I've been using maya for about a year now and even though it's powerful I don't think it matches A:M's rigging out of the box. If you're a programmer and can mel script away you MAY be able to match A:M's rigs.

If not, you can still get VERY good rigs out of maya, they are just not as... clean... as the A:M rigs.

As far as smart skin... no. maya has no such thing. The paint weights are very good, but I would KEEEL for smart skinning in maya :)

If you move to Maya from A:M and you give it time you won't be dissapointed. You may be confused at first, but give it a chance... build a model, rig it, and animate it... Then you'll get the feel for it.

All the best...

Rob Starr
http://10secondclub.org

oops
 

I meant... If you move from AM to MAYA, not the other way round :(

:)

At last... someone has answer my plea! Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!

Well this is insightful. I always thought AM was great because of its constraints, workflow and smartskinning - it is a character animator's delight... until it crashes and crashes and buggers things up!!!

Recently, I have had to rebuild my PC because of this. AM is temperamental and too many drivers on my system have upset it. It is Win98SE so that don't help either and I cannot get Win2K to load it keeps halting - some hardware problem no doubt.

Honestly the amount of time spent fixing AM probs, for all its great features, I would probaly be ahead if I had switched to Maya with less technical hitches!

I do love the idea of Maya 4.5 on OSX - dead sexy!! I am going to preview it tomorrow night at Escape Studios.

tis true
 

You'll find yourself more productive in maya after time... if only for the lack of crashing....

I LOVE A:M to death, it's workflow is the best there is (along with project:messiah) but it's not stable enough and maya is like a rock (well, as much as a complex 3d app can be i guess)...

I think you'll enjoy maya, but its a personal thing.. some hate it, some love it....

just give it time, and don't give up on A:M altogether... I still make my lores mesh in A:M, do an OBJ export into maya then continue from there....

MKess007 - check your private message box :)

begging bowl
 

hey kevin,
u think you could drop a penny ahem...that link into my bowl as well ;)
b