First off all - I want to say that this thread will
not be another Blender VS Maya thread - and I don’t want that!
I’m a Die-hard Blender user as most of you know, and probably will
always remain so, but sometimes you got to use other applications
when your employer demands that you do, and here’s where my
questions about workflow and the transaction from Blender to Maya
to you…
I’ve been hired by a huge well known company to do 3d for them
as a part of a big team of 3d artists. How could I refuse?
I’m looking forward to it as a kid to christmas, but Maya is not Blender
so I hope that there are more of you Maya users in here that use
Blender at home (or at work if they allow that) that could give away
some real life-saver tips on how I could survive the first days.
On a short leash…
I got hired friday, and my first day at work starts on Monday,
I’ve been told that I get Maya training and it wasn’t an issue since
they only looked at my artwork for qualifications - not the application I use.
Yes…thats 2 days to surface Maya Learning Edition before I get thrown
to the hounds. Help… :eek:
Q:1
So I turn to you - my fellow Blenderhead friends - hoping that you
have some real good “pointers” that I should get on my fingers before
I start?
Yesterday I spent 10 hours plugging the Maya basics videos and learning
how to move around the viewports easily, and do some basic editing
and extruding of polygon objects.
Unknown grounds…
One thing that struck me thought using Maya is a feverish search
for stuff I know from Blender. One of the things I’m totally dependent on
is the “extrude” command. Maya have such a command…but it’s not
assigned to any shortkeys (according to the manual) so I have to
enter the SPACE-key menu (or top menu) and yet another sub menu
(Edit polygons) menu just to extrude a face.
The smart thing was that I could in YET another submenu select the number of
extrusions I want to do in one go…but that one has to be reset for the next
extrusion again (very cumbersome imho.)
But with Blender we do these things in ONE go…and even just by drawing
with the mouse, and everything is controllable on the go without all these
time-consuming menues.
Q:2
Is Maya really that clumsy or is it just me with “newbie woes”? Tips here
for a smarter workflow in Maya - desperately wanted.
Another thing that almost made me pull hairs out where the inherent
lack of a subdivision modifier (I guess that comes to play under the
subdivision modeling mode later on?)
I remember from the old “3dstudio Max days” before Blender that modifiers
where dependent on topology and if you had various material coordinates
as a modifier or anything that would influence the editable mesh…could
entirely destroy the mesh integrity …
…this also seem to hold true for Maya. Maya seem to have
a sort of history-based topology where you can go back to whatever
action you “applied” to the object or object groups you’re currently working
with. This seem very advantageous right? Well… as soon as I tried changing
my mind about the numbers of extrusion, even with the slightest change
like…moving or rotating the frontmost face…would “mess up” the whole
topology. Pretty much like I remember from the 3dstudio max days…
Q:3
What’s the genuine advantage about history topology based mesh editing
if you rarely can go back and change anything anyway? Hints and good
tricks (or references to real good tutorials) would be nice here.
Butterflies in my stomach:
I hope you guys will help me out here, I’m still stuck to Blender
but I need a lot of good helpful tips from you guys to make the
transition smoother.
thanks in advance.