Mender (Maya clone based on Blender) -possible with 2.8 ?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

Hi. I guess for students, the bad part about the educational license for Maya is that models created in it cannot be used for commercial work.

What if some guys create a branch based on 2.8, that would mymic Maya UI, tools and workflows, but have Blender behind ? Based on current planning, would 2.8 allow for such a deep customisation ?

Mender could be used by people that wish to work in the AAA industry, wanting to learn Maya while in the same time not having their models locked by a non-commercial license. What do you think ?

2

Uhhhhhhhhhh, if you can’t use it for commercial work under an education license, then the most logical thing to do is to learn a different program or pay for theprogram. Blender has a feature where you can use the commands just like Maya. Blender also have the some of the same tools and even better tools than Blender depends on what you are trying to do.

Honestly, using only Industry Standard programs kinda limit the access of what a person can do, but that’s a person to person basis. It’s not the tool that’s important, it’s how you use it and what you create from it.

3

Blender doesn’t look like Maya or work like Maya, all you can have is a few shortcuts the same

Why do students need to make commercial models anyway. If they want to make money from Maya then just pay the dues or learn another application.

4

maya sucks, I’ve worked with it for 9 years, and I tell you, we don’t want to have blender mimmic maya at all, it’s workflow is one of the worse out there, yes some technologies it has implemented are great like alembic which has taken too long to implement on blender, but still blender is better.

5

Anything you create takes hours from your life. You spend time creating these objects, with the scope to be able to work in a team using an industry standard. All the models they build in those years become just a part of their portofolio, not something they could use in a commercial videogame. These models are somehow lost.
Also, there are seasoned pros, that can’t afford to pay the sub anymore, and find it hard to learn the UI of a new software like Blender, because of their habbits.
Blender doesn’t look like Maya or work like Maya, true, but with some work, it could. If Blender 2.8 UI is a lot more customizable than in previous version, then the community could strip off UI from Blender and replace it with shells, menus like Maya etc.
Blender 2.7 series introduced pie menus, which work similar to the ones in Maya.
If Blender 2.8 adds even more configurability of UI, this could happen.

6

Sorry for asking, but just by curiosity.

Is realy the objects or project created in Maya under "educational " licence have any restrictrion then for be used with a commercial professional version ? With the new "educational " licences term ? What happend, it tell you the object have been created on a non commercial version when you copy paste it, or import it ?

It is specific to Maya ? because i have nothing like that with other Autodesk softwares. ( Autocad, Revit, Inventor, etc )…

7

It specifically states the app can not be used for commercial work.

The problem would only arise however if you tried to send a Maya file to a company for them to use. And in most cases that is what they would want. Not an exported file.

But AutoDesk to my knowledge does not own your intellectual property. As long as they can not prove you were hired by a company and used Maya to create work for them, there is really no violation of the agreement.

If you worked at school and had assets you built and then decided to export those later for commercial work, that is another thing. I am not sure they have a way to police that.

But the other side of it is, how many companies will want to use stuff you created already at school?

Probably nearly none. In most cases. So it is a non issue all around really.

Lean Maya use Maya, buy it, get work.

I teach Blender to Maya users all the time. It is not that big of a deal. There are more similarities than not.

And if anyone wanted to make a Mender, go for it. Why not?

A lot of time and work involved. But up to them.

But Blender is already getting more and more use with schools and even students on the side. It is growing. Students I think are aware that they may not get that dream gig. And they want to have an app they can use commercially. So Blender is the go to in this case.

I am seeing this happen with students in my area. A change in the last 2 years even. Students have gone from only knowing about it, to showing up at my studio and already have used it.

A local prominent university with a rep animation teaches a class in it.

Everyone is seeing the writing on the wall here.

Blender does a lot of things well enough to be worth the effort.

8

Its clear, for respect the licence term, that at the moment you use “maya” for a commercial use, you shoud own a commercial licence, but physically, using assets created on a previous education licence dont bring any problem. ( at the moment that the commercial final product is made on a commercial licence or that at this moment you own a commercial licences. ( who could be 2years later after have created the assets ) .

Theres no more watermark ( numeric or print ) on the files, models, object, made on an educational licences. ( as it was by the past. ) .

9

People being lazy to learn blender will always be stuck with maya :smiley:

10

I guess there’s a semantic difference between “… cannot use…” and “… should not use…”. However, less chance of being caught doesn’t make it any more right. Does it ever occur to do the right thing not because you’ll be punished otherwise but because it is the right thing to do?

Probably time to start bringing back dedicated ethics classes in schools…

11

No. It is not a blurry line or any question. It is a violation of the agreement to use Maya ED commercially in any capacity no matter when you use the files or the export results of those files. The question is only a matter of being caught. And if they will try and go after students who use stuff they created while in school for commercial purposes, say theoretically 2 years later as .obj or any other format.

But completely practically speaking, what are the chances of you having use for student projects commercially after the fact?

Pretty much nil so it is not even worth discussing.

12

On the contrary. People who are too close minded or believe in some Blender myth that it can trump Maya in all areas or simply are unfortunate enough not to be able to afford a better solution like Maya for certain things will be stuck with Blender.

There is the true rub.

Some day Blender will be more robust in all areas. But that day has yet to come.

13

I am also a maya user myself - and I know for fact that it is ahead of blender - due to being used in industry a lot. The budget - the features and years of production use are unrivaled.

Hey and I know its hard to get used to something new - to relearn how to walk in other software while you got to a running stage on maya.
I get it- ok?

But telling blender devs outright to make it mimic maya’s interface in order to avoid learning the one blender devs worked on hard to design and implement is kind of close minded and lazy. It’s disrespectful to blender’s developers.

Designing software is kind of like art you know - they pour a part of their individuality and that of the blender’s community into every new feature they implement. The way it is represented must then fit with an already strong and established design that - believe it or not - millions of people have gotten used to and like more than that of Autodesk Maya’s. Blender has it’s own character - and its a very cool one.

Maya is an ancient beast. Autodesk has been very aggressive in feeding it with other applications that they bought from other companies.
As such it has a lot of interface design choices that are kind of forced and attached on top. It’s actually harder to teach someone how to use maya than it is to teach them blender. Because Maya’s interface has a lot of design inconsistencies. It has a lot of features not being obvious. It has a steep learning curve too!

But autodesk can not change their interface - for the same reason that blender devs cant just scrap all of the years of hard work and feedback from this wonderful community. Maya can not be radically changed because the established userbase will not be happy to have relearn everything.

Blender has flaws - but the solution to those flaws is actual thinking - not just copying another product’s flaws. There is a lot of stuff that is done so right in blender and will be lost if blender’s development effort goes into unimaginative cloning of interface design - instead of improving and adding features on top of the current one.

14

Im not right with it, the licence term are clear… this only cover the use in a professional context ( production of the final result) … i can use a edu copy at home in 2011 create assets, reuse them in my professionall work in 2016 with my Maya 2016 commercial licence… the creation is mine, and i have a licence for use Maya as in a comercial way in 2016 …

I work with Autodesk since 1992, in fact i have a lot of master teacher Autodesk diploma … I work mainly on architectures, technical building engineeri and conception ) . ( mainly used Autocad on my professional life ofc now coupled with BIM solution )

With the new orientation of licences made by Autodesk since 2014-2015 … this is simple:

They are made for protect the use of professional licences in an Professional, commercial context… And by Authorize peoples, at home, or at school to acquire freely the softwares … ( its marketing, peoples learn a software and then use or teach this software )

Now i cant use legally a free version at home, for transfer my work from home then use it back at work ( legally ofc )

If i work in a studio for sell my products, i need a commercial version.

At the moment i selll my creation or use them in a professional, enterprise context, i need a commercial licence, this dont mean i cant use object, models or assets i have created before on an edu licences on my commercial projects ( at the moment, that the commercial licence when made at my office or at home is made with a commercial licence ).

its why this “story” was a bit surprise me … because i dont see how they could put a "watermark on your objects " ( so just copy, import them in a new "commercial licence Maya context " ) … before even print or export a file with an educational licence will have watermark, or constraint ( when import the fille, open it on a commercial version, a message will tell you, this “file have been created on an edu versioon” … but its not anymore the case .

15

I didn’t say that the main devs should mymic the Maya UI, but make Blender’s UI customisable to such an extent that users could easily do that. Currently, modding the UI is hard. Mender would be rather an option, created by community. (It could even be a kind of preset, not an entire branch) . The question is if Blender 2.8 will make UI editing easier than before. (I’ve heard something like Blender 101 or configurability project). If the UI would be highly configurable, users could make Blender look like everything they want.

16

As a preset, Mender actually exists. If 2.8 could permit easier UI editing, people could get a closer replica.

mender__maya_for_blender__blender_2_6_only__by_tidalkraken-d5ytxvh.jpg823×970 143 KB

17

I think it is just things that get lost in translation over threads like this. You can’t say all you want to say in a few lines. I get it. No need to banter back and forth. There are 100 different ways to discuss these things.

I absolutely see what you are saying. I was just adding counterpoint. :slight_smile:

18

I am not against it in concept. I think it is cool. More options for interfaces are always good. And Blender is lacking many needed options in my opinion.

19

how is that left click to select working in blender with timeline scrubbing? Timeline view, VSE & NLA Editor? what i remember that worked so horrible I gave up on it.

the naming is off. Mender. Everyone know if you’re gonna make a Maya clone with Blender it should be called Blaya. :smiley:

20

You are practically moving a cursor in the timeline. So its quite logical to have the same behaviour like in the 3d view: Left click cursor, right click data editing (like editing keyframes in the graph editor).

As for the original post:
Can’t comprehend why blender should actually simulate maya, especially without the functionality behind its interface concept (like procedural modeling). Personally I do think maya is a software wich bolted on features without integrating it in a coherent way. (A lot of tools come with their own idea of how the maya interface should act like). Some tools quit on object mode, some leave the selection intact, some don’t, etc…
Comparing both I do have to say, that Blender, as beeing a open software developed by a multitude of users, is more coherent than maya. And I do think one reasons for this is, that it’s UI limits do help actually to keep the the tools cohesive with the UI.

Sure bring on more options to modify the UI ( especially 3d widgets) but don’t fall in the trap that by making blender look and act like maya on the UI level, you gain something out of it. You still have to learn the inner workings of the 3d program, and blenders own UI does represent these as best since its growing with the programmers concept behind it.

In my beginning days of blender I also tried to make blender act like a different 3d program because I thought it was the most efficent way of doing things. Today I count these days as wasted time: By doing so I just put more roadblocks into my path of learning blender, than what I gained out of it: I constantly fought the interface instead of learning it. Especially ignoring all the “fun” parts, where blender was better than my other software at that time. And if your fear is that you unlearn maya… well I can atest to you that after one hour of using it again all those shortcuts / workflow methods will again fall into place, and the more often you switch between the programs you will adapt to the enviroment in a much faster pace.

anyway my 2 cents on this.
chris