Justin, how did you adjust the scale of the soft select interactively like that? Haven't figured out how to do that in Max yet, does it work in viewport as well when you are modeling?
I just scroll the soft selection falloff value. It's a good idea to switch from XY coordinates to UV, otherwise you need massive numbers (hold ctrl and scroll for that). You don't see the UV soft selection on the model in the viewport but if you're talking about using soft selection while modeling, yes it shows up.
I just scroll the soft selection falloff value. It's a good idea to switch from XY coordinates to UV, otherwise you need massive numbers (hold ctrl and scroll for that). You don't see the UV soft selection on the model in the viewport but if you're talking about using soft selection while modeling, yes it shows up.
Ah, yeah. Currently I just adjust the value manually. It looked like you were doing it on the fly though with your mouse pointer or something, not to worry! Thank you man
all of these features have been in since Max 2009, maybe even Max 8. 8 was the earliest I put any serious work into, I did some max stuff in 2002 but I was a noob and barely remember it.
I've seen a uv select paint tool in later versions, would it be possible to use that as a basis for a smudge brush script?
all that is possible yes, but it isnt faster or more intuitive in Max.
in maya it is very fast to switch between move, rotate, scale, all while changing temp pivot on the fly for any of that and do fast soft selection.
changing temp pivot seems so slow in Max, you have to click exactly on the current pivot and then move it. in Maya you can do it faster holding down "d" key and middle click drag from anywhere.
it is all these little things that add up to such slow UI in Max.
also no smudge brush for Max which is a big drawback (Maya has had it for a long long time) , but for the rest of the things that you do have are they all that easy straight out of the box without any additional max script ?
what i am doing in maya is without any scripts or customization at all.
i cant seem to get soft selection work like on the fly, like select some UVs, toggle on soft "b" key with one key and change radius on the fly holding down "b" and middle click drag (lot faster than going to the number scroll input thingy in Max)
*edit* nvm, i just read your latest post so you are in fact scrolling through that small arrows next to the soft selection toggle button.
is there a way to toggle soft selection in the UV editor with one hotkey and be able to change radius easily like Maya ? in the customize menu there seems to be only soft selection (Poly) and nothing for soft selection UV.
yes, those are all out of the box, I add a lot of scripts because - why avoid scripts??? I've been unwrapping longer than I've been modeling, since maybe '95 or '96 so I find it dead easy. I rarely ever use soft selection.
Since I've moved more towards a 3D Painting workflow I have less of a need to really worry about UVs that much although I still tend to group materials togother and make sure everything is packed and lined up so it makes sense in photoshop. This is all on 1500 tris and under characters with 512x512 textures. I would think working in 4k textures with mostly baked workflow would make UV's even easier, just make sure there's minimal distortion and efficient packing.
yes, those are all out of the box, I add a lot of scripts because - why avoid scripts??? I've been unwrapping longer than I've been modeling, since maybe '95 or '96 so I find it dead easy. I rarely ever use soft selection.
Since I've moved more towards a 3D Painting workflow I have less of a need to really worry about UVs that much although I still tend to group materials togother and make sure everything is packed and lined up so it makes sense in photoshop. This is all on 1500 tris and under characters with 512x512 textures.
fair enough. and yes, one should never avoid helpful scripts. only reason i asked to compare without scripts is because it would be even more unfair comparison if i showed what some proprietary maya scripts/plugins can do.
as for soft selection, i cant imagine working without it. i am sure the feeling is mutual among many other maya artists. when dealing with complex characters that has lot of separate mesh elements it becomes invaluable. its one of those things that after you use a lot you cant live without. it is also pretty handy for doing quick'n'dirt character posing for previz purpose.
here is soft selection cycling between surface, volume and global mode for falloff. also notice how fast it is to toggle and change falloff radius.
even with scripts, Max doesnt have anything for smudging UVs with a brush based tool.
Maya's artisan brush tools really is the key here and if Autodesk wanted to they could even turn it to some sort of advanced sculpting tool inside Maya. currently you can already do some rudimentary sculpting inside Maya with the artisan tool.
I would think working in 4k textures with mostly baked workflow would make UV's even easier, just make sure there's minimal distortion and efficient packing.
that seems the opposite of my experience. i worked on many 512x512 characters for mobile and lot of 4k stuff as well. the more details the textures need the more you need to be careful about your UV stretching, placement, etc. in fact i had to worry less about soft selection when unwrapping very lowpoly characters. in may of the 4k works i have to go in manually scale certain areas of the UV with soft selection so that the end result is more uniform pixel density.
I rarely use soft selection in the UV editor, I use it from time to time in modeling. I was a 7 year Maya user before I had to switch to Max for work and fell in love with it. Use what works best, it seems to be about 50/50 in the industry and I haven't had any issues finding Max studios to work at.
I was a 6 year Maya user before I took up Max; been using it for 6 months at work. I like it for a lot of things, but I find that I'm moving my mouse to toolbars and clicking far more than I did in Maya; at first it was hurting my wrist quite a bit! But I figure that I was the same with Maya when I started using it, I just need to find the shortcuts that suit me It is a great program though! The selection tools are nice, especially dot ring for example.
MM, it seems like your problems with max boil down to:
1) Max's transform doesn't behave exactly like maya.
2) Soft select isn't a fully fleshed out brush based feature (in the UVW editor).
3) It lacks a smudge brush (in the UVW editor).
RE 1) Max Transform:
Well... It's not Maya.
It has the same nutritional value, just a different taste. Being different, doesn't make it a bad tool, but I understand if it is frustrating to you. Especially if you try to interact with it like you would in Maya.
Just to be clear where I stand on the "Nav war" issue. I like Maya Navigation for most things, its how a lot of programs operate, I like that they added it to Max. I don't like that it doesn't play well with the Max brush shortcuts, I actually use them all the time, especially when painting weights. It's a deal breaker until they sort it out.
Shift = inner falloff
Ctrl = outer radius
Alt-Shift = strength
Outer radius can adjust the inner fall off as it adjust past its threshold (and vice versa)just like falloff on lights.
Maya Nav in max conflicts with these shortcuts and it's a deal breaker for me. I've gone back to Max nav until they figure it out. Even though I prefer Maya navigation controls, it doesn't slow me down to use Max's, it's just different, not worse, not bad, just different. I've spent enough time with both that I can switch back and forth without it being a hassle. You'll get there too, faster if don't try to force once to behave like the other and accept them for what they are.
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A biased attitude can cause a lot of friction, please, be careful not to develop one, I think you have some hints of it and definitely not the worst I've seen but you do need to be careful, it can grow and spread to others like cancer and I've seen it bump some artists out of the running for jobs. It's a shame that it happens but I understand where they are coming from. It puts leads in strange situations, especially when people make it through the interview process with smiles and warm hugs then show up on day one with a handful of misinformation and a chip on their shoulder. Instead of just teaching a sponge, they have to confront and reverse a jaded attitude.
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umm ok, back on track...
RE 2) Soft selection in UV editor:
When they get a good relax working and shells relax better, a lot of what you're trying to hold over Max's head, just isn't needed in max. It might be needed in Maya because you have to spend a lot of time noodling around with pieces, smuding them around and softsel+custom pivot deform to straighten things out. But I'm really having a hard time finding cases where I would need to use a smudge brush in the UV editor? Or soft select so much that I need it to behave like the regular brushes in max?
RE 3) shift brush in UV editor:
Autodesk would just need to add the paint deform tools from graphite,(specifically the smudge brush) to the UV editor. It would be neat to see the other tools added too, like pinch, crease, exaggerate and shift. But I suspect if they went to that trouble, the demand for it would be about the same as it is now... which is probably why they haven't bothered.
RE 3) shift brush in UV editor:
Autodesk would just need to add the paint deform tools from graphite,(specifically the smudge brush) to the UV editor. It would be neat to see the other tools added too, like pinch, crease, exaggerate and shift. But I suspect if they went to that trouble, the demand for it would be about the same as it is now... which is probably why they haven't bothered.
Actually you could use the old copy UV data to Poly data trick, I think TexTools actually simplifies that process. Then you'll your UVs represented in 3D space and you could use the smudge brush or any other 3d tools on them.
Oh yea I forgot about that. From what I remember it had some funky rules that would break it if you didn't follow them? It's kind of foggy I haven't used it in quite a while, I think he took it out?
If they worked out something like that native in max and it was solid, it would be helpful for a lot more than just smudge.
You could skinwrap meshes like chainmail, stitching, zippers ect to the flat UV mesh and then morph it back into position on the 3D model where it deformed and hugged the 3D surface. It kind of worked in textools if you broke the model at all of the UV seams. It also had some funky scaling issues from what I remember.
I think there where some other tools that did that, "slide knit" or something? MoP made a version but I think it was for Maya? Still it would also be crazy helpful to allow a lot of modeling tools to operate on UV's. Maya or Max needs to make that happen...
I am glad you guys are nudging the discussion towards what needs to be added in both apps.
@Mark, i am well aware of such bias from certain users and whether you believe me or not i really don't care about any software loyalty. i am just trying to objectively judge the efficiency of both tools.
regarding the 3 main reasons you mentioned, yes you could sum it up like that although it reaches beyond that quite a bit but thats for another day. I did use Max quite a bit (before 2008-2009) and i still have to use it time to time now days with more recent versions.
1. re: transformation, i guess you are right for the most part. however as my feeling was similar to what sheckee few posts above. i just found myself doing lot of extra clicks an manual menu item scrolling etc. marking menus and general maya nav seems just more efficient in MY observation.
2. re: soft selection in UV editor, yes, if you never used it then its hard to convince you how useful it can be. it isnt about using soft selection to fix a bad unfold or bad relax, its more about doing more efficient tighter pack, tweaking the UV shell beyond default unfold shape(even from roadkill or UVLayout) and still maintaining no major distortion etc. btw, maya's unfold and relax works fine for me as well should for you too as long as you know how to adjust the solver settings properly.
3. re: smudge brush, yes graphite tools brushes look great and you are right about why Autodesk might not bother adding it to other parts of the software.
Actually, graphite tools have some nice features that I would like to see added into Maya. I dont think that will happen either because of the reason you mentioned.
@2: Peel mode with auto-pin might be an alternative to that in some cases. Works similar to puppet warp in PS. Needs a bit of trial and error, though, especially when starting out with it.
Btw: Is inverting selections in the unwrap uvw editor acting strange for some of you, too?
Works with faces, but nothing else. (Seems to just select vertices and edges across uv seams for me. )
Max 2014 here. But maybe it's my mistake.
I haven't done much unwrapping lately but I'd wish the packing algorithm was a bit better and also the general responsiveness, especially with bigger meshes.
Also, like mentioned, consistent shortcuts and tools.
Undo can cause some funky stuff, too, from time to time, though that might have been fixed in newer versions.
1) I agree and it will be like that until you start assigning shortcuts. Maya's menu system will drive just about anyone to learn the shortcuts too, heh.
Max's customize UI menu system leaves A LOT to be desired and they have been reworking it's core elements over the last few releases, probably getting ready to overhaul it, hopefully for the better. But for now, once you get it set up and saved out it ports to other copies of max so you only interact with it once in a while. Still it's one of my biggest beefs with max, a lot of other users too.
I also miss the marking menu from Maya. I was really excited for "hotbox" because I use the quadmenu in max as little as possible. Obviously a programmer who likes hiding things in flyout menus, created max's quad menu system. But the hotbox script had some fatal flaws, no swipe through and release, you had to click on everything, bahh. and it was a pain to set up and the author gave up on the project, another reason not to trust your workflow to 3rd party stuff. had it worked and then he gave up on it, I probably would have kidnapped him and forced him to keep it updated =P
2) For those kinds of tweaks I switch to vert mode, and toggle on soft select, it squashes the odd protrusions and gets the job done. It might be handy to have it as a brush with brush based controls but I don't think that is necessary or critical in max. I a perfect app it would probably have a brush based smudge tool in the UV editor. But there is a lot more that they should spend their time on, heh.
3) The tools are great, the ribbon is a lagging cluster fuck. "Hey lets make it like MS Werd!!11" heh ok, thanks for trying. We'll just hotkey the good bits.
Actually now that I think about it, I kind of want some of the paint deform tools to be in the UV editor. Pinch and spread would be helpful. A brush based relax like what's in edit poly or graphite would be handy too. It would be cool to have a brush sort of like flatten, but straightens UV angles to 90 degrees. I think someone had an "UV Iron" script that did that? Was it textools? But that stuff wouldn't speed me up that much and there are bigger fish to fry...
My dream is that someday they get everything else and the only burning priority is stuff like brush based tools in the UVW editor.
Anybody using Maya 2015 yet? I'm building a new environment and every time I open my files, random meshes lose their material assignments. Everything is in proxy phase right now so I have lambert1 on everything. Meshes turn green, aka lose the default material assignment.
One fun "why'd they do that?" change too: The Keep Faces Together menu toggle is gone, and is now hidden in a shift-control-right click hotbox when you run the extrude command.
I'm having a similar issue with the LT version losing the default material, except mine always occurs during modeling, and usually after beveling at that.
Bellsey, while that may be true, maybe that isn't the root cause of the long standing bug I'm thinking of. It happened to me in 2015 the other day: bevel an edge, new faces created don't have the default material applied.
Can you send me an example file where this shader assignment failure happens? We did a lot of development work on Bevel for Maya 2015 to ensure that defects like these don't occur any longer. We did indeed do work (as Graham says) on better preserving texture borders, but we also specifically focused on fixing defects where shader assignments weren't applied correctly (or in some cases, happening at all) during bevel operations. So if you could share a file or give me some steps (or a script) so that I can repro the issue you're seeing on my end, we could fix your specific use case. In all my testing however, I don't run into any scenarios where the shader assignments are failing during bevel operations and that's why I could use your guidance.
Additionally, I should mention that since our bevel code work was very deep-rooted, we had to separate the old code from the new code (so that we didn't screw with any legacy files using old bevel nodes opening in Maya 2015). So you may still somehow be using the old code, if again you're opening an old file with a bevel already applied in your object's history, or you have the setting "Use legacy Bevel Algorithm" (found in the Bevel options window and Attribute Editor) set to On.
The shaderless faces bug has been around so long. It shows up in most Maya tutorials. I would be embarrassed if I was Autodesk.
After using Combine, Separate, Extract Faces, Duplicate Faces, Booleans, Mirrorcut, or assigning multiple materials to a mesh, the following creates faces without a shader:
1. Bridge when adding divisions
2. Extrude when adding divisions to edge extrusion
3. Bevel when adding segments & Beveling all edges
4. Mirror Cut
Duplicate faces, extract faces trigger this because they use polySeparate. It seems to all come back to polyUnite and polySeparate.
But the root trigger appears to be multiple shaders assigned to a mesh and all the actions above seem to create a duplicate of the same shader. Surprisingly it doesn't occur when adding divisions for face extrusions, wedge, or polysplitRing.
I recently tried max 2015 to test the new quad chamfer. My initial thought is they broke viewport navigation. It seems pretty much unusable and several threads online show other people have the same issue.
Hope that's something you guys get fixed quickly, as there's plenty of cool stuff that was added otherwise.
My initial thought is they broke viewport navigation. It seems pretty much unusable and several threads online show other people have the same issue.
Hope that's something you guys get fixed quickly, as there's plenty of cool stuff that was added otherwise.
I just installed Max 2015 on my work comp, and I've been having lots of issues with orbiting objects. It seems to lose the focus point quite often, requiring me to have to grab an object and hit Z again to center it. Is that the issue people are having?
I just installed Max 2015 on my work comp, and I've been having lots of issues with orbiting objects. It seems to lose the focus point quite often, requiring me to have to grab an object and hit Z again to center it. Is that the issue people are having?
I just installed Max 2015 on my work comp, and I've been having lots of issues with orbiting objects. It seems to lose the focus point quite often, requiring me to have to grab an object and hit Z again to center it. Is that the issue people are having?
I haven't used max 2015 yet - but I find that in 2014 If i don't have any elements on an object currently selected (ie: vertex, face, line etc.) the camera just pivots on 0,0,0 instead of my last selection or even my currently selected object. It's very frustrating.
I haven't used max 2015 yet - but I find that in 2014 If i don't have any elements on an object currently selected (ie: vertex, face, line etc.) the camera just pivots on 0,0,0 instead of my last selection or even my currently selected object. It's very frustrating.
have you tried setting the orbit mode to sub object orbit?
wow. It took them only more than 10 years to add quad chamfer. Gratz!
lol, this. Maya is so retarded.
In fact, both Maya and Max need a UI overhall, I actually wouldn't mind if they just skipped releasing a year or two, to work on a better UI for both those apps.
But of course, Autodesk investers would never let that slide.
Bellsey, while that may be true, maybe that isn't the root cause of the long standing bug I'm thinking of. It happened to me in 2015 the other day: bevel an edge, new faces created don't have the default material applied.
I guess we could be talking semantics here. In 2015, a bug (MAYA-144) whereby new faces resulting from Edit Mesh > Bevel has been fixed. But you prefer to have the default lambert applied regardless of any neighbouring specific materials? I tried some tests in 2014 and all new faces from bevels had the default lambert applied. So the bug is fixed but some functionality might not fully be there.
As for issues with shaderless faces in Maya. I remember those kinds of problems, but I haven't seen them in some time now, several versions in fact.
The shaderless faces bug has been around so long. It shows up in most Maya tutorials. I would be embarrassed if I was Autodesk.
After using Combine, Separate, Extract Faces, Duplicate Faces, Booleans, Mirrorcut, or assigning multiple materials to a mesh, the following creates faces without a shader:
1. Bridge when adding divisions
2. Extrude when adding divisions to edge extrusion
3. Bevel when adding segments & Beveling all edges
4. Mirror Cut
Duplicate faces, extract faces trigger this because they use polySeparate. It seems to all come back to polyUnite and polySeparate.
But the root trigger appears to be multiple shaders assigned to a mesh and all the actions above seem to create a duplicate of the same shader. Surprisingly it doesn't occur when adding divisions for face extrusions, wedge, or polysplitRing.
I can't repro this is maya 2015. What version are you using
But you prefer to have the default lambert applied regardless of any neighbouring specific materials?
No, the only material I'm using in my entire scene (I'm still proxying) is lambert1, so it has nothing to do with multiple material assignments or per-face materials. To be honest over the years I've developed a workflow that avoids beveling because of all of the historic issues with the tool, so I can't reliably repro the issue. It's just caused a blip on my radar because last week I beveled by chance, and noticed a missing material assignment on the new faces, and chuckled because that old bug hasn't been fixed while a seemingly new one (missing materials on entire meshes upon scene open) just popped up.
I can't repro this is maya 2015. What version are you using
Sorry, forgot to specify you have to interactively increase divisions on edge extrusion and bevels, if it's preset bug wont occur. Also it only shows in default and viewport 2.0 rendering.
I consistently reproduced it in Maya 2014, and Maya LT 2015.
Specific Repro:
Create 2 cubes, run combine, then bevel or extrude edge and interactively adjust segments/divisions. New faces will not be shaded.
So Bellsey, is this not a bug but by design?
I can kind of understand if there's truly multiple shaders making it ambiguous, but when there's only one shader, such as default lambert, the issue still occurs because it gets "duplicated" and treated like multiple shaders.
I hate to be a broken record but what Maya version?
Sorry, didn't see your question. I'm currently using Maya 2015 and seeing the missing material assignments on entire meshes, but only after re-opening my scene.
The bevel operation - new faces created and missing materials, that bug I've seen in every version of Maya I've ever used.
Create 2 cubes, run combine, then bevel or extrude edge and interactively adjust segments/divisions. New faces will not be shaded.
Not sure if this is an actual "bug" but I can repro this, can you log it here
missing material assignments on entire meshes, but only after re-opening my scene.
Are you using a proper project setup or something saved a different alienated location. If this happens again can you save the file, and upload to the bug forum?
The bevel operation - new faces created and missing materials, that bug I've seen in every version of Maya I've ever used.
Got to agree with Bellsey here I havent seen this in a while
Not sure if this is an actual "bug" but I can repro this, can you log it here
I can repro this as well. Though I noticed that the default material node is still connected when I graph the object in the Node Editor, or use the Attribute Editor. Any changes made don't have any effect, so it looks like there's a bug somewhere.
Maya has had Bullet support as far back as Maya 8.5, when Disney open sourced their Dynamica plugin that used the Bullet open source libraries. Autodesk started to add the Bullet plugin natively in 2011.
curious how opensubdiv performs in Maya 2015 I keep hearing negatives of it mainly its not that fast and in some cases even slower than normal subdiv approach in 2015, how do you find it?
curious how opensubdiv performs in Maya 2015 I keep hearing negatives of it mainly its not that fast and in some cases even slower than normal subdiv approach in 2015, how do you find it?
The scenes I've tried myself, I've noticed a significant increase in performance. Some assets, the increase has been marginal. Not sure why, and I haven't had the time recently to really dig deeper and investigate further.
I haven't used max 2015 yet - but I find that in 2014 If i don't have any elements on an object currently selected (ie: vertex, face, line etc.) the camera just pivots on 0,0,0 instead of my last selection or even my currently selected object. It's very frustrating.
Replies
I just scroll the soft selection falloff value. It's a good idea to switch from XY coordinates to UV, otherwise you need massive numbers (hold ctrl and scroll for that). You don't see the UV soft selection on the model in the viewport but if you're talking about using soft selection while modeling, yes it shows up.
Pretty cool stuff imho.
Maya LT 2015: Geodesic Voxel Binding (Rigging tools)
Maya LT 2015: New UV Editing Tools
Maya LT 2015: Substance Material Integration
Maya LT 2015: Texture Deformer
Maya LT 2015: Open Subdiv Library
Maya LT 2015: Cloud Integration
Ah, yeah. Currently I just adjust the value manually. It looked like you were doing it on the fly though with your mouse pointer or something, not to worry! Thank you man
all that is possible yes, but it isnt faster or more intuitive in Max.
in maya it is very fast to switch between move, rotate, scale, all while changing temp pivot on the fly for any of that and do fast soft selection.
changing temp pivot seems so slow in Max, you have to click exactly on the current pivot and then move it. in Maya you can do it faster holding down "d" key and middle click drag from anywhere.
it is all these little things that add up to such slow UI in Max.
also no smudge brush for Max which is a big drawback (Maya has had it for a long long time) , but for the rest of the things that you do have are they all that easy straight out of the box without any additional max script ?
what i am doing in maya is without any scripts or customization at all.
i cant seem to get soft selection work like on the fly, like select some UVs, toggle on soft "b" key with one key and change radius on the fly holding down "b" and middle click drag (lot faster than going to the number scroll input thingy in Max)
*edit* nvm, i just read your latest post so you are in fact scrolling through that small arrows next to the soft selection toggle button.
is there a way to toggle soft selection in the UV editor with one hotkey and be able to change radius easily like Maya ? in the customize menu there seems to be only soft selection (Poly) and nothing for soft selection UV.
Since I've moved more towards a 3D Painting workflow I have less of a need to really worry about UVs that much although I still tend to group materials togother and make sure everything is packed and lined up so it makes sense in photoshop. This is all on 1500 tris and under characters with 512x512 textures. I would think working in 4k textures with mostly baked workflow would make UV's even easier, just make sure there's minimal distortion and efficient packing.
fair enough. and yes, one should never avoid helpful scripts. only reason i asked to compare without scripts is because it would be even more unfair comparison if i showed what some proprietary maya scripts/plugins can do.
as for soft selection, i cant imagine working without it. i am sure the feeling is mutual among many other maya artists. when dealing with complex characters that has lot of separate mesh elements it becomes invaluable. its one of those things that after you use a lot you cant live without. it is also pretty handy for doing quick'n'dirt character posing for previz purpose.
here is soft selection cycling between surface, volume and global mode for falloff. also notice how fast it is to toggle and change falloff radius.
even with scripts, Max doesnt have anything for smudging UVs with a brush based tool.
Maya's artisan brush tools really is the key here and if Autodesk wanted to they could even turn it to some sort of advanced sculpting tool inside Maya. currently you can already do some rudimentary sculpting inside Maya with the artisan tool.
that seems the opposite of my experience. i worked on many 512x512 characters for mobile and lot of 4k stuff as well. the more details the textures need the more you need to be careful about your UV stretching, placement, etc. in fact i had to worry less about soft selection when unwrapping very lowpoly characters. in may of the 4k works i have to go in manually scale certain areas of the UV with soft selection so that the end result is more uniform pixel density.
and yeah, I haven't made a personal model since professor spaceman :P everything else I would have to spend the time getting approval to show
it is useful though and i think Maya has plugins for that too.
There should be a thread about useful tips for 3d applications using only .gifs so I can save them to my tipz n trix folder
I'm the same with Max, but coming from XSI instead. I think half the issue is that the Max UI for defining hotkeys is bloody terrible.
1) Max's transform doesn't behave exactly like maya.
2) Soft select isn't a fully fleshed out brush based feature (in the UVW editor).
3) It lacks a smudge brush (in the UVW editor).
RE 1) Max Transform:
Well... It's not Maya.
It has the same nutritional value, just a different taste. Being different, doesn't make it a bad tool, but I understand if it is frustrating to you. Especially if you try to interact with it like you would in Maya.
Just to be clear where I stand on the "Nav war" issue. I like Maya Navigation for most things, its how a lot of programs operate, I like that they added it to Max. I don't like that it doesn't play well with the Max brush shortcuts, I actually use them all the time, especially when painting weights. It's a deal breaker until they sort it out.
Shift = inner falloff
Ctrl = outer radius
Alt-Shift = strength
Outer radius can adjust the inner fall off as it adjust past its threshold (and vice versa)just like falloff on lights.
Maya Nav in max conflicts with these shortcuts and it's a deal breaker for me. I've gone back to Max nav until they figure it out. Even though I prefer Maya navigation controls, it doesn't slow me down to use Max's, it's just different, not worse, not bad, just different. I've spent enough time with both that I can switch back and forth without it being a hassle. You'll get there too, faster if don't try to force once to behave like the other and accept them for what they are.
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A biased attitude can cause a lot of friction, please, be careful not to develop one, I think you have some hints of it and definitely not the worst I've seen but you do need to be careful, it can grow and spread to others like cancer and I've seen it bump some artists out of the running for jobs. It's a shame that it happens but I understand where they are coming from. It puts leads in strange situations, especially when people make it through the interview process with smiles and warm hugs then show up on day one with a handful of misinformation and a chip on their shoulder. Instead of just teaching a sponge, they have to confront and reverse a jaded attitude.
[/Pause]
umm ok, back on track...
RE 2) Soft selection in UV editor:
When they get a good relax working and shells relax better, a lot of what you're trying to hold over Max's head, just isn't needed in max. It might be needed in Maya because you have to spend a lot of time noodling around with pieces, smuding them around and softsel+custom pivot deform to straighten things out. But I'm really having a hard time finding cases where I would need to use a smudge brush in the UV editor? Or soft select so much that I need it to behave like the regular brushes in max?
RE 3) shift brush in UV editor:
Autodesk would just need to add the paint deform tools from graphite,(specifically the smudge brush) to the UV editor. It would be neat to see the other tools added too, like pinch, crease, exaggerate and shift. But I suspect if they went to that trouble, the demand for it would be about the same as it is now... which is probably why they haven't bothered.
Actually you could use the old copy UV data to Poly data trick, I think TexTools actually simplifies that process. Then you'll your UVs represented in 3D space and you could use the smudge brush or any other 3d tools on them.
If they worked out something like that native in max and it was solid, it would be helpful for a lot more than just smudge.
You could skinwrap meshes like chainmail, stitching, zippers ect to the flat UV mesh and then morph it back into position on the 3D model where it deformed and hugged the 3D surface. It kind of worked in textools if you broke the model at all of the UV seams. It also had some funky scaling issues from what I remember.
I think there where some other tools that did that, "slide knit" or something? MoP made a version but I think it was for Maya? Still it would also be crazy helpful to allow a lot of modeling tools to operate on UV's. Maya or Max needs to make that happen...
@Mark, i am well aware of such bias from certain users and whether you believe me or not i really don't care about any software loyalty. i am just trying to objectively judge the efficiency of both tools.
regarding the 3 main reasons you mentioned, yes you could sum it up like that although it reaches beyond that quite a bit but thats for another day. I did use Max quite a bit (before 2008-2009) and i still have to use it time to time now days with more recent versions.
1. re: transformation, i guess you are right for the most part. however as my feeling was similar to what sheckee few posts above. i just found myself doing lot of extra clicks an manual menu item scrolling etc. marking menus and general maya nav seems just more efficient in MY observation.
2. re: soft selection in UV editor, yes, if you never used it then its hard to convince you how useful it can be. it isnt about using soft selection to fix a bad unfold or bad relax, its more about doing more efficient tighter pack, tweaking the UV shell beyond default unfold shape(even from roadkill or UVLayout) and still maintaining no major distortion etc. btw, maya's unfold and relax works fine for me as well should for you too as long as you know how to adjust the solver settings properly.
3. re: smudge brush, yes graphite tools brushes look great and you are right about why Autodesk might not bother adding it to other parts of the software.
Actually, graphite tools have some nice features that I would like to see added into Maya. I dont think that will happen either because of the reason you mentioned.
Btw: Is inverting selections in the unwrap uvw editor acting strange for some of you, too?
Works with faces, but nothing else. (Seems to just select vertices and edges across uv seams for me. )
Max 2014 here. But maybe it's my mistake.
I haven't done much unwrapping lately but I'd wish the packing algorithm was a bit better and also the general responsiveness, especially with bigger meshes.
Also, like mentioned, consistent shortcuts and tools.
Undo can cause some funky stuff, too, from time to time, though that might have been fixed in newer versions.
Max's customize UI menu system leaves A LOT to be desired and they have been reworking it's core elements over the last few releases, probably getting ready to overhaul it, hopefully for the better. But for now, once you get it set up and saved out it ports to other copies of max so you only interact with it once in a while. Still it's one of my biggest beefs with max, a lot of other users too.
I also miss the marking menu from Maya. I was really excited for "hotbox" because I use the quadmenu in max as little as possible. Obviously a programmer who likes hiding things in flyout menus, created max's quad menu system. But the hotbox script had some fatal flaws, no swipe through and release, you had to click on everything, bahh. and it was a pain to set up and the author gave up on the project, another reason not to trust your workflow to 3rd party stuff. had it worked and then he gave up on it, I probably would have kidnapped him and forced him to keep it updated =P
2) For those kinds of tweaks I switch to vert mode, and toggle on soft select, it squashes the odd protrusions and gets the job done. It might be handy to have it as a brush with brush based controls but I don't think that is necessary or critical in max. I a perfect app it would probably have a brush based smudge tool in the UV editor. But there is a lot more that they should spend their time on, heh.
3) The tools are great, the ribbon is a lagging cluster fuck. "Hey lets make it like MS Werd!!11" heh ok, thanks for trying. We'll just hotkey the good bits.
Actually now that I think about it, I kind of want some of the paint deform tools to be in the UV editor. Pinch and spread would be helpful. A brush based relax like what's in edit poly or graphite would be handy too. It would be cool to have a brush sort of like flatten, but straightens UV angles to 90 degrees. I think someone had an "UV Iron" script that did that? Was it textools? But that stuff wouldn't speed me up that much and there are bigger fish to fry...
My dream is that someday they get everything else and the only burning priority is stuff like brush based tools in the UVW editor.
http://i.imgur.com/RyKp0iX.jpg
Anyone knows how to get rid of them without going in manually to delete them?
http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2015/ENU/?guid=WN_Maya
think also all the other ones...
http://docs.autodesk.com/MUD/2015/ENU/#!/url=./files/Export_All_Paint_Layers_window.htm
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should be possible to pipe the textures also to marmoset...
One fun "why'd they do that?" change too: The Keep Faces Together menu toggle is gone, and is now hidden in a shift-control-right click hotbox when you run the extrude command.
Can you send me an example file where this shader assignment failure happens? We did a lot of development work on Bevel for Maya 2015 to ensure that defects like these don't occur any longer. We did indeed do work (as Graham says) on better preserving texture borders, but we also specifically focused on fixing defects where shader assignments weren't applied correctly (or in some cases, happening at all) during bevel operations. So if you could share a file or give me some steps (or a script) so that I can repro the issue you're seeing on my end, we could fix your specific use case. In all my testing however, I don't run into any scenarios where the shader assignments are failing during bevel operations and that's why I could use your guidance.
Additionally, I should mention that since our bevel code work was very deep-rooted, we had to separate the old code from the new code (so that we didn't screw with any legacy files using old bevel nodes opening in Maya 2015). So you may still somehow be using the old code, if again you're opening an old file with a bevel already applied in your object's history, or you have the setting "Use legacy Bevel Algorithm" (found in the Bevel options window and Attribute Editor) set to On.
Thanks,
Trevor
After using Combine, Separate, Extract Faces, Duplicate Faces, Booleans, Mirrorcut, or assigning multiple materials to a mesh, the following creates faces without a shader:
1. Bridge when adding divisions
2. Extrude when adding divisions to edge extrusion
3. Bevel when adding segments & Beveling all edges
4. Mirror Cut
Duplicate faces, extract faces trigger this because they use polySeparate. It seems to all come back to polyUnite and polySeparate.
But the root trigger appears to be multiple shaders assigned to a mesh and all the actions above seem to create a duplicate of the same shader. Surprisingly it doesn't occur when adding divisions for face extrusions, wedge, or polysplitRing.
Hope that's something you guys get fixed quickly, as there's plenty of cool stuff that was added otherwise.
I just installed Max 2015 on my work comp, and I've been having lots of issues with orbiting objects. It seems to lose the focus point quite often, requiring me to have to grab an object and hit Z again to center it. Is that the issue people are having?
Indeed.
I haven't used max 2015 yet - but I find that in 2014 If i don't have any elements on an object currently selected (ie: vertex, face, line etc.) the camera just pivots on 0,0,0 instead of my last selection or even my currently selected object. It's very frustrating.
have you tried setting the orbit mode to sub object orbit?
lol, this. Maya is so retarded.
In fact, both Maya and Max need a UI overhall, I actually wouldn't mind if they just skipped releasing a year or two, to work on a better UI for both those apps.
But of course, Autodesk investers would never let that slide.
I guess we could be talking semantics here. In 2015, a bug (MAYA-144) whereby new faces resulting from Edit Mesh > Bevel has been fixed. But you prefer to have the default lambert applied regardless of any neighbouring specific materials? I tried some tests in 2014 and all new faces from bevels had the default lambert applied. So the bug is fixed but some functionality might not fully be there.
As for issues with shaderless faces in Maya. I remember those kinds of problems, but I haven't seen them in some time now, several versions in fact.
I can't repro this is maya 2015. What version are you using
No, the only material I'm using in my entire scene (I'm still proxying) is lambert1, so it has nothing to do with multiple material assignments or per-face materials. To be honest over the years I've developed a workflow that avoids beveling because of all of the historic issues with the tool, so I can't reliably repro the issue. It's just caused a blip on my radar because last week I beveled by chance, and noticed a missing material assignment on the new faces, and chuckled because that old bug hasn't been fixed while a seemingly new one (missing materials on entire meshes upon scene open) just popped up.
Sorry, forgot to specify you have to interactively increase divisions on edge extrusion and bevels, if it's preset bug wont occur. Also it only shows in default and viewport 2.0 rendering.
I consistently reproduced it in Maya 2014, and Maya LT 2015.
Specific Repro:
Create 2 cubes, run combine, then bevel or extrude edge and interactively adjust segments/divisions. New faces will not be shaded.
So Bellsey, is this not a bug but by design?
I can kind of understand if there's truly multiple shaders making it ambiguous, but when there's only one shader, such as default lambert, the issue still occurs because it gets "duplicated" and treated like multiple shaders.
Sorry, didn't see your question. I'm currently using Maya 2015 and seeing the missing material assignments on entire meshes, but only after re-opening my scene.
The bevel operation - new faces created and missing materials, that bug I've seen in every version of Maya I've ever used.
Are you using a proper project setup or something saved a different alienated location. If this happens again can you save the file, and upload to the bug forum?
Got to agree with Bellsey here I havent seen this in a while
I can repro this as well. Though I noticed that the default material node is still connected when I graph the object in the Node Editor, or use the Attribute Editor. Any changes made don't have any effect, so it looks like there's a bug somewhere.
Maya has had Bullet support as far back as Maya 8.5, when Disney open sourced their Dynamica plugin that used the Bullet open source libraries. Autodesk started to add the Bullet plugin natively in 2011.
The scenes I've tried myself, I've noticed a significant increase in performance. Some assets, the increase has been marginal. Not sure why, and I haven't had the time recently to really dig deeper and investigate further.
Same here