[Technical Talk] - Making the Max to Maya Switch?

[AstroZombie]

Ok, I know this has been posted a few times before, and I really did try and use the search feature before I posted but I could not find previous posts on this subject. Anyhow ...

Tomorrow I am being assigned to work on a Maya project. I have minimal past experience with Maya. Any tips or advice from those of you who have had to make the switch in the past would be much appreciated.

[MoP]

Set up your hotkeys to be as similar to Max commands as possible.
Get MJ Poly Tools script for modelling.

Use this guide as reference (I GOOGLED IT SON)

http://www.alias.com/eng/products-services/maya/file/3dmax_to_maya.pdf

[Jeff Parrott]

Woah, Mop is laying it down!

Get used to using the shelf. I have every command I need up there. It really speeds me up.

[AstroZombie]

Sweet! thanks MoP. But what is this "google" thing you speak of? /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[MoP]

google? not sure... i stumbled across it one time when using a search engine.

[AstroZombie]

what's a search engine?

[MoP]

google it

[motives]

you might wanna get the OMToolbox. Way faster than mjpolytools..
http://www.alias.com/glb/eng/community/developers_corner.jsp

You probably also want multischnap IE. target weld
http://www.users.on.net/~neilandbron/multiSchnap.mel

good luck

[Marine]

that toolbox thing is much faster. lacks some of the functionality in mj that i use a lot though, like selecting four sides of a poly and creating a diamond of edges within it, and splitting an individual edge.

[AstroZombie]

ok, slight delay on getting started on this project. I am presently trying to set up my hot keys. How do I assign function keys?

Example, I want to match the max settings:

f2 = Shade selected faces (in sub-object mode - not sure that this applies to maya or not)
f3 = toggle wireframe on/off
f4 = toggle edged faces on/off

Also, is there anyway I can change swap the space bar for right click?

?

[thomasp]

press F1 to access the help system /images/graemlins/wink.gif
lots of customize options can be found in the window->settings/preferences branch.

[AstroZombie]

Yea, I've been customizing from there, but I think the terminology is throwing me a wee bit.

[edit]
found it. It is bound to "4" and "5" in Maya by default /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Now ...
how do I set my viewports to:
"f" = front
"l" = left
"r" = right
"t" = top
"b" = bottom
"p" = perspective

?

[Snowfly]

Here you go AstroZombie. Just bind these to hotkeys.

//Front
string $currentPanel = `getPanel -withFocus`;
viewSet -f `modelEditor -q -camera $currentPanel`;

//Left
string $currentPanel = `getPanel -withFocus`;
viewSet -ls `modelEditor -q -camera $currentPanel`;

//Right
string $currentPanel = `getPanel -withFocus`;
viewSet -rs `modelEditor -q -camera $currentPanel`;

//Top
string $currentPanel = `getPanel -withFocus`;
viewSet -t `modelEditor -q -camera $currentPanel`;

//Bottom
string $currentPanel = `getPanel -withFocus`;
viewSet -bo `modelEditor -q -camera $currentPanel`;

//Perspective
string $currentPanel = `getPanel -withFocus`;
viewSet -p `modelEditor -q -camera $currentPanel`;

These are crude by the way. They don't preserve the zoom that you were working at.. and they don't really switch viewports, they just move the camera to a predefined location.

which in practice might make them useless, I don't know... There are more refined scripts out there I'm sure.

[PaK]

Sticky this biatch, kubby!

Thx snowfly. Do you know alotta melscript?

-R

[Snowfly]

Pak - Nope actually I don't. /images/graemlins/frown.gif Cobbling together new commands from the script editor to speed up my workflow, yeah, but I can't make anything widely useful.

[Justin Meisse]

Hey, if you open up the script editor (icon in the lower right) then go to script>echo all commands, it helps when you want to figure out what certain commands do.

[AstroZombie]

Thanks a bunch, Snowfly.

[Zergxes]

Maybe hit up some of the free tutorials on digitaltutors.com. The DVD's they sell are pretty good, less of a deep coverage of everything and more of a fast functional overview.

Good luck!

[dRaster]

check out the vids

http://draster.com/ttrain_max_maya

http://draster.com/switcher_max

good luck,
Arash

[SouL]

Anyone have a spare bat I can use to beat this dead horse with some more? kthxbye.

roflololololololcopter.

[Tulkamir]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone have a spare bat I can use to beat this dead horse with some more?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well... if you really want you can use mine...

http://www.exzooberance.com/virtual%20zoo/they%20fly/bat/Bat%20471075.jpg

[Zergxes]

mmm... found this

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/3dmax_to_maya.pdf

Any info on switching the other way? It's high time I figure out Max.