Zwebbie's Big Maya Questions Thread

[Zwebbie]

I've been a Blender user for years now, and it's pretty much my only experience with 3D packages. Now, I've got a real Maya 8.5 license, so I'd like to learn the software, which should make finding a job way easier. I do hope to be proficient enough with it soon enough for DomWar IV.

It is, however, a piece of junk, and I'm completely baffled with it sometimes. That's why I'm starting this thread - for all those moments when I wonder "how do I do this?" or "is there no better way?". It's a bit odd to have a Blender user complaining about Maya's UI, but I guess my workflow, over the years, has become very Blender-dependent, which is why I'm having trouble adapting. Enlighten me, Polycounters!

(A)1). What's the easiest way to make this object from a cube:
http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/9237/mayacubeki6.jpg
In Blender, I would select the vertical edges and subdivide them. I made this in Maya by using Split Polygon, then scaling the vertices to have the same height, and then triangulating the ngons on the side. Surely there's an easier way?

(A)2). Switching between Perspective and Orthographic display; is there an easier way than going to the Camera Attribute Editor and changing the Angle of View?

(A)3). Whenever I press bevel, the edges are beveled by a set amount, defined in the bevel options... shouldn't I be sliding in the 3D view to determine the amount, like with 3dsMax' Chamfer Edge?

(A)4). Mirroring. Is Duplicate Special with a -1 scale really the best option?

5). When I zoom out in an orthogonal view, the camera 'jumps' back, , quite a bigger step than when zooming in... what's up with that?

I'll be adding to this as I run into things - which is bound to happen, considering these bother me in the first five minutes of starting Maya. Thanks in advance :) .

Edit: updated

[MoP]

1). Split Polygon tool has a snapping tolerance option, you can choose how powerful to make the snap, and where along the line to snap. It defaults to 50% along an edge, if you increase the tolerance then it will be more likely to jump to exactly 50% if you're near the middle of the edge. Unfortunately without custom scripts there is no other way to do this. To triangulate the edges the fastest way is probably just to stay in the Split Polygon tool and hook up the verts manually. Either that or select each face and do Mesh -> Triangulate.
It seems like most old-school Maya users do a lot of their work with Split Polygon tool, which frankly I find quite scary since it's much slower than many other (more modern) methods... although it is obviously a very useful modelling tool, I don't think it should be used for quite as much as you're forced to use it for.

2). Spacebar by default, tapping it will toggle whatever viewport display modes you're in between fullscreen or not. If you were in a 4-view display by default, just tapping spacebar once, mousing over a different viewport and hitting it again will put you in that view, fullscreen.
Alternatively, a faster way can be to hold down Space to get the hotbox up, click and drag in the middle, it should give you all available camera views in a radial menu. Pretty fast.

3). Yes, another thing which is painful to behold. There's no preview or interactive setup BEFORE you bevel (although I believe Funky Bunnies made a script which allows this). The best way to do it is just to bevel with default options, then go into the History list in the Channel box, expand your polyBevel node, find the "Offset" value, highlight it, and middle-click drag in the viewport to change the value.
Middle-click is like the "magic button" in Maya, it's what the majority of interaction can be done with, and is often very fast (for example you can drag-select over a Rotate field in the Channel box, then middle-click in the viewport and it will rotate only around that local axis).

4) Unfortunately, yes. There's nothing as straightforward as Max's "Symmetry" modifier. The closest you'll get is by assigning a "Mirror Cut" node to the Output list of your mesh, but that's not exactly a friendly workflow (by default it gets placed in the Input list).


Please note that all of these answers are "to the best of my knowledge". Do not take them as the final word, it's entirely possible that someone else has better solutions... although I have been using Maya for at least a year and a half now, so I'd hope that if there are better solutions, then they're not immediately obvious ones, or I'll be kicking myself :)

[Zwebbie]

Thanks, Mop! Split Polygon's tolerance especially is quite a relief. 3 and 4 are typically Maya, from what I've seen. Everything is possible, but it's clear that no artist has any hand in suggestions for the next update. Duplicate Special gets you the results, but I use Symmetry/Mirror on over half of the objects I make, so a little ease of use wouldn't hurt :( .

[glib]

A note on negative scaling: make sure to freeze your transforms afterward, and then bring up the attributes on the mesh and uncheck the 'opposite' flag under the render tab. You'll have to uncheck 'double-sided' first before it will let you uncheck 'opposite', then re-check 'double-sided'. I put together a short script a while back that did all this for you that I could dig up if you want. Mirroring stuff in maya is stupid.

[claydough]

a symmetry solution for Maya:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=60994


no negatively scaled instances needed

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3436/3270869354_1133a187fd_o.jpg

[Marine]

for 1, i'd select the two edges you want connected with one edge and do polySplitRing -ch on -splitType 1 -weight 0.5;then split polygon to connect the edges for the triangles

[Zwebbie]

Many thanks! Again, I am amazed at how backwards Maya can be on the most common things. I'm still of the mindset that software should just be useful without a ton of scripts!

Another question today:
5). When I zoom out in an orthogonal view, the camera 'jumps' back, , quite a bigger step than when zooming in... what's up with that?