We should all get back to maya 4 and 7, most stable versions I can remember. I miss AliasWaveFront

Everybody talks about stability and the crashes they get - I have to say I've hardly experienced any issues with Maya... most of the crashes I had were with Max at my old workplace.

@Torch: Doesnt speak for you, Max and Maya only crash when the user is super awesomely creative and stuff (and obviously forgets to save)

@ arrangemonk - singed

looks very nice - have to try it out some day

Originally Posted by arrangemonk

@Torch: Doesnt speak for you, Max and Maya only crash when the user is super awesomely creative and stuff (and obviously forgets to save)

Oooo burn

Yeah, Torch, I haven't noticed it either.

as arrangemonk said: it depends on how the user is doing stuff in each application, new users tend to do things that will make it crash almost instantly, you will know where u want to save after a while and this will help on your workflow later on. At least in Maya is that way. I know where it can crash, and I just don't go that path OR I save before doing so.

Originally Posted by FelixSchl

Ace Angle, what about making the software stable? That would be a great "feature".

I started with 2010, which was fairly stable but ever-since their switch to the new ui, the program is volatile as hell in terms of stability. I find the constant crashing and loss of time and work rather frustrating. One would think that they would at least by nice enough to put it in a default hotkey to save a new version and also to save a copy.

I am a novice with Maya, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I use an auto save feature with Maya and I have it set to every 20 minutes and each save has it's own name and number. It's a very useful feature that I have on all the time.

@Tairii You mean incremental saves. I am coming from Blender and over there we can only smile at such a feature (although they do have it). If Blender should crash, it will always manage to make a backup copy just from before the crash. But that is not all, here comes the kicker: On startup, it actually offers me to load it, rather than go digging for it. I never lost data with Blender.

Here comes another kicker, when "saving as..." with Blender, there is a little '+' sign that will increment the filename for me. So I can do an incremental save of my scene in less than 3 seconds.

What is cool about Maya, is the extensibility and flexibility. If you wanted any of the features I mentioned above, you can just write some MEL, pyMEL or plugin for all it matters. I just wish they put more effort into making the software stable. I mean, how often does Photoshop crash? And that is one big app, too.

Well, Maya also has a backup function while crashing. It tries to save your files, but it puts on the temp folder of your system. You can grab the .ma file there. 20% of the times tho you wont be that lucky.

Originally Posted by FelixSchl

@Tairii You mean incremental saves. I am coming from Blender and over there we can only smile at such a feature (although they do have it). If Blender should crash, it will always manage to make a backup copy just from before the crash. But that is not all, here comes the kicker: On startup, it actually offers me to load it, rather than go digging for it. I never lost data with Blender.

Here comes another kicker, when "saving as..." with Blender, there is a little '+' sign that will increment the filename for me. So I can do an incremental save of my scene in less than 3 seconds.

What is cool about Maya, is the extensibility and flexibility. If you wanted any of the features I mentioned above, you can just write some MEL, pyMEL or plugin for all it matters. I just wish they put more effort into making the software stable. I mean, how often does Photoshop crash? And that is one big app, too.

max has the + to increment the save in the save as dialog, and in i was able to easily make a new command on control+alt+s, that saves with a incremented version. so not too much a of kicker.

my main app is maya, and i tend to get very few crashes, actully it seems the most unstable app in my workflow is photoshop.

Originally Posted by FelixSchl

@Tairii You mean incremental saves. I am coming from Blender and over there we can only smile at such a feature (although they do have it). If Blender should crash, it will always manage to make a backup copy just from before the crash. But that is not all, here comes the kicker: On startup, it actually offers me to load it, rather than go digging for it. I never lost data with Blender.

Here comes another kicker, when "saving as..." with Blender, there is a little '+' sign that will increment the filename for me. So I can do an incremental save of my scene in less than 3 seconds.

What is cool about Maya, is the extensibility and flexibility. If you wanted any of the features I mentioned above, you can just write some MEL, pyMEL or plugin for all it matters. I just wish they put more effort into making the software stable. I mean, how often does Photoshop crash? And that is one big app, too.

Yes, thank you! I love it so much. It's weird, I never have Maya crash on me like I do Max. Then again, I don't have those, "I wonder what will happen if I added 90,000 more particles"-moments in Maya

take a look at this presentation about pixar subdiv in maya...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-3L9...ailpage#t=757s

little trick to launch maya in DX11...

dx11 trick - YouTube