XSI to maya learning curve

[alphatron]

Well.. I've only used XSI a little.. but I came primarily from Max to Maya.. and it was like a revelation.. I can't even bare to use Max anymore.

Maya has a really smooth, fast, and simple way of workflow and just getting around.. very intuitive. Once you know the alt+mouse buttons to move around, the QWERTY keys, right click for context menu, and the hotbox (hold space bar)/marking menus then you are pretty much set. Both F8 to swith from Poly to component (verts, faces, etc..) mode and the f-key to focus in on a selected object are also very useful. After you've got these down you can pretty much hide most of the interface to get maximum screen real-estate. It's extremely efficient.

The only thing that can be daunting in Maya is the complexity of the program. It's deep, almost too deep sometimes.. just so many ways to attack a given idea that it can be a bit frustraiting to choose just one.

[boomji]

[i]
Ive heard getting into Max can be a bitch, is Maya a similar trip?

[/B]


first of all apart from rhino... MAX is the easiest of softwares to get into.i havent used soft and am learning maya now and by no means planning to completly transfer...instead i'll be using the strenghts of both softwares.
coming from a max background i have to unlearn a few things about max to get with it in maya...dunno if that applies to soft though.
but this forum is so kick ass(along with the ones at www.highen3d.com)so the transistion will not hurt much.
b

[svenip]

i've worked a while with soft and xsi besides maya and here's what i think.

xsi is a very very professionell tool since 1.5-2.0 came out. it has a good learning curve if you come from soft too. but my opinion is maya is (just for me! don't flog me) the best to work with. xsi has copied nearly every good invention coming out in the past versions of maya. i think of all the painting stuff, etc (the list is long). as i can see it in xsi it's not so nice build into the package like in maya. ok the renderer and the integration (the best one) of mental ray is absolutely fantastic. but this will come soon for maya too and maya has some great connections to renderman.

so to learn maya if you come from xsi isn't so hard i think. you don't have to sit only on one package. learn the methods of 3D any you will find it in every package, just with a different wrapping. only the shortcuts are different :)

[Rob3D31]

Thanks Alpha and Svenip!

Glad you like the forum Boomji....

[monotypic]

i just finished up a one week xsi boot camp.... after learning maya for 3 months.. all i can say is DAMN! xsi scares the crap out of me. maya was an incredibly steep learning curve... but once you get used to everything it just makes sense... xsi on the other hand... well.... everything makes a strange sort of sense to me at the moment.. but its still VERY alien to me.

[wmendez]

the comfort level from what ive heard and seen on different forums is MAYA and MAX are similar and users switching between these two apps are more confortable and the same goes from Lightwave and XSI. I tried to get into Maya coming from the LW world and could not get used to the interface while getting into XSI felt much more comfortable.

[mr.bean]

sam shit, BIGGER pile.

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