considering switching from lightwave

[SpriteGF]

Originally posted by themaxx
my primary interests are photorealism and character animation.


I believe Maya is very well-endowed in the character animation department. As for photorealism, Mental Ray (included with Maya 6) should give you the photorealism you need.

there are a couple of interface issues that concern me: i noticed that my scroll wheel doesn't work on the palettes; the inspectors seem slightly clunky (expanding/collapsing a section should be instantaneous on a dual 2g g5, shouldn't it?). i lost the outliner behind the main window a couple of times. i'm willing to adapt, but these are things i noticed during 15 minutes of play. is the interface going to drive me nuts with little things like this?

The user interface drove me nuts in the beginning, especially since it's not nearly as responsive as Lightwave was on OS X. Scroll wheels should (finally) work in Maya 6, but yes, it is annoying.

The Outliner can be integrated into the main window as a panel (click on the appropriate button in the Toolbox, below the tools on the left-hand bar). Because of my limited screen space, I use Exposé extensively, so I tear off as many panels as I can into separate windows, and, when I need them, I just click my fifth mouse button and it shows me my entire Maya workspace.

can i do everything "out of the box", or am i going to need to buy additional components? (i realize that "everything" is a broad term, but i don't know what i don't know.)

Believe me, Maya's feature set is PLENTY. A lot of the good stuff (Fluid Effects, Hair, Ocean, Fur, Cloth) is unfortunately not available on the Mac version (Maya Unlimited hasn't been ported --- I'm hoping that they delayed it so they could get a speedy Mach-O version working). A bit hard to answer your question, yes ...

[pasto]

Rigid bodies are one of the best thing in Maya imho. Works perfectly and quite simply.

pasto

[Ziah]

whlep i ise both im moving into maya as well they are features i wish it had simialr to light wave and vice versa ..its a good app i think if you could keep both it would really be a benfit ...even when you decide to do free lance work its not like you have to maintain um constantly ..

look at it this way they are both great appss and you be twice as qualified

don't limit urself unless it really is required

[dmaas]

I usually hate in-line replies but it seems appropriate here... I started using Maya about a year ago in conjunction with Lightwave, which I've used for nearly 10 years (since v2 on the Amiga :) ).

my primary interests are photorealism and character animation.
You will find Maya's animation tools far better than Lightwave's, especially IK, constraints, expressions, and the ability to animate essentially anything (like modeling operations).

For photorealism, you should probably stick with Lightwave's surfacing and renderer. Maya's internal renderer sucks by comparison. I haven't tried Mental Ray yet. (I use RenderMan for most things here)

i noticed that my scroll wheel doesn't work on the palettes; the inspectors seem slightly clunky (expanding/collapsing a section should be instantaneous on a dual 2g g5, shouldn't it?).
Maya's interface is a tad "clunkier" but it doesn't bother me much. The only thing I really miss from Lightwave is the ability to move and rotate a camera while looking through it. (anyone know a way to do this?)

i lost the outliner behind the main window a couple of times.
Don't open the Outliner as a separate window. Open it as one of the viewport windows. (use the "Panel" menu inside the viewport and choose "Outliner")

how hard is it to move models between LW and Maya?
There are no general tools as far as I know. Most studios end up writing custom converters. Also keep in mind Maya does not handle very complex polygonal models as well as Lightwave. It is designed much more for NURBS and SubDs.

I know Digital Domain has a system for getting SubD models from Lightwave to Maya, animating them, and then bringing them back into Lightwave. But it's not publicly available.

can i do everything "out of the box", or am i going to need to buy additional components?
Maya is pretty comprehensive out of the box. I wouldn't say there are any "essential" plugins. The only "add-on" I have is MTOR (Pixar's RenderMan interface).

[alivegy]

Originally posted by dmaas
Maya's interface is a tad "clunkier" but it doesn't bother me much. The only thing I really miss from Lightwave is the ability to move and rotate a camera while looking through it. (anyone know a way to do this?)




That's very easy to do. Eiher hit alt and the mouse button to rotate and pan through the window. Or you could select the camera that you're looking through and in the channel editor select which axis you want to rotate or move in. Then just middle-mousebutton click and drag in the viewport window.

Mental Ray is an excellent renderer for photorealism and is much more flexible(also complex) than most other renderers save PRMAN, and a lot of the updates in Maya 6 sound like they only improve on it's functionality.

As everyone else it's rigid body dynamics work well and are flexible enough for basic task such as you mentioned, and it's particle system is strong as well.

You also get the MEL language which pretty much let's you do about anything in the program that you can imagine, and is fairly simple to learn.

[SpriteGF]

dmaas: You can select your camera and, in the viewport that you want to look through, select panel menu Panels > Look Through Selected.

[dmaas]

That's very easy to do. Eiher hit alt and the mouse button to rotate and pan through the window. Or you could select the camera that you're looking through and in the channel editor select which axis you want to rotate or move in.
Thanks but that is not exactly what I want. I want to move or rotate the camera about its origin (not about a "center of interest" as with Alt-drag). The channel or graph editor works but that's only one axis at a time. It's also important that this be done in the view panel looking through the camera. In Lightwave you can be looking through the camera, then click-drag to move the camera or rotate in heading/pitch about its origin. This is really helpful for precisely aiming the camera.

(which reminds me, one tip for LW->Maya transition, the Maya rotation controls are quite a bit different from Lightwave, though if you change the axis ordering you can get approximately the LW Heading-Pitch-Bank behavior)

[alivegy]

if you go to the viewport and go to the view menu -> camera tools -> Yaw-Pitch tool. This seems to be the tool you are looking for, you can rotate the camera around it's axis in the viewport

[dmaas]

Thanks! That and the "Fly Tool" take care of what I need.

[themaxx]

thanks a ton for the replies. not sure what i'm going to do just yet.. i'm going to wait for LW8 to arrive at least; play with the learning edition some more, then decide. thanks!

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