moving from lw to maya

[Nicool]

I remember there is on the A|W website a *.pdf documentation to help the graphist to use maya when they are use to 3dstudiomax... It maybe exists for Lightwave :)

[xtrm3d]

thx for te reply..
but nope .. tehy dont have it for lw...
it's seem that they dont know that lw exist.. lol
:rolleyes:

[CIM]

I suggest you assign hotkeys (in Maya) to closely match those of Lightwave.

[Soeren Nielsen]

xtrm3d : yeah I just recently moved to maya also. Very recently really... I started out by calling a good friend and had him on the phone for about an hour telling me alot of great things... things are alot speedier for me in maya now.. still not as speedy as I were in LW, but then again, I havent used it for more than a couple of days.. However, if you want a detailed explanation of what I learned, and found very usefull, then Ill write a longer post :wavey:

[xtrm3d]

@ Soeren Nielsen

cool.. cooll.. i know and i like your work..
plzz..plzzz tell me as much as you can.... :-)
:thumbsup: :beer:

[Ed Lee]

I moved from LW/Max to Maya, and have been using Maya for almost a year now and am happy with it. I find LW still has more modeling tools and it's faster, but you can get around the problems with shortage in Maya's modeling tools with free scripts and plug-ins that you can download from www.highend3d.com - you prb already know that.

What can I say..congrats(?)...

Ed--

[Soeren Nielsen]

First of all, I got rid of the default keys for Low, Medium and High quality display of objects.. and used them (1,2,3) for Object, vertices, faces. selection mode instead.. (alt+3 for edge selection).
No need to have them since you can just press and hold d + LMB and you can select the different quality levels.. Thats one thing that frees up some keys. (note tab'ing d cycles trough the different quality levels)
If you want to extrude faces and keep them together, then go into Polygons/Tool Options/Keep faces together you probably allready know this, but still handy to know none the less
a quick way to change between object, world and local mode (when using translate, rotate and scale) is to hold down the keys assigned for that tool, and pressing LMB and holding it also.. then you can change easy. ie. w+lmb

I know your used to using the mouse pointer as action center in LW for modeling, and I miss to be able to do that.. however it is pretty easy to quickly to get something a little similar in maya.

Try selecting a face. Press insert (pivot mode) move the pivot to where you want.. now this is pretty simple, and you probably allready knew this also. What I didnt know myself, was that if I press that small circle that appears at the top of the manipulator, (so it is filled) it will be locked, and it will save the pivot for the selected face.

Also, when you are working with subdivision surfaces, allways try to keep it at level 0. Here's why.
Lets say you have subd surfaces at level 3, and you want to convert to poly.. Then you will need to go to level 3 and it will then convert the whole mesh to level 3. You will have something like a smoothed version now, which isnt very good to work with as you know. Add your detail manually :)

One thing I didnt find very good, was assigning the different hotkeys to match LW's it just didnt work very well for me. Im going to learn most of the default Maya keys first.. Will be alot easier to get help from other maya users then.

Also download MJpolytools, very nice stuff. www.maya3d.dk check it out :)
And lastly dont have the outliner window open if you dont need it, it uses ALOT of RAM

I probably forgot alot of things, and you might allready know alot of this, but I found it usefull to know.
Hope it helps some way.

[iso]

hey xtrm3d

i have seen your stuff in LW and it is amazing, is there a reason that you wouldn't continue to model in LW and just import them into maya?

[CIM]

Why even waste time trying to model with Maya when you have Lightwave!? You can easily model in Lightwave and export over to Maya for animation or whatever. Use Maya2LW (http://www.3danim.de/pages/free_stuff/maya2lw/maya2lw.html) for export back to Lightwave for surfacing and rendering or you could use one of the free Renderman renderers out there.

[xtrm3d]

yo thanx for so much answer..
it's nice to see that the maya comunity is a cool one like the lw comunity...


yes sur i can still use lw to model...
but i feel that to be able to do trouble shooting .. i should be able to handle every aspect of maya...modelling too

and no .. i cannot use lw to sufacing and rendering.. cause our next project has to be done in maya.. from the begining to the end...:shrug:


one more time thanx you for the kind words.. and the help..


merci beaucoup:wavey:

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