Autodesk Maya 2008 Ext 2 demo movies

[Cometsoft]

Thanks for pointing out that link. Looks great!

Glad to see these modeling enhancements coming to the core package. I've heard a lot about Nex, but far as I know it doesn't run on a Mac.

[SpaXe]

I do not think that they actually inplemented NEXtools into Maya. That's my guess anyhow. It doesn't look the same.

But good stuff. Thanks for sharing!

[xstijn]

I do not think that they actually inplemented NEXtools into Maya. That's my guess anyhow. It doesn't look the same.

But good stuff. Thanks for sharing!

No, they haven't implented NEX into Maya, but they surely took a look at the toolset available in NEX :rolleyes:

I think these are some great improvements overall for just an extension (this in autodesk/alias style would normally be a x.5 upgrade). I really like the new poly enchancements, although they should have been implented years ago, it's still nice to see that they added some nice stuff to the quite old toolset. The skin/muscle features really look amazing, i really like the ability to pain wrinkles or make the skin slide along a bone as he's previewing.

I don't normally say it, but:
Autodesk, good work! :thumbsup:

[PaulAdams]

I thought it was very NEX like too. Even the 'b' hotkey for the soft selection is the same. Some decent tools there, much needed (should've been added long ago of course) but none the less.. great to have stuff Max has had for ages. Topo tools next maybe?

[GennadiyKorol]

I thought it was very NEX like too. Even the 'b' hotkey for the soft selection is the same. Some decent tools there, much needed (should've been added long ago of course) but none the less.. great to have stuff Max has had for ages. Topo tools next maybe?


Dude, 'b' hotkey was used in Maya as long as I can remember back (version 4.5) to resize the artisian brush and soft mod tool radius.

[Kabab]

Pretty nice update...

I don't think people can really complain about the poly tools in Maya anymore...

The muscle stuff is quiet impressive!

[Buexe]

Pretty nice update...

I don't think people can really complain about the poly tools in Maya anymore...

The muscle stuff is quiet impressive!

I agree. My favourite modelling tool is now Artisan with smooth mesh preview, feels much better IMHO than in one of those sculpting apps, especially the "relax" mode is superb.

[uncle_frankie]

Dude, 'b' hotkey was used in Maya as long as I can remember back (version 4.5) to resize the artisian brush and soft mod tool radius.

Since version 1.0 I think?

As for the future LSCM or ABF+ uv tools and could somebody please fix the crash when you undo a split poly action. Been there since 2.5?

[NUKE-CG]

I wonder if the NEX tools forums got users whining about plagiarism too, because from what I see, all of their features aren't invented by them either.

3 threads about Ext2, 3 thread filled with users taking an unusual stance on software companies adding functionality.

If NEX is so great, they'll add new features to keep it attractive, or drop their $150 price tag. Lighten up.

[cresshead]

just can't please some people eh!:)

maya get new functions for modeling and muscles...and people complain!
3dsmax gets 2 full releases within 1 subscription year and people moan
lightwave get 2 major FREE point updates and they still get moaned at

weird!

[emeyers]

I do feel a little bad for the dRaster guys, seeing some of their core tools are now useless in v2008 onward, although I applaud Alias/Autodesk for finally implementing these very important modeling enhancements. Now, combined with Artisan and the new sub-d mode, I think Maya has one of the very best toolsets available.
Of course, NEX's Quad-Draw and Sliding tools are still irreplaceable :)

[mental]

I'm not sure what new features dRaster will add to Nex v1.5 but it seems like they've put quite a bit of time into it.

I just wish somebody would write a solid, well intergrated tool similar to Jason Schliefer's GreasePencil (http://jonhandhisdog.com/shh-life-er/index.php?s=greasepencil) or Pixar's 'Review Sketch tool' (http://millimeter.com/mag/video_tool_time_pixar/index.html) for Maya. That would be a plugin that I would gladly pay for.

[NolanSW]

Wow, Very cool stuff indeed...until the end of the last video (the mocap took some of the cool out of it) . Amazing to see wrinkle maps, self collision and smart collision all be able to be viewed in real-time without having to sim it.

Well, crap, now I'm going to have to go off and try to attempt to model some muscle guy too in order to play with this when it comes out. Finally some Maya releases for the rigging geeks out there.

[etobler]

Dude, 'b' hotkey was used in Maya as long as I can remember back (version 4.5) to resize the artisian brush and soft mod tool radius.I think he meant, the creators of NEX came up with the idea of integrating a toggle and resizing function. tap b to turn it on/off, hold b and drag to resize. artisan never did that as far as i know so it was new with NEX. Gennadiy, your attitude towards the NEX team is obviously biased. you go out of your way to discredit them. I have been anxiously waiting for your tool to be released since my mother started breast feeding me as a baby and i still dont have it. stop being a sore loser and excuse maker.

anyway, back onto maya, personally, i'm always happy to see new features in maya but it's sad to see how little innovation comes from the maya team. nCloth is nice but I can't use it because my company can't afford it.

[GennadiyKorol]

etobler: Hey,

I actually responded to somebody else, don't think my post was somehow related to NEX, but...

They came up with an idea of toggle and resize function? Artisan never used b to resize brush? Soft mod tool never used b either, right? I don't know what is the Maya version you are using, but I can't help but not to agree with you.
Your other point is just drivel, excuse me, but I don't feel like addressing it.



On the positive note for dRaster guys, I don't think ext2 comes close to NEX, there are many things that NEX does much better (even though I do not regard NEX as top notch product, which is another story).

I can share my thoughts about ext2 beta now since the feature list became public.

So ext2 is... well, that's what happens when people implement something without understanding why they are doing it.

The selection highlighting is purely cosmetic. It is not raycasting (so you're selecting things you don't even see (!) behind the model, makes you want to go punch puppies after you've done wrong selections with it).

It won't select the closest component to the cursor, you have to almost precisely be over the component you wish to select or you will once again hit the component behind the model and have bad words for Autodesk.

Most importantly, the selection tools are the same, you don't get any workflow streamlining with this. You don't have preselections (so you can't invoke actions on prehilites). Essentially, the selection is exactly the same, with the prehilite over it, which honestly isn't much of a help at all.

Another thing is that prehilite ignores the manipulators. So you will hover over the manipulator and Maya prehilites the face behind it, so you actually have the feeling that manipulator will be ignored, but it won't. Again, half baked stuff.

The speed isn't really great too, they refresh Maya scene every time you move the mouse, so on my machine on 40k model the 'prehiliting' becomes a slideshow http://henrykorol.net/betaBoard/Smileys/orange/wink.gif

The multi component selection mode makes no sense at all, you always select 3 components, where for selections you might just want to start with vertex and then select only vertices.

The soft selection modes for move/rotate/scale are a nice addition, seam preservation works (although it's tolerance based), and I seriously dislike the way the falloff is displayed. But those are definitely steps in right direction.

Tweak mode works for move tool only, if I haven't missed anything, it doesn't prehilite falloff for the transformation. The tweak speed seems to be slower than that of soft modification.

And, prehilite works for polygon components only. From creators of Maya I would expect prehilites for entire application, say nurbs curves, locators for animators, nurbs components, etc.

Overall I feel like it's a step in right direction, but I see no reason for NEX guys to be even slightly worried, their implementation for this stuff is way better (except for the surface falloff, which is much smoother in Maya).


That's just my opinion on it, feel free to use tomatoes if desired :P

[lovisx]

I've been using b to resize artisian since I started using maya in version 5. And it's been available for soft mod since version 8 I think.

[Buexe]

b hotkey was already in Maya 1.0 for Artisan brush resize.

[etobler]

Not to beat a dead horse but you guys all seem to be blind! I said that NEX integrated a toggle in addition to the the resize. That means that you can tap the b key to turn it on or off. Soft mod and artisan didn't have an on/off, they just had a resize function. Soft selection does. So it's not just a resize, everyone knows that artisan and soft mod use the b key to resize but the NEX guys added the feature to also toggle it on or off. get it? it's the same hotkey used two different ways. simple but genius. It's not a big thing but it was new with NEX and it saved the user from having to use anoter hotkey to enable or disable it.

Gennadiy, thank you for telling us about the new ex2 and sorry for the rant. I'm not surprised that they did the highlighting that way. they wanted to take the safe route like modo.

[goleafsgo]

I'm not surprised that they did the highlighting that way. they wanted to take the safe route like modo.

A few things that I wanted to add...

The short time span between 2008 and 2008 Extension 2, combined with limitations for what should go into an Extension means that not everything that we want to get done in this area is complete. What I mean is that when you look at something like the muscles plugin you could, for the most part, just give the plugin to users and away they go.

Features like soft select and pre-select-highlight are new for Maya and at some point we have to say that what we have is solid and provides enough of a benefit to customers that we are good to ship. I think we have accomplished that for Extension 2 (I actually begin to cry when I have to fire up older cuts of Maya without Extension 2 features) but we aren't done yet. There are still more features to implement which I'm sure will make everybody happy.

That being said, I will comment on a couple of the points.

It won't select the closest component to the cursor, you have to almost precisely be over the component you wish to select or you will once again hit the component behind the model and have bad words for Autodesk.

The distance that PSH will go out is controlled by the "select size" in the main prefs. I think by default (4) it's a little bit tight but you can up it easily enough...I normally use 8 - 12.


The multi component selection mode makes no sense at all, you always select 3 components, where for selections you might just want to start with vertex and then select only vertices.
This was by design. The feedback we got was that you should be able to stay in multi component mode and be able to click on any of the components. If you box drag out a selection then it will look at what you already have selected and go with that component. eg. if you have some edges selected while in multi component mode and you box drag you will select edges...if you have faces selected when in multi component mode and you box drag you select faces...

, and I seriously dislike the way the falloff is displayed.
Is it the colours we chose or...?


You don't have preselections (so you can't invoke actions on prehilites). Essentially, the selection is exactly the same, with the prehilite over it
That is correct. In Extension 2 commands will not automatically pick up what is highlighted, and "ls -sl" won't return what is highlighted. There are a bunch of reasons why this is the way it is for Extension 2 which I won't go into...but the ls command does have a flag for returning what is being highlighted so any hotkeys you write could do this.
So something like...

string $selection = `ls -sl`;
if (0 == `size($selection)`)
{
$selection = `ls -psh`;
}
...do something here...

...will do what you want for now. I admit that this could be made more automatic.

That's all I've got for now :). Hopefully everyone likes what we've done once they've had a chance to play with it :thumbsup:


Actually I've got one more thing to add...

I was at Siggraph this past year and was talking to a guy about some issues that he was having with marking menus on the Mac. He sent me an email after Siggraph to remind me what we talked about but I lost some emails shortly after so I couldn't reply back. So if that guy ends up reading this...I think we fixed your issues in the 2008 service pack that should also be out soon too. I say I *think* we fixed your issues so hopefully you have access to the service pack and can check it out. Shoot me another email if you actually see this...

[kelgy]

I hardly use maya's sculpting tools.
Its mostly move, scale, split polygon/edge loop tool, merge,

repeat and rinse.

But I guess its because my meshes are always being sent into zbrush so i never had enough poly count to be using soft modification and the sculpting tool very much.

Maya muscle looks really cool. Love the elbow wrinkle and muscle jiggle effect.

[drthunder]

Tim,

If you've fixed the marking menu behavior on the Mac, I will bow to you as a god AND root for your hockey team for ONE full month.

[goleafsgo]

Tim,

If you've fixed the marking menu behavior on the Mac, I will bow to you as a god AND root for your hockey team for ONE full month.

Unfortunately we only have one more month to go...no playoffs for us this year :sad:

I had heard some complaining about problems with marking menu's on the Mac but it always seemed that some people had slightly different problems then others so we never knew if it was hardware/drivers or what, but there were a couple of things that I think were hitting everybody on the Mac.

We fixed one issue where if you were gesturing (i.e. just going in a direction and not wanting to actually see the menu) it would pause a bit before firing off the command.
Then there was another issue where if you were using a marking menu at the edges of the screen that it would offset the menu and you could end up hitting an incorrect menu.

I have to say that I have not tested these two personally (I don't use a Mac) but I mentioned them to the correct person and I saw a fix go in for them into the upcoming service pack for 2008. That being said, if anyone is planning on upgrading to 2008 just so they can get these fixes then don't take my word for it. Find someone who has access to the service pack that can confirm that they are fixed. Lawyers/Managers would freak out on me if someone made a purchasing decision based on me saying that something was fixed.

[circusboy]

What are folks viewing the movies with?
I keep getting 'error on page'.

[fahr]

Let me just throw out a small "OMFG" in regards to the marking menu fixes for mac. :)

I was the guy you talked to at SIGGRAPH and it's great to hear that my bug report got passed on and, better yet, FIXED!

Maya on the mac is getting better and better with each new release, but the issues with the marking menus were pretty much making it painful to use compared to the pc version. I can't tell you how excited I am to try out Service Pack 2 now. :)

Thanks so much listening to your users! It's great to hear feedback from the maya development team on these boards. I think it goes a long way towards silencing the "Autodesk doesn't care about maya or its users" people that troll these forums...

[goleafsgo]

Glad I found you :) Give it try when it's out and let us know if all is well.

[GennadiyKorol]

Hey Tim,

I really appreciate your work, I think from programming perspective most of this stuff is decent (my hats off to the one implementing true surface falloff, even though it could use some optimization). But from the design stand point the team has just lost the touch with reality, in my opinion.

I also discovered that mutli component selection works ONLY in "object-component" selection mode, if you use it in pure component mode (using F9 for instance) Maya is going to select vertex faces. And that is EXTREMELY SLOW.

On 10k model my Maya simply hangs whenever I have prehilite on and accidentally go into vertex face selection or enter mutli selection in component mode (which should work). I have to wait until it unhangs without moving my mouse (or it will hang for some more minutes again) and quickly exit the mutli component mode in order to be able to work with Maya again.

Edit: And yes, many times multi component mode works on edges/vertices only, ignoring faces until you change the camera angle, might use some refinement here too in my opinion.


The distance that PSH will go out is controlled by the "select size" in the main prefs. I think by default (4) it's a little bit tight but you can up it easily enough...I normally use 8 - 12.

I thought that might fix it, but unfortunately it doesn't work.

The selection doesn't really pick the "closest" component it just works wrong. On models that I tested there are still vertices you have to be precisely over in order to select them (depending on which face you hover over) no matter what radius for selection you set up. Even if I set the pick radius to 100 the selection for edges still doesn't work as it should, hitting components behind the model.

This was by design. The feedback we got was that you should be able to stay in multi component mode and be able to click on any of the components. If you box drag out a selection then it will look at what you already have selected and go with that component. eg. if you have some edges selected while in multi component mode and you box drag you will select edges...if you have faces selected when in multi component mode and you box drag you select faces...

And that is the problem with it, it's not designed correctly. For tweak tool the always in 3 component mode might be desirable. But for selections it makes no sense at all. You almost never select multiple components at a time. You work with one type of component and make operations on it. For the cases where you need to have more than one type of component selected (for instance, hinge edge) you first go into face mode to select faces and then go into edge mode to select the pivot edge. The marquee selection mode definition is good though :)

and I seriously dislike the way the falloff is displayed.
Is it the colors we chose or...?

Yes, the colors and the point kind of way of drawing it. It's not subtle, the points are fat and they really obscure forms during the tweaking. On more or less complex model you stop seeing forms while tweaking which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the tweak.
I didn't really find any way to customize those, nor the colors, nor the soft selection point size.

The addition to ls command for prehiliting is a good addition, when the better prehiliting engine will be implemented.

That's again my feedback on it, I hope it won't be ignored as an angry rant but will be considered as healthy criticism to improve Maya in the future versions.

P.S. You should probably allocate some time to answer emails :P

Cheers :)

[goleafsgo]

That's again my feedback on it, I hope it won't be ignored as an angry rant but will be considered as healthy criticism to improve Maya in the future versions.

P.S. You should probably allocate some time to answer emails :P
Cheers :)

Hey, I have a family life as well as a work life :) can't be online all the time.

And I do take all of this as healthy criticism. Some of the reputation that Autodesk and Alias have gotten over the years for ignoring customers are valid and some aren't but it's actually not hard to tell the difference between the trolls and those that just want their tools to work.

[mental]

@HenryKorol: Could you run a quick test to see if Soft Selection will work on Lattice Points as well? Thanks in advance :)

[GennadiyKorol]

Tim: Cya in my email box later then :)


mental: Yep, it does. Although you don't see the visual feedback on lattice here, SS and reflection options work as expected :)

[NUKE-CG]

Eh, the implementation of the polygon tools, by the sounds of it, are flawed. Again.

Fixed for Maya 2009 one can hope.

[mustique]

Maya Extension 2 features look good on paper and in these videos. Hopefully Maya 2009 - once realeased - will have much more to offer.

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