Maya 8 Release!

#121

Ah what the hey, I’m not a programmer at all, how could I understand how difficult it is to circumvent this sort of problem. All I can do is to point them to Cinema4d… really hope some of the techies at Alias/Autodesk are reading this.

Cinema4d has a render-to-picture-viewer mode that opens up a picture viewer, and displays the rendering process in there. Updates are the same as when you render in the main window, AND you can work on your scene without disturbing the render. Pressing ESC stops the render.

I think this sort of thing is really good to have for tweaks, and I think even a few minutes added to a render OVERALL would still not offset the usefulness of having the ability to work while your render is going on, WHILE being able to see how the render looks.

Terence

#122

you can do the same in maya with mentalray, though it’s not as elegant as some might want (including me :D)…

  1. use batch rendering
  2. use mentalray’s imf_disp utility to display the rendering process (though this is broken in maya 7… must take a look to see if it’s back in maya 8 :))

I also have to agree … Click and drag primitive objects … isnt very helpful.

you can allways switch back to the old creation way if you don’t like it.

but i find it very easy to create greeeble like scenes, but in a more manually way:
just click here and there with the tool to create default sized objects at the respective position, or click to place and drag to scale. And if you click to create over an live object, the newly created one snaps onto the live and aligns itself to the normal :slight_smile:

here’s a fast 50 seconds scene that would have taken at least 10 minutes before :slight_smile:

#123

Sheesh! I could have used this a few weeks ago! I had this inordinate number of spikes I had to put onto a robot arm… what a pain that was! Geo Constraint, Normal Constraint, Position, Delete Constraints… over and over… ARRGH!

I want so much to play with Maya 8 now… for some stupid reason, even though I have downloaded the installation package (thanks plat membership) and am currently using Maya 7, the webkey program that they asked me to download to my desktop and run keeps saying that there is No license found in the input license file. I have no idea what is going on. I am using winxp64, i wonder if any other winxp64 users are having the same problem… Anyway, my dealer indicates that processing to get a license would take a week. A WEEK! Sigh…

Terence

#124

I dont really understand how ppl can think the new primitive function is worse than before. It must be because you have done primitive creating the stone-age way too long to let go of it.

I cant se ANY positive thing with the way maya created primitives before. One click and you get your primitive right in middle, one size fit all and 99% of the time you dont want it that way and need to move scale etc by hand. Really annoying acctually if you have used other 3d programs with click and drag primitives function (like strata 3d had it 10 years ago!). I just think many maya users are so anti-max that they just reacts because max have the same feature, who cares aslong as maya gets better?

#125

Hi,…what do u mean with “Zaps archviz shader”
Thanks

#126

I cant se ANY positive thing with the way maya created primitives before.

Yeah agreed…
Funny trivia: nearly a decade ago Alias PowerAnimator, the precursor of Maya, had almost the same thing - the primitives would appear wherever you clicked the cursor, and with snapping switched on it was almost as cool as this new one. Obviously Max stole that

ducks and runs :smiley:

Seriously, the reason Maya has lagged in polys for so long is because Alias used to be all about NURBS, they in fact ruled the industry for years in that field. Max used polys because they were more basic, simpler.
Then ironically (and honestly who in the late 90’s would have predicted it?) came the swing over to poly modeling. Then came Wings, MJPolyTools, Byrontools, Koshigaya, Modo, Silo, ZBrush, Mudbox, Hexagon etc… and of course now the planners at Alias probably think something like:
“If someone pays 7000 for a software, they’ll have no problem paying another 99 for Silo, anyway there are free alternatives and free plugins to customize Maya, not to mention the power of MEL which lets people design their own tools… so why should we waste millions trying to catch up to these other tools? Better we should focus on the stuff we’re really good at.” And I guess I can see their point.

.

#127

When I used to use Max I got SO sick of numerically evening out my hand dragged proportions.

In Maya if I press Cube, I get a cube. It’s that simple.

Got milk?

#128

I totaly get your point. But that coin got 2 sides, eather thinking like that because silo is so darn cheap and maya want to develop the more advanced features that they are known for like fluids and dynamics that bigger companys use.

But on the other hand why should someone that have already paid 7000 for a 3d-software need to buy another 3d-software to get good modeling tools? If you pay 7000 you would expect there to be up2date modelingtools, because imo I think the “standard users” models alot more often than they for example make complex particle/fluid solutions.

But I can get that maya 8 dosnt come with too exciting modeling tools becuase I think the 64bit, multithreading and preformance updates took alot of effort and alot of rewrite of tools. Its a shame tho that I have to read forumposts from platinum users to know whats new in maya8 because the featureslist on autodesk dosnt even cover half of the updates. Theres not even videos on the new features.

In max you could just check the radiobutton from box to cube to get your cube proportions always :stuck_out_tongue:

#129

btw when im at it, does anyone know if the bevel tool have gotten any visualfeedback in maya8? Or is there a plugin/MEL script to maya7 that got this. It always takes some make/undo to get the bevel right because the numbers dosnt tell me much (specially not when its sometimes make supersmall bevels with same numbers that makes a big bevel on another model).

Well off with to the positive new things that actually come with maya8. Of what I have read here there are alot of little functions that will make my day and the performanceboost sounds terrific =) The extrude is under one command finally (one less need for a MEL script), who made up the idea to have different tools for vert,edge and poly extrude in the first place? :wink:

#130

A rebuttle? How… quaint. I’ll make sure to remember that tip for the next time I never use Max again.

:scream:

(hehe sorry I’m bored)

#131

I think I’ve been using Maya for too long. Am I the only one who doesn’t have a problem with the modeling tools in Maya? :scream:

It could do with some better curve manipulation tools. Something for sculpting curves would be sweet.

#132

oh, this is a excellent big new, una noticia muy muy grande, bravo, Maya 8.0, anabasis to maya 9.0, oh yeahhhhh,.

#133

Installed Maya8, feels abit different, maybe is the menus has got new names e.g. Polygon become Mesh etc.

The response is abit senstive now, when I zoom near my object closely, it overshot & zoom in inside my object.

Well, need to get use to this New ‘Maya’. :slight_smile: Hope that Maya can ‘evolve’ to a better 3d program everytime but don’t ‘die’ like 3ds Max as I use Max before, it crash alot although it
had some useful feature.

Btw, still miss the old name “Alias Maya”, too bad, it change to Autodesk Maya, anyway,
it still started with the letter ‘A’ infront only sounds different now. :sad:

#134

If you look through every last entry you’ll realize theres a lot of stuff on there from 2002 and many of the entries arent actually feature requests, but people leaving messages that the site needs to be emptied and start over again to get more accurate results.

Not quite sure about the spamming tho. You’re only allowed 200 points so spread across multiple items. I think if every maya user, even the PLE users and bootleggers were to sign up and vote properly there’s be great results. But some maya chatrooms and forums are filled with people who never even heard of the site. And even when I tell them they still don’t go and vote.

#135

Hey, guys,

Any improvement in Subds with Mental ray? Like suport for partial creases?

[]s
carlos

#136

please don’t ban me for bringin put the topic… plese??? (begging)

I went to …a place…somewhere… yesterday and they had about 20 systems with maya 8 installed. I watched the install process using their bootleg copy and it was pretty straight forward regarding the awdat stuff.

So if it were me (like when I got maya 5), seeing as how you already paid big $$$ for the thing, you might as well download the keygen and get your maya 8 working now and have some fun while you wait for autodesk to send you the proper stuff.

#137

Hehe maybe you havent tasted the sweet fruit of temptation from other packages so you dont have a clue what your missing. Like before the computer or mobilephone was invented you never needed/longed for it and now you cant live without them :stuck_out_tongue:

You can check some features out like Selection highlightning and topology in SILO so you know of some features that would be nice to have, here: http://www.nevercenter.com/tutorials/videos/

topology btw is similar to the “pen tool” in modo 201 or like one of the tools in Andreas polyspeed for 3dsmax (cant remember the name of it) where you just can paint the mesh onto objects. If there was a tool like that in maya I guess it would work together with the “make object live” function.

#138

you mean paint geometry? there is a script for maya called geometryPainttool.

#139

I’m loving this new paint selection tool in Maya 8, can’t seem to find the shortcut though??? Anybody?

The menu change is driving me crazy. When I first downloaded it, the polygon menu wasn’t even in my hotbox by default? I added it but still??? Its really slow navigating until you get used to where things are located. The High Quality rendering took me forever to find, then it turned out it was right infront of my face the whole time…

Personally, I didn’t mind the old names and locations?

#140

But on the other hand why should someone that have already paid 7000 for a 3d-software need to buy another 3d-software to get good modeling tools?

Yes, I know, doesn’t sound fair does it…

But life is unfair sometimes… and how could Maya hope to ever surpass Silo or Modo now? They have a big head start, and they started clean from scratch, with totally modern code. It’s a waste of effort, duplication of effort. And as long as they can’t surpass them, if we’re not happy with the modeling tools in Maya, we might as well buy one of them. Or both.

Me, I’m perfectly happy with the modeling tools in Maya. I never model mechanical things, only organics, maybe that’s why. I bet I only take like 10 - 20% longer to model the stuff I do, than if I did it in for instance Max. And since 50% of the total modeling time is spent thinking and planning, you see how faster modeling is very low on my list of priorities. :slight_smile:

Of course another option for Autodesk is to simply buy out one of those better modeling apps and add it into Maya. It would probably be cheaper than trying to duplicate the development.