Maya 8 wishlist!

[mlykke]

render out a small thumbnail, like you would for an icon, with the same file name as the scene and keep it in the scene folder. You can automate that process too. Adjust your file viewer settings to thumbnail. I’d rather NOT have Maya spend system resources trying to render out a thumbnail preview of all my scenes every time i want to load one. It’s just not efficient.

Its not a rendered preview, but a scaled down screenshot that is saved with the file when you save it. Fast, easy, and always up todate.

[Arcon]

i’d like to see occlusion that can be integrated into a single color pass. might seem weird but that would save huge amounts of render time and production time spent setting up occlusion scenes etc. also if light(s) could be linked to the occlusion node and their effect on the occlusion scaled, then the occlusion could lessen in bright areas, the way it should be IRL.

sometimes the finer control of a multi-pass is simply wasted on smaller projects that require fast turnaround but still high quality.

[revilo3D]

i’d like to see occlusion that can be integrated into a single color pass. might seem weird but that would save huge amounts of render time and production time spent setting up occlusion scenes etc. also if light(s) could be linked to the occlusion node and their effect on the occlusion scaled, then the occlusion could lessen in bright areas, the way it should be IRL.

sometimes the finer control of a multi-pass is simply wasted on smaller projects that require fast turnaround but still high quality.

Hey Arcon… you can do this by connecting the occulsion shader into the diffuse arttribute of a shader - results are just like that. Even better use a mix8 to split all your attributes over differnt shaders and then mix, then output. In addition you can then also use the ctrl_buffers to output on once off render into seperate files. Im not 100% about that last thing but my workmate has become quite the guru with it and it works great. Setup time of normal render but at render time, multiple img seqs are rendered.

Regarding your occulsion based off light - I highly recommend just using ctrl.occlusion shader. It does exactly that and infact does it so well it can be used as an area shadow replacment.

These I would say are more specific requests for mental ray rather than maya… so this problem porblem applies to all apps with a MR renderer

[thinsoldier]

You can do this in Maya! I use it lots. You just need to CTRL + left click on the axis you don’t want, to turn that axis off. Then the centre square thing changes from view based to the two left over axis.

I just tried out modo, At all times ther are 3 small circles on the manipulator that represent the planes of x+y, z+y, and z+x, no extra clicking needed.

I realy love maya, and even if I didn’t I’ve invested far too much of my free time and spare change on it (& I still suck), but it really pisses me off that other apps have continued to add small but significant improvements and time saving features while maya has done nothing much or if they did do something it’s still much easier in other apps (like modo and silo).

for example
If I rename a node in the channel box using spaces, maya fills in the spaces with underscores and lets me keep going. But if I rename a layer using spaces, it throws an error and I have to correct the name. AND I have to grab my mouse to hit the OK button instead of just being able to hit enter and keep going. It’s so DUMB that something so simple hasn’t been improved after all these years.

Another thing about modo, and z-brush, and silo, and 3dsmax and…
I can take a bajillion poly ball of crap I doodled in zbrush and load it in any of those apps in a fairly quick amount of time and pan/rotate/zoom around it in the viewport pretty darn quickly. But the same object in maya makes it slow to a crawl.

[thinsoldier]

…best thing would be to have a look at some StudioTools tutorials and video’s to see how powerfull these curves can be…

The Maya CV/EP curve system is identical to StudioTools, .

Thats another thing that bugs me. I saw some stuio tools screenshots and it’s quite obvous just how much studiotoosl and maya have in common. If they’re so similar couldn’t they port the visual style of studiotools to maya? Many of you might not want to believe it but sometimes have even a slightly prettier interface can make an appication more fun and less draining to use for hours on end. Especially for new users.

Like imagine learning after effects on AE5 compared to AE7

[thinsoldier]

–more description for newbies about …

LIke how in z-brush if you hold down ctrl and mouse of nearly anything you get a tool-tip that is very lengthy and descriptive. Basically taking the need-to-know stuff out of the help file and embedding it as tooltips in the interface itself.

[thinsoldier]

–
so change button backgrounds from simple gray to transparenced ones.

Or just let users use transparent .png/.gif files

[cbernardo]

A better UV creation for Subds, if the put all the options of Poly UVs for Subds will be great! Or a way to remenber the creases when convert a Subd for a Poly.

[]s
carlos

[thinsoldier]

• I second mech7: Pop-up Window explaining the tool usage, like in Zbrush.

Any menu item added to the shelf should also have a detailed tooltip.
Alt+clicking a shelf icon should open its option box window
Shelf icons should have a right click context menu with some of the options being
Delete, Copy, Paste (for moving an icon from one shelf to another easily)

… I wonder if anyone from alias/autodesk has ever read any of these posts?

[thinsoldier]

Something I’ve always wanted is to use illustrator files directly as file textures. So that it would always render sharply no matter what the distance to the camera is.

Cheers,
Pete

yeah, this is something that always confused me as to why it’s not done this way in any app. Especially in video games. If I need a stop sign graphic, why must I have to make a bitmap when I can just have a few simple vector points that are a heck of a lot smaller.

[cbernardo]

And about Shelves, when windows crash all the current added shelves are lost when I open Maya again, maybe if they put a export button like Outlook to save the preferences in a file, I think Lightwave do that, it will be great!

[]s
carlos

[Bryan_Y]

yeah, this is something that always confused me as to why it’s not done this way in any app. Especially in video games. If I need a stop sign graphic, why must I have to make a bitmap when I can just have a few simple vector points that are a heck of a lot smaller.

Procedural shaders, such as RenderMan shaders are able to do just that. That is one of the reasons why RenderMan shaders (and RenderMan) is a staple of the film industry and why hardware shading languages are popular. Of course, they don’t read Illustrator files, but are programmed. A vector file, such as an Illustrator file, is not in general designed to be evaluated at random points, which a shader needs to be.

A general purpose programmable shader could in theory be programmed to read a vector format such as an Illustrator file (actually a preprocessed Illustrator file translated into a set of data more easily digested by the shader, assuming it was fairly small), but it wouldn’t be as efficient as a particular programmable shader designed to render a particular thing such as a stop sign in a procedural way.

If you’re willing to learn the basics of programming constructs, as well as the shader programming methodology, and some general concepts with regard to normals, normalization, dot products, distance forumulas, general vector math and efficient culling through the use of bounding geometry, then all that power is at your fingertips through shader programming.

[Arcon]

Setup time of normal render but at render time, multiple img seqs are rendered.

Regarding your occulsion based off light - I highly recommend just using ctrl.occlusion shader. It does exactly that and infact does it so well it can be used as an area shadow replacment.

hi revilo is that ctrl_occlusion available for 6.5…? i’ve seen a version for 7… i should just refuse to work until they buy 7 for me
RE the ctrl_buffers, i’ve tried it before for 6.5 but it is slower to get a well sampled render, and is it correct that a new buffer-store node is needed for every different coloured/textured object? if so then that extra setup time would kill us. our scenes are typically 1,000 - 10,000 objects, 1 or 2 hundred shaders.

thanks for the tip on connecting ao to diffuse, i never thought of that but its kinda obvious, i’ll have a play.

[Kabab]

Thats another thing that bugs me. I saw some stuio tools screenshots and it’s quite obvous just how much studiotoosl and maya have in common. If they’re so similar couldn’t they port the visual style of studiotools to maya? Many of you might not want to believe it but sometimes have even a slightly prettier interface can make an appication more fun and less draining to use for hours on end. Especially for new users.

Like imagine learning after effects on AE5 compared to AE7

I would have to disagree i prefer Maya inferface much more then Studio its much faster.

[revilo3D]

hi revilo is that ctrl_occlusion available for 6.5…? i’ve seen a version for 7… i should just refuse to work until they buy 7 for me
RE the ctrl_buffers, i’ve tried it before for 6.5 but it is slower to get a well sampled render, and is it correct that a new buffer-store node is needed for every different coloured/textured object? if so then that extra setup time would kill us. our scenes are typically 1,000 - 10,000 objects, 1 or 2 hundred shaders.

thanks for the tip on connecting ao to diffuse, i never thought of that but its kinda obvious, i’ll have a play.

regarding ctrl.occulsion- id guess not then. It was only recently programmed

i see with a object count like that it may be an issue :S what about p_megaTK? maybe that can work more in your favour - like i said my workbuddy is the sharp one at this. I will ask tomorrow

Sorry guys… not trying to change topic here

[coccosoids]

are there any news about the launching date of maya 8 ?

[yolao]

-sculpt displacement ala zbrush
-tweak mode with pre-highlight selection
-3d paint options with layer system and real time preview of the maps in the viewport

[dagon1978]

are there any news about the launching date of maya 8 ?

mmm maybe after siggraph?

[cpan]

mmm maybe after siggraph?

yep, 3 more weeks to go

dunno why but i think maya 8 will rock hard despite all the rhumors!! well… it’s one year since maya 7, its got to be good hah mr 3.5 alone will rock infact

[dagon1978]

yep, 3 more weeks to go

dunno why but i think maya 8 will rock hard despite all the rhumors!! well… it’s one year since maya 7, its got to be good hah mr 3.5 alone will rock infact

mr 3.5 :love: i want u :love: