New(ish) to Maya, need advice on workflow/technique

#1

(I’m extremely frustrated, but really really trying to keep a lid on it here. Thanks for your patience. :slight_smile: )

I’m using Maya 2014 and it has been a real nightmare so far. Normally I wouldn’t even ask this sort of question, I’d just read the manual, and start toying around with it, but that’s proven to be extremely frustrating and a HUGE time-sink for me. Just today, I was trying to use some softbodies for some guts falling and hitting the floor. Maya’s built in softbodies just… didn’t work, period. So I looked around, discovered that there’s a bullet plugin I never even knew existed. Cool! Got that working, looked decent enough, but when rendering, none of the softbodies moved, they just started out in their final position. So obviously I need to cache the simulation… erm… somehow… Well a couple hours later I’ve concluded that, for whatever reason, you just can’t cache the bullet softbodies. That would have been swell to know about before I spent 3-4 hours working on this shot. So that’s what the point of this post is: to gain some insight into maya, and to (hopefully) avoid some pitfalls like the one above.

I’ve got another shot that calls for a tree to fall in the middle of a road. I figure the best way to animate the tree falling is to use softbodies, correct?

Now… how do I go about doing that? Should I use Maya’s built-in softbody system, the bullet softbody system, or something else entirely?

On a side note/question, is “undo” reliable? I’m beginning to suspect it isn’t… A common theme with my experience in Maya is that if you don’t setup something right the first time, you may as well scrap everything and start over from an earlier back-up of your scene, because it’s going to screw it up even further if you just undo and try again. For example, when working with bullet, the scene would sometimes break and get to the point where whenever I tried to “Create a dynamic rigid body object”, it would create 2 rigid body objects for one mesh, and the mesh would disappear entirely during the simulation. That, or I would be completely unable to move the mesh, as it would just snap back to its original position once the simulation started.

#2

Oh man, you jumped into the deep end of the worst parts of Maya :wink: haha
I feel for you a tiny bit. But then again, why do people take on projects without knowing the tools? :curious:

Bullet is hell, and soft bodies are so 90’s… use nCloth.

Undo (set to infinite) works most of the time… again Bullet is pretty hoaky … but if you read about it, you would know you cant move the objects around once they are made into rigids wihtout much difficulty or how to create rigids without having multiple copies.

I always suggest doing more research such as online videos and tutorials, and read here on CGTalk or other forums to see what other people have learned, what works and what doesnt before diving into a real shot. And of course doing a few working tests before telling a client you can do something.

So read up on nCloth, it’s fine for a falling tree.

#3

I did read up on the tools to an extent. But of course, none of the show-stopping problems show up until there’s a show to stop. :frowning:

NCloth eh? Now that I HAVE had success with in the past, but for cloth-y things. :smiley: I just assumed that was only used for making thin sheets behave like cloth. Would it be able to handle something like a thin branch deforming as it lands? It wouldn’t end up looking hollow, would it?

Thanks for your reply! :smiley:

#4

You can use nCloth for just about anything and you can make it soft or rigid and everywhere in between. There are plenty of threads, tutorials, and videos on non-clothy nCloth.

Seek and ye shall find the solution! (even in the forum threads from this past year) :wink:

#5

Sounds great, thanks for your help!