Maya PLE

[glassblowerscat]

Has anyone learned Maya using their free "Personal Learning Edition?" I've been thinking about doing it, but I don't know how much you can learn without getting extra resources.

[Rich Lee]

from what i hear it can be done. coupled with a good maya book.

[TC]

That's what I'm doing!

Pick up these books:

The Animators Survival Kit- Absolutely the most important book you could possibly read. Read it, learn it, love it. I can't stress that book enough.

The Animation Book- Also a great book, chocked full of resources and much more oriented to 3d animation.

Introducing Maya: 3D for Beginers- It will take you through almost all the aspects of Maya, and animation workflow in general.

My advice, the first thing you should animate is a bouncing ball, (aka, squash strech ball) you'd be suprised how many fundamentals you'll get down once you get it right.

[Rich Lee]

ah yes, the bouncy squishy ball...those where the days.....

[TC]

:D

For me, they ARE the days. :P

[glassblowerscat]

Now to figure out if I have time enough to do it... a much more difficult question.

[Policar]

Max is much better than Maya. Maya's interface is a nightmare.

But yeah, you can learn from it.

[Shaw]

My personal preference is Lightwave ;D

[Rich Lee]

Max is much better than Maya. Maya's interface is a nightmare.

But yeah, you can learn from it.



what makes it better? just curious, im not a max or maya guy...xsi all the way, just curious as to why max is better. although i am working in maya at the moment.

[glassblowerscat]

I'll tell you one thing that makes it not better for many of us: Maya is OSX supported; 3DSMax is not.

And for the sake of argument, I think you'll be hard pressed to find as many production houses (e.g., Industrial Light & Magic) who use 3DSMax as use Maya.

[Rich Lee]

i think max still dominates the world of video games...not sure by how much anymore. but yeah, maya is the feature film 3d animation package of choice as of now. thats only because they dont know how much they are missing out with softimage xsi.

[seantree]

I'm a max user and I really do not see them doing very well in the future unless a nice little price drop comes along. Maya, and XSI are both very affordable now, while max is way out of range. I'm sure the prices of XSI and maya can reach, or exceed those of max when you add on various plugins etc.. As for Maya's UI, it can be troublesome at first but it really works well once you get it set to your personal liking.

[Policar]

Rich, I saw a demo of XSI and I was very impressed. The cloth and hair simulators were sweet, too, and seemed very intuitive. The subdivision surface modelling seemed pretty solid as well. It looks like a great product overall.

I don't like Maya because its interface is unintuitive and it doesn't always seem to function correctly. The subdivision modelling tools which are most useful are well hidden, and I've done a number of extrusions which resulted in bizarre abberations on the mesh, and modelling in general just seems very time consuming and convoluted within the Maya interface. Hypershade has a nicer looking layout than Max's material editor, but in practice it's clumsy and crowded.

Max is great because of its use of modifiers and their parametric properties. You can work with a lot of modifiers before collapsing them, and this allows you to place layers of information upon other layers of information in very cool ways. The modelling tools are excellent...I don't think anything beats editable poly, and the fact that when you select vertices they move to a relative location and not to an absolute location is wonderful. "Soft selection" is more powerful and you can select more than one vertex at a time and see a preview of what it will do. Character studio is also a beast, but hard to use.

Max just seems to have the best interface and best modelling tools and modifiers are a great way of working with a mesh. That said, it's a total rip off at four grand (thank god for educational discounts) and it lacks some of the clothing and hair simulation that make maya and xsi so cool and appealing. Reactor is sweet but it's not enough to justify the price.

I guess it's probably better to start with xsi now than anything else because it's gaining in popularity and it's cheap. Sadly, I know Max best, like it best, but cannot afford it.

[Rich Lee]

Policar, i have opened the max interface only once. so i cant say much about it. but modeling polys in XSI is effing awesome. its subds are soo easy to use. so many cool little tools to make things happen faster. its all about speed with xsi man. i am working on a project in maya right now...and man, do i miss xsi. seriously, it makes me apreciate it so much. anyway, the only thing that i can say maya has over xsi right now is a few little short cut things...like taping space bar in a viewport to make it large. also, the alt key is in a handy place to manipulate camera and whatnot. also the manipulator tools are realy realy nice in maya. xsi just got them, but they are a tad crude right now. anyway, just some minor shite.

good luck with xsi if decide to jump into it, and give me a hollar if you have any questions...

peace

[Rich Lee]

oh yeah, and your right about the maya interface just not behaving properly...like, some buttons just dont want to always work...it seems very fussy.

[bgundu]

I worked at Alias for 6 years developing books and DVDs for people to learn Maya. I was the main author for the Learning Maya book, and the Art of Maya. I also created 5 DVDs starring me showing how to use Maya for beginners: Alias has now bundled them all onto 3 DVDs at a great price. BTW, I used the DVX on them.

http://www.alias.com/eng/education/learning_tools/maya_beginner/maya_beginners_guide_bundle.shtml

Bob

[Rich Lee]

thats pretty cool bob. did you do any of the softimage to maya learning cds?

so do you still do work for alias?

[BLUESPIDER]

Bob- you can hook me up right? We family right? :)

[TC]

$25 is a steal for that set.

[bgundu]

Bob- you can hook me up right? We family right? *:)

I don't even get a real copy. Actually that's not true. They simply renew a 3 month license whenever I need it.

[bgundu]

thats pretty cool bob. did you do any of the softimage to maya learning cds?

so do you still do work for alias?

I did 1 Softimage to Maya CD back in the day. It was a long time ago. Alias isn't worried about Soft anymore. I'm not at Alias fulltime anymore. I do however work for them on a consolation and contract basis.

[TC]

Hey Bob, do you know Jason Schlefer? He used to work at Alias, now he works where I do.

[bgundu]

Hey Bob, do you know Jason Schlefer? He used to work at Alias, now he works where I do.

Wow! A blast from the past! Yeah I know Jason Schliefer. He worked out of the Santa Barbara office while I worked from the Toronto office. We would meet at Siggraph and other office meetings. I helped put together the 2 DVDs he did on character rigging. So I'm assuming you're at Weta? I had two other colleagues who work at Weta now too - Shawn Dunn and Bill Dwelly.

Small World,

Bob

[TC]

Actually he's at Dreamworks Animation. (RIP, PDI)

[WaveRiderXIX]

Has anyone learned Maya using their free "Personal Learning Edition?" I've been thinking about doing it, but I don't know how much you can learn without getting extra resources.

You can't go wrong with it. It has all the functionality of the retail version (supposedly) but you have to work with a constant watermark on the interface and renders.

I've used Maya since 98'. I think as far as "not needing to know how to program a script" Maya has one of the most versatile particle/dynamics systems out there. Especially now that their hair and fluid systems are pretty much stable enough to render/act photo-real on a production level(WITHOUT the need of 2 million plug-ins). The new Maya 6 is incredible.

I use Max & Mirai occassionally... but for particles, you can't go wrong with Maya.

Can you learn it on your own? Well... to get great at it, unless you are a good problem solver/scripter... it'll be tough.
The best DVD's for Maya right now are the Gnomon Workshop DVDs. Personally, I think the DVDs themselves could be ALOT better. They need to edit them better and are filled with a bunch of "verbal-filler crap". i.e... and... ummm... uhhh.. yah... uhhh.... like... personally I hate that stuff. But if you can work around it. Also, they are pretty damn expensive. About $80.00. But hey... it's alot cheaper than taking a $1,600.00 professional particle/dynamics class.
www.gnomon3d.com

I guess the DVD could be worse. I can't remember if it was a lightwave or Softimage DVD I saw... one guy was talking.. then out of nowhere, someone else started talking? Then the friggin' phone rings in the background and while the demo artist was talking, you hear the other guy answering and talking on the phone!

You can also check out the Alias DVDs off their website.

I'm not the type to say 1 software is better than the other. It's all the same in the end... just depends on personal preference and how good you are in the end. I just happen to prefer Maya and Mirai.

[WaveRiderXIX]

Hey Bob,

Is Dreamworks Animation using proprietary stuff for most of the 3D or Maya?

[TC]

WaveRider- I'm the one that works at Dreamworks. Yeah, the software is proprietary.