Maya

[CDNFutballer]

What do you guys think of Maya?

 

[dawdler]

Moved to models, modellers frequent that forum more often than this

 

[The Dark Elf]

Maya is good for character animation. I've no idea if it animation features are compatible with HL2 modding though.. Since Softimage and Alias are in competition as the two big 3D app developers, it probably wont be initially compatible or easy atall, other than modeling simple stuff to take across (using the dotxsi exporter might make that a bit easier). It does however have the best rigid and soft body dynamics. But again their not much use to modding. It also has really cool fluid dynamics, but their no use either. Same goes for paint effects (unless your texturing with them)

Three versions,
PLE (freebie, complete version I think)
Complete (poor persons Maya)
Unlimited (the full package)

Really Maya is geared more to FX industry or games development from a low level, as in creating the work and being included in the process from pretty much the start. In terms of modeling for HL2, Maya could really only be used for modeling and UV mapping.. It's not clear if its bones, animation and blend shape features will be usable and could result in you doing a ton of work only to find most of it is useless.. Best ask Valve about it though, the game ain't out yet and who knows they might have included support for Maya's animation capabilities by now?

 

[CDNFutballer]

couldnt you do something on maya and then transfer it to a app that works best hl2 and then do the animation and other stuff?

 

[The Dark Elf]

Originally posted by CDNFutballer
couldnt you do something on maya and then transfer it to a app that works best hl2 and then do the animation and other stuff?

Thats what I said. Though I don't really see the point of spending a fortune on Maya to model some stuff only to spend more on another package to take it into. And possible yet more on software to convert to the required object properly if whatever format it ends up being isn't done correctly from app to app. Not to mention you end up having to learn more than one package just to do something simple, and for a beginner that will just cause more problems than its worth

Unless you've enough experience in Maya to warrent using it and you already have a good idea how to bake motion to get some of it out and into another package then I wouldn't recommend it. You'll just get bogged down leaning all the time and not creating and end up getting bored and giving up.

 

[CDNFutballer]

ok but say i was on a mod team and all i did was model and someone else did the animation using a different program... wouldnt that work?


*edit*

What valve email would i send the question to?

 

[The Dark Elf]

Originally posted by CDNFutballer
ok but say i was on a mod team and all i did was model and someone else did the animation using a different program... wouldnt that work?


*edit*

What valve email would i send the question to?

Ok well if yuor modeling and someone else is animating I suggest the pair of you get together and do a number of tests to make sure your modeling it with animation in mind and that he/she can work with the models you produce


as for email. I dunno, do a search on this forum, bound to be some mention of the right email to send to

 

[Jaenos]

Converting Maya models to XSI can be done, easily; whether it is a decent conversion depends on the model.

I was just converting a couple of my friends models over into XSI from Maya at school here and I can say it didn't do a great job, in fact, it was nearly unusable in XSI. But that could be because of his modeling method.

It's just that a few features in XSI that are different then maya that screws things up.

1. Don't use Nurbs, XSI nurbs are very different from Maya and pretty much blow, complex nurbs geometry is likely to crash XSI.

2. Don't subdivide in Maya. Apparently to smooth things in Maya people subdivide the geometry(on high end models, low poly probably doesn't have this problem) that adds huge poly counts; XSI subdivdes and smooths the geometry but with your original polycount making a cleaner mesh and more efficent model. Of course if you wanted to export the smoothed model from XSI to Maya or XSI to Hl2 you would have to add the geometry, but for purposes in XSI it's easier on your system.

EDIT:

3. Rigging, weighting, unwrapping, and texturing won't translate from Maya to XSI. If you get it to work, awesome and share it with me, because as far as I can tell XSI and Maya's system concerning those things are very different and there just is no way to export it without some 3rd party ap or mystic voodoo.