Maya 2018

[luceric]

So..... Maya 2018 Shareholders Release™.........

It's really a release for the users who have been saying that Autodesk keeps adding stuff and never fixing what's there.
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/sites/de ... me_enu.htm
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/the-maya-blog/maya2018
I did not work on a single feature for a year; I'm investigating and fixing problem all day, looking at crash logs, working with the Qt company on Qt issues, etc.

[Draise]

Yeah. Some of the modeling things are nifty. Good work on the bug fixes. I should have read those.

[owei]

Yes,that is a huge list. If you don´t fix bugs for years, this list gets longer and longer, doesn´t it. Its always possible to sell bugfixes as features.
And if you add features, you can say, we added features and had no time to fix bugs..next time, the other way round ;)
I wonder when the famous bifrost will make it into Maya as a nod based system, as claimed years ago...

[Rork]

Yeah... Apparently it's hard to dedicated some of the dev group to fixing bugs, as new features are more important to the shareholders... err... users....

And yeah... If you ignore the bugs over the years, at some point these bugfixes will become a looong list.

I still prefer SI over Maya any day. Heck, I prefer using Houdini, even though it will give me brain freeze sometimes ;)

And it looks like MASH is becoming the new "ICE" for Maya, as the promise that was Bifrost never really came to fruition....

But not to talk all bad, I have to say Maya has become more workable since 2015. Not SI workable, but errr... better... ;P

[Mathaeus]

Some things are interesting, almost as interesting as some addons SI has had for years...

But yeah.. is this a years worth of updates?!

While yes, one could just install a new rental offer, when it comes to functionality, I'm not sure.... Maya 2017 introduced QT5 and all that problems with windows, unseen in DCC apps before (as far as I know). This was, more or less fixed in update 3. Well, except for newly added (in update 3... ) UV editor window, this one was stable only on first launch. Advocatus diaboli will say, they made it to work exactly for GDC or FMX presentation, hehe... That UV window was finally fixed in update 4, but 'fixing process' is somehow dramatic process where windows are left to disintegrate first, then Maya gathers them back. It's looking like small earthquake.... To be fair, these wild windows, displaying the Open GL cache from last year and such, that's traditional in Maya. To be fair again, QT5 'plague' is running all around, these days Houdini 16 seems to be a primary victim.

According to that experience, new option to dock the shelf vertically, will ends with having your shelf permanently attached on Windows task bar, or something like.....

Imho general problem with 'small and nifty' features, is that anyone could play this game, let's say one man for Blender team (I think name is Kent Trammell) is able to compete and lead against AD team, all that for zero price. Another solely Maya problem is total lack of consistency - in 2017 it become possible to move points along normals, by some as usually weird shortcut combo, but, not to snap that moving anymore. Snapping is special story, snap to poly edge and curve is same thing, making both barely usable (as far as I know, because of temporary ''solution'' from Maya 2 or so, when they decided to add some polygon modeling, but not to add any simple new icon).
While ago I've desperately tried to get equivalent of SI Clone or Max's Referenced Instance, with, again somehow typical, half - success - actually there is a script in Bonus tools for that, but, that script has to do some strange deleting sequence in order to get the node setup to work (without reload), still not working with multiple materials on one object.

Note that in Maya modeling, it's still ''normal'' to have two disconnected edges between two vertices. In Maya simulation, you have to write expressions (plural) to get smooth blend of anything (including point position) between two particle caches (or, it works if you load these in Mash, then in Mash you have to do some another mad procedure).

Long story short, Maya as usual - good enough for rigging and animation, has great playback of deformed characters, few really nice solvers as well. Otherwise, just a weak, over-complicated mass with worst interface on planet. Occasionally or not, what's coming with Maya LT imho really worth that 300 - 350 Euros yearly. More than that, it is a sort of offence.

[Draise]

Imho general problem with 'small and nifty' features, is that anyone could play this game, let's say one man for Blender team (I think name is Kent Trammell) is able to compete and lead against AD team, all that for zero price.

Actually.. yeah I agree there.... Blenders release notes and bug fix lists are usually more exciting and, or one man developed addons, do that competition quite easily.... and free or for very reasonable prices.

[Rork]

In a perfect world Blender would clean up the UI, and -after being adopted by all big studios- becomes the standard of 3D, with new functionality development being shared. ;)

[NNois]

Did the bitfrost thing end up with something replacing ICE ? modeling etc ?

[Rork]

Nope.

They bought MASH, and it looks like it is becoming a odd mix of ICE-, Cinema4D- and Houdini-ish functionality.

[Mathaeus]

Did the bitfrost thing end up with something replacing ICE ? modeling etc ?

Nope, it's still only a set of nodes for controlling Naiad, that's all. By the way, there were rumors about something new and great that is coming in simulation area, started by some AD people on AD forums, sometime at the end of last year. Some important developers got job again, after they were layoff-ed few years before. Obviously nothing of that for now, there's only hope for Mayans, that something will still appear in some update. Hope dies last..... Bullet dynamics added to Mash (feature from C4d before five or seven years) is a very very bad sign for hopes about Bifrost.

Regarding MASH, that's more or less C4d Mograph level of control - there are theoretically usable operators, influences, randomizers, ID mappers and such. However, options were fixed, what and how is possible to control, (just as C4d Mograph), so imho nothing significant of that, beyond basic functionalities like alive copying operator and such.
Let's say exactly, I've tried to create a 'procedural book listing rig' as some ordinary test (bending, specific to each instance, general rotation and moving of instances...), but no success, it failed at ''general distribution of lists", simply it has no nearly enough possibilities to control the movement, to avoid overlaps (just as c4d Mograph). Same is piece of cake in Houdini, ICE, Fabric, and.... in Max MCG too (well if you're able to make it with closed eyes, as MCG is still not interactive)
In short, no chance for ''controllable'' motion graphics (controllable = able to follow client's wishes), well, only one where I'd be able to earn something, that's story. ''No controllable eye candy" in my life already belongs to After Effects people and hundreds of After Effects plugins, while they are earning very little with that, form what I've heard. That is, MASH is definitively good as addition to Maya with its zero proceduralism, otherwise feel free to forget it. Mash alone is not hard to ''get into'' which is yet another reason to do not care about this thing....

That's all only about deformations. When it comes to modeling that includes topology changes, I'm not sure if Maya is even capable of that at all, at least in feasible way. For example Maya 3rd party equivalent of Mesh Fusion, is asking from users to make choice in advance, how many intersections they'll have (or to repeat the procedure), perhaps because of some Maya internal incapability to have alive Boolean. Maya always been good as ''playback machine, relying on fixed data'', but, after even small change of anything before evaluation, it is like Borg disconnected from collective, randomly shaking and running in circles.

[luceric]

They're still actively working on Bifrost's ICE-ish environment for Maya. MASH is a different thing; it's a set of DG nodes and easy user interface for motion graphics artists. Bifrost Fluid is based on Bifrost, but its node graph isn't exposed to the users right now. There aren't enough general nodes in there yet, just what the Fluid developers made for their own needs. I'm somewhat involved with those developers through the Node Editor API part.

[CafeNight]

good realase, can't say more, not impressive but still not bad
cant understand what Maya dev's what achieve adding all those features may be ofc they usefull but why lol
shift extrude, UV, Floating Shelf finnaly
and 10(or something) year later they adding Circle script
Good job -)

Edit: with Shift Extrude and Duplicate work way faster for some kind of basemeshes for Sculpting
Circularize doing exellent work

but after all Maya has same problem as before

[Rez007]

@Luceric

I am about to dive into Maya 2018 here shortly, and looking at the features - the Shift Extrude is a big one to me, as similar to a thread on here where we talked about something similar. I filled out the survey to make "Maya more streamlined" right before Maya 2018 came out, and a few of my suggestions in that survey were already implemented in 2018, so that was nice to see. Since you are here, I thought maybe I could share a couple of ideas that would help bring some things more inline with the new Shift Extrude function, and get your thoughts.

(Shift Extrude - being the base assumption)

Incremental (Ctrl + Shift): This would work depending on what Translation/Scale/Rotation the user is using. Pressing Ctrl+Shift while Rotating an object with rotate it in degree increments...right now it is the "J" key, but that key is halfway across the keyboard. Pressing Ctrl+Shift while Scaling, would step the scale increments while also Zeroing out at "0" flattening out your selection (i.e. a selection of Vertices). Pressing Ctrl+Shift while moving an object steps it a certain distance.

Snapping Toggle (Ctrl): I think it would be great to set your Snaps (check the boxes you want to use at the top of the screen - i.e. Vertex, Grid, etc.) and then pressing Ctrl to enable that Snap. This allows for multiple setups and enabling that by pressing only one key. Also, I believe this is the process now but I am going by memory...in Softimage, I can move my selected objects and then press Ctrl if I want to enable snapping. In Maya, I have to first press the key I want to snap (i.e. X for grid) and then I can move my geometry. If I don't press the snapping key first, I have to release my objects, press the snapping key first and then snap to what I want. Softimage method is really efficient to me with its setup.

Those are the main ones above I was thinking about, the others would be a toggle for COG (Center of Geometry option) for gizmo positioning; a toggle for 'tweaking' - unless this was already added/changed; Raycast/Marque selection separation where camera based selection can be on one setting but not the other regardless of what shading mode is enabled; and having the TRS gizmo be separate, like it is in Softimage, for quick modeling needs being able to move/snap that on the fly on a temporary basis.

As writing this I am going by limited memory of Maya right now, but I just wanted to share some ideas. Not everything to me is about speed, as I like quality more, but I thought these areas could help improve efficiency if you guys are open to ideas.

Thanks!

[luceric]

@Luceric Since you are here, I thought maybe I could share a couple of ideas that would help bring some things more inline with the new Shift Extrude function, and get your thoughts.

Sorry, I totally got out of passing along UI and workflow suggestions.

The Maya team monitors the forum here https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-for ... /area-b201, anything you post there should be seen by the right people.

[Rez007]

@Luceric Since you are here, I thought maybe I could share a couple of ideas that would help bring some things more inline with the new Shift Extrude function, and get your thoughts.

Sorry, I totally got out of passing along UI and workflow suggestions.

The Maya team monitors the forum here https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-for ... /area-b201, anything you post there should be seen by the right people.

I will try there. Thanks for the info.