Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

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Pooby
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Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by Pooby » 16 Feb 2017, 12:28

I recently took on a job which required me to learn Maya. I've been using it for 2 weeks and thought it may be of interest to share my initial thoughts.

I spent the first week getting constantly shocked at the ridiculous omissions and opaqueness of Maya. The fiddly nature of setting up joints and trying to skin meshes to them. The fact you need Joints to skin to, often causing extra stuff in the scene you wouldn't normally need. The lack of having World coordinates at your fingertips. The reliance on scripts to patch up basic workflow deficiencies. The crappy and basic blend shape workflow. The extra clicks you need to get things done. No generic weight-maps etc etc.. Constant annoyances.
I also felt like I was writing with my left hand, navigation wise.

However, when I finally got to the point where I could at least make a rig do what I want and skin it to an acceptable level, my view now is that, at least Maya is not as hard to learn as I thought it would be. Its sort of OK, as long as you do standard things and certainly you don't want to compare it to the flexibility of XSI, because there is nothing remotely like ICE, and ICE forms the basis of most of my work. When I think about making skin or hair effects, I think from the ground up manipulating vectors. The idea of using black boxed tools feels like I'm taking a trip back to the Lightwave days.
Put ICE in the mix and XSI does trounce Maya. All the people who have told me that XSI and Maya can do the same stuff fall silent when I do an ICE demo.

I do like the fact you have a node editor that can manage scene connections, but I don't yet find it intuitive to use. There are no ways to make compounds as far as I can tell, and it cant deal with deformation. On that subject, the list of deformers in Maya seems very feeble, even if you only compare it to XSI WITHOUT ICE.
Other things I do like are areas which give you tools and abilities you cant do in XSI. The ability to sculpt in scene, The fact I can now do good liquids with Bifrost. Ncloth seems good and can do things that Sylfex can't and I like it that rendering seems familiar to me using Arnold.

I think when you take into consideration having a studio that needs to hire artists and not be constantly worried about your software being bought out, it does make sense to have Maya as a central 3d environment for things to come together to render in. Its uninspiring out of the box and doesn't inspire experimental creativity in me but its functional and has some useful tools.

However, for me. I might as well use the Maya licenses I already have. Knowing how to use it seems like a wise move just because everyone else seems to use it and XSI artists are much harder to find. However I'll still do all the inventive progressive character stuff in XSI and Alembic it over, and in the very near future see how I get on with Houdini. In fact I'm downloading Houdini now, because I am actually excited about the extra flexibility and experimental ability it will give.

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Mathaeus
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by Mathaeus » 16 Feb 2017, 16:09

As a matter of nitpicking, it don't need joints to skin, it can skin to locators, too. And imho skinning to locators, or building IK chains by nodes, works a way smoother than default, because this prevents Maya to try to help in Maya (idiotic) way. It can do some nice things with nodes and transforms, too, let's say you want to build your own shrink-wrap constraint. Even LT, by some MEL-ing. Anyway complete structure is anachronistic and inconsistent. It is not only XSI without ICE, it is XSI without construction modes, without real GATOR, so on. Let's say just a bit better than XSI 1.0 beta with Valve Addon, when it comes to kinematics.
Anyway it can animate, and it's a way snappier than SI, here, imho.
Generally, whatever you can do against Maya ''workflow'' and features, any way you'll find to lobotomize it, better for you. It has no 'workflow', that's it.

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Rork
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by Rork » 16 Feb 2017, 19:08

Hi Pooby,

I love to hear your thoughts on Houdini after you had the time to play with it.
Looking at your workflow, I'm pretty sure you're going to love the way it is set up.
In a way it resembles ICE in a lot of ways.
It does take some time to get used too though, more than any other DCC app out there.

You might want to wait for H16, available next week. There's tons of new things in there.

Working with Maya will, at some point, make sense in a way, and modeling/shading/rendering isn't that far off workflow wise as SI and such after you get used to it.
You will miss the elegance of the SI Passes system though, and only certain tricks will make it a little bit more bearable.
You will curse batchrender at some point, and the idiotic differences Maya has to save renders.
The whole XGen system looks promising at first sight, but it is a infuriatingly stubborn system with no real 'procedural' setup. Rendering it is even more troublesome, especially with animation.
And most of the reference system setups are still relying on MR, or scripts still calling it. But MRis not supplied anymore with the basic installer??!

I haven't tried Maya 2017 yet, but the amount of complaints about the new rendering system (aka SI Passes&Overrides clone) doesn't give me good feelings to move on from 2016.
Especially that one 'legacy' renderlayer can mess up your whole new Pass setup....

Unfortunately Maya is a given in a imperfect 3D world, and as such we have to have at least a basic understanding of the app to get work.

This year I'm going to give H16 some serious care and attention to see if I can finally get comfortable with it. After that I will slowly phase out SI, and keep Maya as a side app.

rob
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

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Mathaeus
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by Mathaeus » 16 Feb 2017, 21:20

Pooby wrote: I do like the fact you have a node editor that can manage scene connections, but I don't yet find it intuitive to use.
Yeah it is somehow special thing, mainly because DAG concept of everything connected to everything. Run copy of one node and everything connected is copied, including connected shaders, layers, whatever. On positive side it can do in one graph, what in SI belongs to Constraints, Expressions and ICE kinematics. There's nothing comparable, built in 3d app, when it comes to kinematics capability. If helps, I've added a few Node Editor examples, mainly in kinematics field, 'thinking in ICE style'.
Tips:
- copy paste across scenes works for almost everything in Maya
- if you have a custom node setup, do not run 'delete unused nodes' from Hypershade menu - just don't (I've learned this part in hard way :D )
- MEL is your friend, and there are tons of examples around

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Rork
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by Rork » 17 Feb 2017, 09:28

Mathaeus wrote: - if you have a custom node setup, do not run 'delete unused nodes' from Hypershade menu - just don't (I've learned this part in hard way :D )
or File>Optimize Scene Size! :(( ~x(

rob
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

Pooby
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by Pooby » 17 Feb 2017, 12:06

Ok, So I just have been trying Houdini VOPs this morning and even just after an hour I can see that this is going to satisfy my ICE-dependency. Its time for me to stop sitting on the fence and take time to dive into Houdini properly.

Maya might make sense, convenience wise, to form a team around and that's an annoying inevitability unless you want to have a tiny pool of freelancers to choose from.
However Houdini is in a different league altogether for doing problem solving, which is what I really enjoy -inventing progressive creative 'problems' , solving them and adding them to my arsenal of tools and techniques, rather than learning a set or procedures and following them which is what I felt with Maya.

So, for me it probably going to be Maya as the base 3d environment. Houdini (and Softimage ICE ) for doing all the 'cool' stuff to import into it. Hopefully with a view to phasing Maya out over time as the Houdini user base grows.
.
In the meantime I look forward to transferring all my tools from ICE to Houdini.

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Draise
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by Draise » 17 Feb 2017, 15:15

Good one Pooby. I love your stuff in ICE.

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SamHowell
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by SamHowell » 17 Feb 2017, 16:53

VOPS are very similar to ICE. They even flow left to right unlike the rest of Houdini.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of information out there other than the help files but a lot of your ICE skills will transfer nicely. It takes a bit of trial and error to work out what equivalent things are, it just takes a bit of time.

You wait until you start using Snippets. Your going to love them.

As for Maya, well it seems very common to use the two together so it makes perfect sense. Maya for cloth and characters, Houdini for everything else :D

Pooby
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by Pooby » 17 Feb 2017, 18:23

cheers.

I'd not use Maya for characters. The fact that it expects you to use just Bones and Blendshapes is the main reason I found it rather depressing. Its like taking a trip back to my Lightwave days.
My character work relies on custom ICE defomation for skin effects. Maya has no way of replicating that without C++ so I'll keep all characters in Houdini where I can continue to evolve and improve my techniques.
To be honest, I'd be very happy with a 100% Houdini workflow, but its doubtful on whether I can find enough artists. Houdini artists are in huge demand I hear from people in the know.

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SamHowell
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by SamHowell » 18 Feb 2017, 12:18

"I'd not use Maya for characters"

Well in that case I think you will be pleasantly suprised by Houdini rigging. It's not on the level of Softimage but it's getting there. At the rate SideFX are going hopefully it will be just a few years and a couple of versions until they have what we need.

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Mathaeus
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by Mathaeus » 18 Feb 2017, 13:04

Pooby wrote:cheers.
The fact that it expects you to use just Bones and Blendshapes is the main reason I found it rather depressing.
Well as I already mentioned, Maya skin cluster node can accept pretty much anything as an input connection. It's just array of transforms and weights who creates deformations at the end, instead of plain per point computation. While is probably not so pleasant method, in Maya it is around 10 times faster to evaluate than SIMD-ish per point equivalent like ICE or H VOP, while ICE still seems to be around 1.5 times faster than H VOPs or Point Wrangle.
Once Maya Skin Cluster is initialized, it's possible to replace inputs by plain connecting if someone wants. While yeah, this makes it incompatible with factory utilities like Copy skin weights or such. That is, default GUI utilities are probably for factory workers on track, focused on releasing them of too much handling with numbers, nodes and such. That's what I described as 'idiotic'. Experiment, more or less belongs to people with C++ knowledge.
Definitively unpleasant for 'middle class', knowing a little about everything, like many of us coming from SI. But..., exactly these two, factory workers and programmers on another side, are easy to find....

Pooby
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by Pooby » 19 Feb 2017, 00:06

It's not the annoyance that in Maya I have to use joints to skin to rather than nulls etc. I could live with that. I don't rely on skinning in the traditional sense.
It's the fact I can't make my own deformers and skin / anatomy simulation systems.
I have a ton of ICE based R and D in skin rolling, or time lag relax deformers for thin eye skin and unique approaches to drive the appearance of muscle movments and things like that all over the body.
With Houdini, I can just carry on where I left off. Even in one day I could see that I'd be able to transfer all my research, which makes the future seem exciting rather than depressing.
With Maya, it felt like I'd have to give those fancy ideas up.

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Mathaeus
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by Mathaeus » 19 Feb 2017, 00:24

Pooby wrote: It's the fact I can't make my own deformers and skin / anatomy simulation systems.
For now I'm afraid there's still only one visual programming system, able to emulate the traditional skin/envelope in useful way by connecting nodes, even coming with appropriate compounds (I mean exactly skin, deformers, weights and such). It's called Softimage ICE.
We will see is there something significantly new in H 16, anyway according to their advertising style and what's mentioned, more likely the answer is no.

Good luck, anyway

telepatam
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by telepatam » 19 Feb 2017, 11:08

Can't you just use fabric engine with maya for the fancy deformation stuff that you want?
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wesserbro
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by wesserbro » 19 Feb 2017, 12:27

It looks like FE is not as widespread as it intended to be. I mean, its creators might be satisfied with bunch of studios as a customer base, but all i can see now its a long way until technical direction with FE will be "affordable" to an artist.

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Mathaeus
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Re: Finally used Maya and here are my initial thoughts.

Post by Mathaeus » 19 Feb 2017, 13:36

telepatam wrote:Can't you just use fabric engine with maya for the fancy deformation stuff that you want?
From my understanding, 'use Houdini for characters' here it is more about simulated effects, like new muscle system in H 16 or new FEM features.
Such thing does not coming with Fabric, one has to build entire muscle system, or solver. Maya muscles probably is aged and way more complicated than this new H solution.
Also, while Fabric offers a way more elegant nodal system than Maya node editor (well, anything is more elegant :D ), it has unique capability to output arrays of transforms or point positions (whatever you like) directly to Maya, offers all usual and unusual math nodes... still it's a significantly less protective than H or ICE, with things like safe or not safe matrix invert, 'not safe' multiplying by zero, C++ naming, all that dispersed around hundreds of node presets, not named so clearly. Fabric is external app after all, not coming with Maya. So at the end of the day, one will try to do equivalent in Maya Node editor, feeding the nodes by scripting, or even manually.
Now back to Houdini, imho it's constant problem with direct anything (animation, modeling) through the years, that they are showing some intention to jump into wagon, even as an important player, in same time not offering even basic, common features of their *system*. Has no script log like SI Maya or Max, bone rotation order is fixed to mocap style rig, kinematics evaluation is unbelievably sensitive to hierarchy level, so on and so on. Here after 20 mins of animating, latest H 15.5 GUI became unresponsive, restart is only option (lovely QT, ehehehehe :ymdevil: ). While Maya, even 2017 is still rock-solid when it comes to animating and kinematics at all.
To say descriptively, H is like person who wants to be a fashion super model, wearing all possible cosmetics, in same time do not taking any care about basic hygiene or teeth health. If you warn him, he's asking you to fill the feature request.

Simulated things will be probably working, but question is, how fast, how easy to control. Don't see, is it FEM multi threaded, finally.

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