Maya LT 2016

[MauricioPC]

I like this UI better. It's not perfect yet, but it's better.

[Mathaeus]

Cool. Always liked the 'small beast' concept, from XSI 4 Foundation times. Reduced number of commands, but strong. This time, playing with Maya LT 2016, should be like driving a Dart Vader's personal star fighter, nothing less
Now seriously, occasionally or not, Maya LT perfectly fits as ideal companion to Houdini - it can do things where Houdini doesn't shine, nicely to say. And yeah, every game artist will appreciate the view port tech. Something I definitively want to have.
By the way, even 2015 LT interface was somehow refreshing, compared to big one. Much smaller horizontal, on top, scaring mass of icons, that's it.

[MauricioPC]

I only wished that Maya LT could be a no limit poly tool. It would be the perfect tool for a Houdini pipeline.

But the way it is now, I still prefer Modo or C4D. No more AD for me. But for those who made the leap, it's good to see that it's improving.

[FXDude]

Is Maya LT somehow more "ergonomic"?

Or what is there, and what is not there?

And do all necessary Maya scripts/plugins work?


(edit: cause everyhing always looks fast/easy in demos, but if anything like Maya... )

[Mathaeus]

Well there are trained professionals for detailed answers. Afaik, export limit is now 100k polys per export, scene can hold unlimited (If I'm correct). Scripting is MEL, plugins are not allowed. Anyway I think I'll get it, mainly for modeling and key framing. Perhaps there are nicer things around for modeling, Blender for example, but I simply have to 'get it' by some practice, as an industry standard. Tried trial of LT 2015, afaik there's nothing more ergonomic into, but somehow it was less distractive for learning and getting into basics.

[nodeway]

Not a fan of Maya but ShaderFX support in Unity and UE4 is really nice.

Now, if by some f*cking miracle Autodesk added something like Blueprints/ICE system to big Maya 2016, but complete one, not castrated shit that will be useful in Maya 2021, I may give Maya a... 1,2,3,4,5...6, 7?... yeah I think 7 chance. But only if the added really nice UI + complete Blueprints system is in place.

[gaboraa]

Not a fan of Maya but ShaderFX support in Unity and UE4 is really nice.

Now, if by some f*cking miracle Autodesk added something like Blueprints/ICE system to big Maya 2016, but complete one, not castrated shit that will be useful in Maya 2021, I may give Maya a... 1,2,3,4,5...6, 7?... yeah I think 7 chance. But only if the added really nice UI + complete Blueprints system is in place.

Have they fixed the compatibility issues in this release? Back then it doesn't work properly, exported codes were not clean enough to use it directly within Unity or UDK.

[nodeway]

AFAIK in previous version ShaderFX wasn't compatible with Unity/UE4. In 2016 version it looks like they finally added this possibility:

Support for PBR shader-authoring
Maya LT’s ShaderFX shader-authoring toolset has also been extended with support for authoring physically based materials, now supported in game engines like Unreal Engine 4 and the upcoming Unity 5.

Or maybe I'm reading it wrong and that means only that they added possibility to preview PBR shaders in Maya to mach what you can see in Unity/UE4. If so, I don't give a F.

[gaboraa]

Or maybe I'm reading it wrong and that means only that they added possibility to preview PBR shaders in Maya to mach what you can see in Unity/UE4. If so, I don't give a F.

most likely the sentence after the comma tries to explain the situation, emphasizing the acceptance of physically based materials in gaming and Maya's ability to create/preview them.

[Mathaeus]

Just to add a bit more of confusion to Shader FX story in Maya LT. I know we all know that, but I think it worth to say, that definition of PBR by game engines, of course does not looking the same as PBR in Houdini Mantra or Arnold, for example. Basics is there, like sort of energy conservation, but that's more or less everything of PBR. It seems the entire thing still rely, more or less, on environment look-up, sometimes blocked by some sort of AO. While people is still able to get nice results with this.

Anyway, I'll ask because I'm bit rusty when it comes to games: is there some other game shader authoring tool, instead of built-in thing in Maya LT, able to export enough good code for use in these engines. Last time I did something for game export ( around eight years ago), it always ended with 'manual' interventions.

[gaboraa]

Actually, as for the materials concerned, it can be narrowed down to the energy conservancy but game engines moved a little bit far from that. They now are able to calculate GI , AO, Translucency etc way better than Mental ray. So not only materials but also with with powerful lighting implementations make the magic happened. Of course the way they accomplish to do such natural phenomena goes from using tricks to get it done. But game development has always been like that, finding some tricks to calculate some particular concept in real time. Just check the following link to see how influential Unreal Engine for architectural visualization.


Now it is a widely accepted rendering solution and even some max/maya plugins floating around to export models into Unreal Engine to see them real time for visualization.

As for the node based shader systems, Maya's Shader FX is powerful enough but exporting codes out of it is not. There are lots of others but I haven't tested them out yet.

[Nox]

GI in UE4 is not realtime, it's some crude FG/Photon mapping that can take 3–40+ hours to bake for serious scene and still produces some nasty artifacts.

LPV is wip only.

[gaboraa]

Yes exactly but Cry-engine does real time GI and it is way better than UE4

[Mathaeus]

But game development has always been like that, finding some tricks to calculate some particular concept in real time. Just check the following link to see how influential Unreal Engine for architectural visualization.

Yeah, first thing I've learned in XSI 4, it was a RenderMap PPG . However, these great samples rely so much on skills of people who made them - I mean, everything rely on skills first, but when it comes to getting the realism through trickery, skills are even more important, I think, much more than with some path tracing renderer of these days.

Anyway, anyone used Turtle, integrated in Maya LT?
Beside baking, how about integrated Substance, does it worth?

[NNois]

Yes exactly but Cry-engine does real time GI and it is way better than UE4

did you have some comparaison article ?

From what i've saw LPV is the same as the tech in cry, no ?

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/IN ... index.html

[gaboraa]

I am not a technical guy on such areas and I don't have any comparison article but know the basic differences. AFAIK UE uses purely differed shading and doing forward rendering is not in its league (it it has not been changed in UE4) it means translucency sucks in UE. But cry engine on the other hand do both. Also there were leaking issues with interior GI lighting with UE, I haven't tried it lately maybe has is already been solved. Cry-engine uses dynamic lighting/GI for years but it is limited of course to a one GI bounce and only one GI source which is the sun. No light-mapping required and even the low end graphic cards could handle CLPV (Cascaded Light Propagation Volumes) well. I heard UE4 Light Propagation Volumes can only be used with high end graphic cards and it is still limited to one GI bounce/one GI Source.