Maya for Broadcast / Motion Graphics

[luchifer]

Hi, the last time I used maya was in 2008.

Im willing to gave Maya another chance, im currently trying the leaked trial (so sorry but I couldnt resist the temptation), and I really like the UI changes and the general feeling of using the hotbox to model with it, but as I have been using XSI first and then Cinema 4D so I want to know if the following is possible:

1) I work in Broadcast industry, so I use a lot of text effects and motion graphics design, but Maya doesnt seem to cover that particular area, I heard theres a plugin called Mash but I dont want to rely on a plugin for my core work. This will involve creating a text, changing the size of each characters, making presets for animating the text by characters, and the ability to latter change the text while retaining all the animation.

2) How does maya handle doing UI like in Oblivion or Tony Stark Helmet? or After Effects integration?

3) Is it possible with maya to create customizable graph bars and pie charts so I can change them feeding them with data? I made my owns with C4D and xpresso and I save a lot of time with custom graphics.

4) I do medical and forensic recreation, I guess Maya will work nice, but I fear the render and the workflow will be slow (because Maya is very powerful, and I need speed, not quality)

The reason I want to change softwares is because 1) XSI is dead and 2) C4D cant seem to handle big scenes and lacks a proper render pass system 3) I want to expand my work area into FX. 4) only Broadcast industry seems to use C4D and I want to move into Advertising or something else.

I know the logic dictates I should continue use C4D, but I feel like I want more.

[luceric]

The better Autodesk choice now would be Max. Autodesk works closely with the makers of Mash, but there is really nothing in straight Maya that's helpful for that sort of text-based work. Max has AfterFX interop.

[MauricioPC]

In Max, you should look for ATK (Animators Toolkit from John Martini).

[NNois]

Hi,
I'm using softimage too for this particular type of jobs + in 50% of the case some more technical parts are needed, so i have to use a hi-end do-it-all software. And more importantly a thing where i can tweak the part exactly how i want and not be limited by a half featured plugin...

In softimage i'm able to generate proceduraly text, procedural bevels or extrude profiles, use groups for creating matching pointcloud, or recursive auto finding COG of each letters on islands, then generate an unsimulated point cloud for procedural animation, use sequences of time based nodes on the points, randomly, sequentially etc then returning the transforms of the particles to the original meshs, it's really a perfect solution, and easy.

I've made a quest too finding the next software and this is nor max (who have good scripts but you always been traped on the case where your tool don't do what you whant it to do) or maya who haven't anything of that or c4d (who is awfully not procedural and you can't work on an animation of a text then change the font a the last moment for example).

BUT i've found houdini, maybe he sound too hard at start but in fact not, the software is logical and so streamlined than when you pass the learning phase it's a win, unlike some other old software who are pills of pieces who don't talk each other houdini is really easy to understand i think. And more importantly FUN to use because, like on softimage you learn than you are the Artist and the Software is the Machine and you don't normally have to do dumb recursive monolytic operations, this work is for the software not you.

Please have a look on this particular tutorial and note than:
1. the first third of the video isn't necessary anymore because of an automatic character attribute generation on text on the lasts version of the software.
2. i've found too than ALL the foreach part too isn't necessary and you can replace it with a SHOP network and really ease the work on your procedural animation.
3. the text styling (bevel extrude etc) part isn't covered but i've found than houdini is the perfect tool for that, i've already rebuild a quasi match of the curve to mesh tool of softimage who is particulay until now unmatched in therm of quality of the mesh generated !
https://vimeo.com/album/3305058/video/17039552

[Bullit]

The best software for this outside Softimage is Cinema 4D , with greyscale gorilla tools even better