Thomas Mahler
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Vienna/Austria
Posts: 415
Hey Glen,
I'm also currently using Maya a bit. I still prefer to model inside of XSI nowadays (even more than Silo, thanks to the great soft selection, sticky keys and other niceties), but I'm actually currently talking with Henry Korol (the guy who wrote the HKMagnetTools, also one of the guys working on the OMToolbox) about plug-ins he's currently writing that'd make many things in Maya a lot easier when it comes to interaction with objects and stuff.
For example, he's writing a smart highlighting plug-in for Maya and a completely new selection system that'd make selecting objects, components and generally selecting stuff just a lot easier. The last version of smart highlighting/the new selection engine he showed me was already pretty dang fast, thanks to the API implementation (worked without problems on a 300k mesh, much faster than the tweak tool in XSI). He's also working on a better API version of his magnet tool, since the old one had quite some issues and didn't really feel the way it should. Also, there'll be an option to evaluate the falloff along edge-distance, just like in XSI, for example.
But all of this stuff will still take some time til it's released - if you're fancy to try beta-stuff out once he compiled it, pop me a mail and I'll send it to you.
For me, polyModeling inside of Maya right now is a pain in the ass - It has some very nice stuff in it that also feels pretty well (in Maya 7.0 you should make use of the Shift + RMB and CTRL + RMB marking menus), like Paint Selections, Artisan (sculpt poly), etc., but it's still so far from having a REALLY efficient polyModeling Toolset and being a really interactive package while modeling. Try to use MEL to streamline your workflow, create some good marking menus (that'll make your life a lot easier) and make use of the more advanced polyEditing tools out there.
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Vienna/Austria
Posts: 415
Hey Glen,
I'm also currently using Maya a bit. I still prefer to model inside of XSI nowadays (even more than Silo, thanks to the great soft selection, sticky keys and other niceties), but I'm actually currently talking with Henry Korol (the guy who wrote the HKMagnetTools, also one of the guys working on the OMToolbox) about plug-ins he's currently writing that'd make many things in Maya a lot easier when it comes to interaction with objects and stuff.
For example, he's writing a smart highlighting plug-in for Maya and a completely new selection system that'd make selecting objects, components and generally selecting stuff just a lot easier. The last version of smart highlighting/the new selection engine he showed me was already pretty dang fast, thanks to the API implementation (worked without problems on a 300k mesh, much faster than the tweak tool in XSI). He's also working on a better API version of his magnet tool, since the old one had quite some issues and didn't really feel the way it should. Also, there'll be an option to evaluate the falloff along edge-distance, just like in XSI, for example.
But all of this stuff will still take some time til it's released - if you're fancy to try beta-stuff out once he compiled it, pop me a mail and I'll send it to you.
For me, polyModeling inside of Maya right now is a pain in the ass - It has some very nice stuff in it that also feels pretty well (in Maya 7.0 you should make use of the Shift + RMB and CTRL + RMB marking menus), like Paint Selections, Artisan (sculpt poly), etc., but it's still so far from having a REALLY efficient polyModeling Toolset and being a really interactive package while modeling. Try to use MEL to streamline your workflow, create some good marking menus (that'll make your life a lot easier) and make use of the more advanced polyEditing tools out there.