Alright! I’m back with some cool stuff to show again!
So I have done 2 more animation updates this past weekend – but forgot to add them before monday. I did though upload them to my youtube account but I just didn’t post them here.
So here is Sam walking cycle revised-
And my Geo boy second revision.
This wasn’t rendered, it was all done using Maya’s new viewport 2.0 . Which I mean it was all done in real-time. I playblast it the clip into an avi then convert it into a mov using quicktime pro. Previously Maya couldn’t do multi-sampling antialias in real-time, only if you render the scene into single frames. Now the new enhanced Viewport 2.0 can do real-time as if it was a game engine. This in mind was noted to be one of the coolest features in this year’s update.
Unfortunately Maya has been a bit buggy on the minus note, but not so much as previous install. They have come out with 4 patches that helped it to get back on it’s feet again. I just blame the fact that they switched the interface engine with QT interface engine. It’s like the developers went back to version 1 with Maya. If it isn’t one thing that isn’t broken, then there is another. They should hire super engineers to guide the work on maya. It should be rivaling Softimage by now with accessibilities that should be on top of its game. Again, and one more time, I feel that equal powers are due naturally with strengths and weaknesses. If it isn’t one strong point that Maya has is its easy to maneuver once you know the keys. The same goes with any program, if you know what makes sense on the shortcut keys or interface – then you can work with the program like if is second nature. Tool set wise Maya is a bit better and for those who want to have full control, Maya can’t be beat. It was designed to be a base for all custom extensions to be made for it. Thus Maya has all the bugs possible for the low level user, while I believe the enterprises have the best version set with their own scripted tool set for it.
This is why I don’t like maya for animation personally. Why? Like I said, its for those control freaks that want to make everything in maya. For me its time consuming – and not a good solution if you want to crank out something quickly. I feel that having to know the full set of stuff and be able to script in maya, is tough enough as it is. While then we have softimage that has the standard tools ready for you to pop in your model and start animating. The same goes with 3Ds Max, where it has two set of tool sets for animation ready to get stuff going. You can even save skeletal information for another character! XD Maya you have to start from scratch and program your own tools to be able to do that – but not even be able to shuffle elements because of different unique rigs that are out there already. In Softimage you can do both – but usually folks who use it don’t want to bother to add to the tool set or make their own when using Softimage. This is cool because if there is any complaints, the company can have a programmer create a new tool/plug-in for Softimage. The same thing goes with 3Ds Max. This is why I’m whining about my 3d class right now.
Anyways – I hope this gives you an insight in my head about my status at the moment. Hopefully this is helpful for you!