I’ve been scouring the internet trying to find an answer and it looks like the main tools in Maya for modeling (quad draw, target weld, multi-cut, etc.) do not work in symmetry. I’ve been learning Maya recently and am completely blown away by this fact. I don’t understand how anyone works with this software. This alone is a huge deal breaker. What am I missing here? :eek:
I’m using Maya LT 2016 and turning symmetry on in the Modeling Toolkit. There seems to be some hacky way to mirror but I can’t even get that to work in the latest version.
Er… it’s a pretty simple question. Should I reword it? If there is an answer PLEASE PLEASE let me know. I have to work with this program for a while and this is a issue that I can’t get around.
I would check in the IRC’s and don’t mention that you are a blender user. Just tell them that you are a school student. I’ve been having to use maya as part of a port process recently for GR2’s but I’ve found its best to not even mention the word blender. Just pretend You are a college student and an utter noob.
My personal suggestion is go to the freenode IRC and go to the UE4/ unrealengine chat and ask there
<edit>
That chat has people who are use and practiced with using maya for real world applications. And I’ve found them as a whole to be somewhat not-trollish…By IRC standards
I asked on EFnet #Maya and the answer was simply no, they don’t work in symmetry and they recommended that instance workaround which I’ve tried but that seems nuts. It’s instancing the other side and doesn’t lock verts to the center… this is crazy!
Do you mean instancing and mirroring the object and then simply working on one of the two halves?
That´s how you used to do in Max before a couple of iterations ago the symmetry modifier was introduced. It´s not all that bad. In fact I still do it that way every now and then. Where´s the problem?
It does lock verts to center if you enable symmetry. As in, cut away half of the model and do that Duplicate Special instance, but still keep symmetry on (also go into e.g. Move Tool settings and check that you have Preserve Seam ticked on). At least in 2016 it works, not sure about LT. This way it’s sort of similar to Blender’s Mirror Modifier, though a lot more clunky, and yeah, you get to stare at that ugly seam all the time.
So after working this way for a bit, I’m actually baffled. I came from modeling in Lightwave and I’ve never not had some sort of symmetry or mirror tools that just worked so when I’m using Maya (the industry standard software), I’m freakin blown away that this isn’t the case.
Here are the biggest issues…
I had to watch a tutorial to get this to work (it’s not intuitive). So I have to do a “special instance duplicate” and then also turn on symmetry. No biggie but ugh.
I’m looking at 2 separate objects now that eventually these have to be welded together. Which means another bunch of work and probably another tutorial.
I can’t extrude without creating geometry inside the object because Maya sees this as 2 separate objects!
You can’t just select a vertex and hit delete in Maya for some reason so I have to figure out carefully how to get rid of the interior geometry.
You can’t just push your center vert to zero (weld the mirrored verts) because it’s 2 separate objects! Those vertex just goes right through each other!
I now know why Lightwave artists would run circles around Maya artists in production (just ask the guys at DD or R&H commercial)… but that was like 10 years ago. You would think Maya would have these kind of tools by now.
The other crazy thing I’m having to deal with is the fact that you have to convert selections. So if you have 4 verts on a poly selected and switch to face mode, your selection disappears. That makes no sense! Why would someone ever want this functionality? So now I have to “convert to” by going down into one of those menus in order to keep my selection. I just can’t believe this.
Sorry for the rant and I would never say this on a Maya forum because, just like the second post here… I’m “trolling” because I’m asking for something that other 3D package have. I’m sure there is an army of Autodesk employees ready to squash any opposing opinion.
You shouldn’t need to use modelling toolkit symmetry AND a copied instance. And btw, “special duplicate instance” is not some arcane command, it’s Maya’s version of Blender’s alt+D (duplicate linked), plus it has some other abilities. I’d make your peace with that tool, it does a lot of useful things.
Mesh > Combine, then Edit Mesh > Merge. These are equivalent to Blender’s “join” and “remove doubles”, respectively.
Is this really that big of a deal? Btw, Edit Mesh > Delete Edge/Vertex is the tool you’re looking for. Maya has two different tools to avoid Blender’s “what do you want to delete” prompt when nuking faces. And yes, it will mimic the behavior of Blender’s “delete > edge loop” when run on a full edge loop.
Do they need to be exact? The merge threshold will give you some fuzz
To be perfectly honest, I’ve been using Maya for…almost 4 years now? And I have no clue what you’re talking about. If you wanted to select faces, why are you selecting verts? Not saying you’re wrong, but I can’t recall ever encoutering the problem you’re describing here.
And this attitude is why people get defensive and call you a troll. You’re sitting here throwing a fit claiming a tool is incapable of doing a job that they use it for daily. In there eyes, your arguments are obviously wrong (how else could they get work done?) and therefore you must be trying to stir up trouble.
Maya is not Blender. Hobbyists looking up to it starry-eyed may have given you the impression it is amazing at everything. It’s not. It is not, however, unusably terrible at any particular thing*, hence why people build pipelines around it. Sometimes though, it’s less that Maya does things the worse way, it just does things a different way, and you need to get used to that. Stop trying to force your Blender habits onto Maya. No, you can’t have live mirror for every step of building a mesh. This is not actually as important as you might think at first.
Another thing to keep in mind while you’re learning: when you start a new app, you will be slower and clumsier with it. It’s easy to blame this on an inherent deficiency in the software, when it’s really just lack of a practice. A few months (or years) later you look back and realize you can do a task in Maya just as quickly as in Blender.
Sorry if this came across as harsh, but I can definately see where those forum-people you describe are coming from. Be patient with yourself and Maya, you’ll get it eventually. And once you need to manage something complex with render layer overrides and references everywhere, you’ll start to get why people don’t use Blender for this stuff.
*except mental ray. Fuck that shit. Prman is free for non-commercial work now, grab that if you don’t already have another alternative lined up.
Ok J, I appreciate your constructive answers. I however, am not a “starry-eyed hobbyist” looking up to Maya. I actually laughed out loud when I read that. You have used Maya for 4 years? Believe it or not, I have actually used Maya longer than you have (just never used it to model with). I have over 15 years in 3D on you and over 10 as a professional working at the top studios in the world. What I said about DD and R&H is true because I was there. I’m having to learn Maya because I’ve been asked to teach at a college and they use Maya exclusively (one of the reasons they dominate the industry is that everyone learns it in school).
I know what you are saying though that you can do this in Maya. I’m just freaked out that it’s so unintuitive and slow. Even you saying “is inside polys really a big deal” kind blows me away. It’s a big deal because I have to go back and deal with them and when you’re talking about a model that will end up being tens of thousands of polys, this is a real time suck. It also means your center verts will not remain at the center if you accidentally bump one.
I so wish you were right about not needing the copied instance but you do and there are many posts out there complaining about this. Studios get around these things by employing people to write tools for the studio. I don’t have that luxury and have to deal with what Maya comes with. I had a mountain of cool tools in Maya as a Lighting Artist.
Oh and your last line… you’ve obviously never used Renderman. It’s a common misconception that if you use Renderman, everything you make will be Pixar quality. I’ve used Renderman for many years and can say that it’s one of the most complicated renderers you will ever use… and honestly, it’s just not that good. Again, with a hundred software engineers, it makes amazing images but you sitting at home working in Renderman… yeah, good luck.
… but again, thanks for trying to help. I WAS ranting (“throwing a fit” if you will) and I apologized for that already. Maya is a capable tool but I have used a lot of software that is much better at 3D modeling (and just about everything else). I’m frustrated and wanted to talk about it and REALLY wanted someone to come along and say “Tom, you’re doing that all wrong, just hit this button” but alas, that is not going to happen.
Ack, now I feel dumb and condescending. Sorry for assuming you were the standard BA user, I need to spend less time in the top two boards.
And you caught me, I’m an Arnold user. I’ve played around with the new RIS stuff in Blender a bit, and figured using that in Maya can’t possibly be worse than Mental Delay.
And no, poly modelling isn’t one of Maya’s strengths as you’re starting to notice. Once you learn to work with it, it’s not quite as bad as it seems at first. I still prefer to build meshes in Blender and Zbrush most of the time though, but it’s not always practical to do it that way.
OMG… I love Arnold. I used Arnold at Imageworks and it completely won me over… along with Katana (their lighting package). Trust me, Arnold is 1000x better than Renderman. You have made a very good choice.
As far as my Maya rant… I’m really not a fanboy of any software but people tend to use what they find comfortable and I’ve never found Maya comfortable. It’s dumb to complain about it but now I’m having to learn it in-depth… so I needed to unload my frustration somewhere. I really don’t think it’s a bad piece of software… it’s just not my first (or second) choice but I wouldn’t want to teach anything else. It wouldn’t be fair to the students. Maya is the standard and it needs to be learned if someone wants to work in the industry. I wish I could just teach Blender. It’s more fun imo.
By the way J, your Combine and Merge thing helped me immensely.
…and I finally figured out how to work in symmetry (not without a bunch of issues but still). My biggest issue was with extrude. Once I changed the poly flow, extrude with mirror on goes wanky (when you pull out the face, it separates from the mirrored piece). I just found out that I can hit extrude without pulling the face, then switch to the Move tool to pull it out without disturbing symmetry.
I still think this is a crazy way to work in symmetry but hey… at least I got it working.
The less I work in symmetry the better the tools work all around honestly. I was having some serious trouble with the bridge tool when in that instance mode. It did not like that I was trying to bridge edges next to the mirror edges and created some crazy results (like not showing the face cuts even though you could select them).
I realize these are just software transitional pains but still… it hurts.
I was watching a guy talk about a bug in symmetry topology and once I got that working in the Took Kit, I realized that ALL THE TOOLS WORK NOW!
So the trick is DON’T use X symmetry. Use Topology symmetry ONLY and all your tools will work with no internal geo issues and no Extruding issues. You do not need the mirror (instance) tool with this solution.
Halaluya!
That was a big hurdle. The other stuff is just little irritants. I can’t work without proper symmetry.
Right about the time I start liking Maya… did you know that in order to use the Bridge tool in Maya, you have to have the same number of edges on both sides? What is this, 1994?
Is there another tool that can bridge a bunch of open faces?
I can’t believe this is still an issue, 2021 and Maya symmetry still is unusable without a bunch of research even with previous experience with other 3d software. In the end this always happens, every software has its strengths an also dumb moments like this one. Anyways thank you for these comments because you helped a lost soul find the way of symmetry in Maya. That rant of yours was the most cathartic experience of my life.
I’m sure there is an army of Autodesk employees ready to squash any opposing opinion.
