Softimage to Maya – Part 1

Hey everybody,

So it’s happened…I’ve begun the transition in to Maya 2016 from working in Softimage (2011/2013) for about 7 years, I thought I would write down all the annoying or useful things I’ll discover along the way. Perhaps I can help other people who have to do the same thing at some point. I’ve always used Maya/Custom hot keys, so I won’t go into comparing hot keys too much. If anybody as advice/other options or the correct way to do things—I’m all ears (or eyes :P)

Maya help also have this Guide which cover a few of the more obvious things.

Softimage to Maya Bridge Guide
http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2016/ENU/?guid=GUID-1D63FB72-2E08-4E95-8AA4-E4DE9448FBED

Alright! I’ll start this off with some miscellaneous stuff.

Working with Face/Edge/Vert component modes. Right-Click on selection to quickly get to a component mode. I find its faster than using the F9-F12 buttons (which do the same thing)

For example face selection:
Double click on a poly to select entire polygon shell.
Select a poly and double click on another poly further away or in the same loop and it’ll connect your selection (useful for selecting specific loops)
Select a poly and double click the poly next to your selection and it’ll select the entire loop

I used to use Space bar to drop the selection (ie. Go to Object Mode) but now you can right-click + hold and choose Object Mode per object you want to switch or just hit F8 (I just don’t like how far away the F buttons are, so I might end up with custom hot keys again.)

Tweak Tool:

Soft: M
Maya: ~
Man… Sad to lose the way the tweak tool worked in Soft. Maya version you should enter Multi component mode to have a similar effect. It doesn’t have multiple options like welding etc. It also doesn’t automatically enter component mode.
Hold the ~ tilde key to tweak components. (and you have to hold a key, baahhhh) Not 100% sure but it looks like its always in sliding/magnetic mode. There should be a way to enable/disable that. At least it works with soft selection (Proportional modeling in Softimage) I found that in the “Modeling Toolkit” Side bar. Top right icons lets you Hide/Un-hide the menu.

Quick ways to access recent tools:

I noticed that if you middle click on a menu, for eg. Edit Mesh— It’ll use the previous command you used in that menu, until you click on something else. Same as Soft, but Maya also has an additional way to find commands and if you hold space bar to access the quick selection—you will see “Recent Commands” which stores about 10 of the last commands/tools you used. You can also break off this window if you find yourself using it a lot.

Invert polys/Reverse:

Soft: Invert Polygons
Maya: Mesh Display -> Reverse

Actually took me much longer than I thought it would to find this one. Using the “Selected Faces” option seems to work the same as Soft.

Isolate Selection:

Maya: Ctrl + 1
Seems to work similar to Soft (Shift + I) although it doesn’t seem to let you add extra objects to the isolation without using ctrl+1 to exit selection and then add more.

Extract/Duplicate:

Soft: Extract (Delete + Keep)
Maya: Edit Mesh -> Duplicate

Bahh, I was searching for a while… such different naming. It works the same as Extract+Keep. I haven’t yet found an option to Extract+Delete yet.

Raycast: (Paint selection)

I would use this in Soft to select specific faces and objects without selecting anything unwanted. Using Tab in Maya works well for Faces, etc. but, doesn’t work for objects and I have yet to find one which works for that as well.

Method:
1. In Face/Vert/Edge selection mode
2. Hold Tab and paint select

Merge/Combine:

Soft: Merge
Maya: Mesh -> Combine

I used this to combine separate objects together as one mesh and if modeled correctly to merge edges/verts and also transfer UV’s etc. all in one go. Works as intended although doesn’t seem to come with the built in function to weld verts etc. I used the next option to do that. It does however seem to merge UV’s with this tool.

Maya: Edit Mesh -> Merge (Same naming as other Soft merge)
This will let you weld those verts and edges together based on distance.

Separate:

Something I wanted in Softimage for a long, long, long time. Might have been introduced in newer versions—I don’t know—but here it is. Separates originally merged geometry back into separate pieces. Probably calculates it by polygon shell.

Center Pivot:

Soft: Set center to bounding box
Maya: Modify -> Center Pivot

Pretty straight forward.

Hiding/Un-Hiding:

Now this is a annoying one. In Soft if you select an object and hit Shift+H it’ll just hide the object and you can use the same hot key again to un-hide it. In Maya I thought it was Ctrl+H but that seems to Hide and Deselect the object, so if you want to un-hide it, you have to find it in the outliner. Rather use just H to toggle between hidden and un-hidden. (Which I think is the Soft hotkey anyway, haha)

Re-naming in Outliner:

I used to hit F2 to re-name something in Soft explorer. Now you can just double-click or hit Enter.

Rotating an object in Global:

Soft had the Global/Local etc buttons on the side bar for quick clicking and I didn’t see any way to change it at a glance. So after some googling here are 2 ways to change it.

Method 1:
1. Hold the manipulator button eg. E for rotate
2. Left-Click and hold until a quick menu pops up
3. Set the option from Local to World

Method 2:
1. Double Click the manipulator on the side-bar
2. Change the option in the Axis Orientation

Grouping in the Outliner:

Bringing this one up cause its different to Soft. This is also the transform group.
Ctrl+G creates a group with selected objects already grouped.
I tried dragging to add new objects and Right+Click -> Add selected objects (The approach I would have always used in Soft) to no avail. In Maya you need to
Option 1: Middle Click + Drag to add/remove objects.
Option 2: Select objects -> Ctrl select group and hit P (parent). I would use this approach so you don’t have to drag stuff around in huge messy outliners.

Part 2 coming soon. 🙂

Regards,
Andrew Wilkins

Zbrush tip #4 – Sneaky Dynamic buttons

Hi, Just a quick one that got me confused for awhile. You may notice (or notice now that I told you) that there is tiny words called “Dynamic” on both the Solo button and the Draw Size slider. These words are actually also a little button and they can be quite important. The Dynamic, when disabled ie. grey text — on the Solo button basically hides the “unselected” subtools when orbiting around your model. It’ll do this whether or not you are using Solo mode or not. It can be super annoying if you don’t know what’s causing this. The Dynamic on the Draw Size can also throw a spanner in the works. Sometimes—let’s say your working on a large set for animation—you can’t get the Brush size to the correct size you want/big enough. This is because the little dynamic button is enabled ie. white text. If you then disable it, u’ll be able to better adjust the Draw Size to your desire.

Thanks, Good Luck!
Andrew

Zbrush tip #3 – Mirroring subtools

Hey all,

Another basic tip but a very useful one. Let’s say you need to mirror something to the other side. For example; you’ve created a tooth or a horn, you’ve placed it on one side of the sculpt and want that subtool to be mirrored and/or you want to sculpt on it in symmetry.

Select the subtool you wish to mirror and hit the “Mirror button”, it will flip the subtool on the X axis by default (or you can change it on the button) which should be correct.

Please note, you should duplicate the subtool you wish to mirror first, because the mirror button just flips the subtool. You can then use the Merge functions (Merge down) to combine the normal and the flipped subtools into one. Remember to activate symmetry on this new subtool before sculpting.

Merge and Duplicate are both located under the Subtools drop-down in the tool panel.

Duplicate:

Merge:

You will find the “Mirror” button under the Deformation drop-down in the Tool Panel on the far right side of the Zbrush UI.

Mirror:

Summary:
Step 1: Select subtool
Step 2: Duplicate
Step 3: Mirror
Step 4: Merge
Step 5: Re-activate symmetry

Thanks,
Andrew

Speed Sculpt – Rock Golem

Hi

Here is a 1 hour speed sculpt I did a while ago. It was just a bit of a discovery sculpt that happened to turn into a rock golem/demon type character.

I actually decided to take this into Softimage and render it in Arnold for fun. The result is pretty cool, I’ll post that up in the Arnold section of this blog soon.

Andrew

Zbrush tip #2 – Perspective view

Hello!

Continuing with simple UI stuff first, this one is another pretty basic tip. So, basically Zbrush usually starts up in orthographic view, which flattens out your sculpture. Coming from another 3D package this really annoyed me since I prefer to work in Perspective view, which is like viewing something in real-life. For example, the back of the model will seem smaller/further away and the closer parts will be bigger. (making them seem close)

I prefer perspective view, because I find it helps describe the form of the model. Although, Orthographic view can be useful if you are using image planes to work from. For other people it can be personal preference or they just alternate while working.

U’ll find the button to switch between the 2 modes over on the right hand side between the viewport and the tool panel or by using the hotkey P.

Click to make bigger.

Thanks,
Andrew

Arnold – Water shader v001

Hello!

I really like the Arnold render software from Solid Angle. For the next while I’m going to be learning as much as I can about it for an upcoming production I’m involved in. So I thought I would dedicate some of my blog to my tests/work in Arnold.

Recently, I’ve been messing around with refraction in Arnold and I decided I would like to make an ocean/water shader. Below are my results so far. I’ve managed to create the different viewing angles you get with water ie. more spec from a low angle and more refraction (see through to the bottom) from a full facing angle. I’m using the “Fresnel” on the specular to control this.

The water colour mostly comes from tweaking the transmittance on the refraction. The diffuse is set to 0%. Spec and refraction to 100% with an IOR of 1.33 (This is the index of refraction value for water)
Remember to turn Opaque off in the Arnold parameters on the geometry with the water shader applied, otherwise refraction will not work.

I have one directional light for the specular highlights on the water and a simple HDRI map plugging into the Sky shader (pass shaders> environments). There is also a grid with a simple random texture I found, underneath the water.

I’m not too happy with the spec, from up close it doesn’t look great and I can’t seem to get it to be anything but 100% white. So, I want to work on this a little bit more.

Thanks for reading
Andrew

Zbrush Tip #1 – Camera Rotate Axis

Hey everyone,

On my path to mastering Zbrush, I thought it would be cool to do a “series” of Zbrush related tips/hints/tricks or even just generally useful things. So every now and then, I’ll be adding new tips as I figure them out. Hopefully—at some point—this can turn into a useful stash of knowledge.

Let’s get this started with tip #1: Rotate on Y axis

Starting a new Zbrush scene, u’ll see over on the right hand side—between the tool panel and your viewport— XYZ, Y and Z. These are the different axis you can rotate around. By default, Zbrush is set to XYZ, which was very annoying for me, coming from another 3D package. The first thing I always do, is set it to Y. This will make the rotation around your sculpture the same as more traditional 3D software. I wish I knew this one the first time I opened Zbrush.

Location of buttons in the Zbrush UI to change the camera rotation around different axis.

 

Thanks,
Andrew