Maya 2008 Impressions! - Page 3 - Simply Maya User Community

# 31 19-09-2007 , 02:31 PM

Acid44

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ya well... im quick to judge... ive got no better comeback:p

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# 32 20-09-2007 , 04:24 AM

Jr.Who

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Sorry that it took so long for me to write up some more impressions, I’ve been quite busy lately.

What’s New in Performance:

Poly reduce caching is new for Maya 2008 and makes poly reduce faster. See Poly Reduce Caching in this section:

Poly Reduce Caching
There have been significant performance improvements in Poly Reduce (Mesh > Reduce). Caching of intermediate polygonal reduction states means a significant increase in performance, at the cost of using more memory.

To disable caching for Mesh > Reduce

Select Mesh > Reduce > .
Turn off Cache reduction (for speed) in the Reduce Options.

I’ve used the reduce thing once, in 8.5, and it went really slow on my computer. I haven’t tested it out in 2008, but I trust that it’s faster. user added image

Poly smooth is faster:

You can see how much faster it is in my first post.

Improved startup time on Mac OS X, particularly on PowerPC machines:

Again, you can see how much faster, in my first post.

There’s a lot more performance enhancements, but that’s just a couple.

What’s New in Artisan and Paint Effects:

Hotkey toggles for Artisan brushes:

I’ve seen someone use this (in the Maya 2008 demonstration videos), and it looks pretty awesome.

What’s New in Modeling:

Smooth Mesh Preview for polygons:

This is a pretty fun feature. :p

User-defined vertex and UV display sizes:

I’ve never had the need to do this, but who doesn’t like customization?

Slide Edge Tool:

I use the Split Edge Tool a lot, and this is sort of like it’s cousin.

Keep Faces Together option:

Why do I see myself messing around with this every time I extrude? :p

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# 33 20-09-2007 , 06:59 AM

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Just waiting to see the full demo next wednesday before I return judgements.

Savings of a few seconds to be honest are neither here nor there (such as start up etc etc) its if it has major workflow imporvement differences, i'm looking forward to seeing the non destructive rigging tools in action and seeing how to fit them into my workflow.

Altering hte uv sizes for me is great as on my monitors resolution (1920 x 1200) I sometimes loose them when its on a large model, same with lines in the uv texture editor.

What do you mean about the keep faces together option, if so what have they done to change it?

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

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# 34 20-09-2007 , 07:30 AM

Jr.Who

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Originally posted by gster123
What do you mean about the keep faces together option, if so what have they done to change it?

Originally Posted by

Well, after you extrude, just ctrl + right click and it will bring up an option to switch to switch between the “Keep Faces Together” option. The interactivity of it makes it too fun.

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# 35 20-09-2007 , 07:30 AM

Maniacal boy king of Babylon
Join Date: Aug 2005

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I don't think there are much changes, the only things i don't like are;
- the edge loop selection; you used to select an edge you wanted to loop than clicked on the icon, now you have to select the tool and then double-click to select the entire edgeloop when your done you have to press q,w,e or r to exit i think the first method was more intuitive and worked a lot better because it required less clicks.
- the view cube and i don't mean the shape itself, but more of the functionality.
The fact is that when you press front, left, right etc. it doesn't switch to an orthographic view(it stays in perspective mode and lines up with the geo) and it doesn't stay in that view.
I know pressing spacebar does the trick also but i liked the way it used to work and it was much quicker especially when you had a lot of poly's in the scene.
So i hope i will discover a setting which turns the cubes behaviour into that of his predecesor.
I haven't used the slide edge tool yet, but i'm kinda hoping that it works like the mj polytools used to work; select an edge press edge loop and in the exact middle of the edges was an edge which position you could alter using a slider in the channel box.

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# 36 20-09-2007 , 07:40 AM

Jr.Who

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Originally posted by mastone
I don't think there are much changes, the only things i don't like are;
- the edge loop selection; you used to select an edge you wanted to loop than clicked on the icon, now you have to select the tool and then double-click to select the entire edgeloop when your done you have to press q,w,e or r to exit i think the first method was more intuitive and worked a lot better because it required less clicks.

Originally Posted by

……I’m pretty sure it’s been that way since 8.5 (maybe 8.0). You can still do it like that. Select the edges you want, then ctrl click, go to edge loop options, then go to select edge loop.

Originally posted by mastone
- the view cube and i don't mean the shape itself, but more of the functionality.
The fact is that when you press front, left, right etc. it doesn't switch to an orthographic view(it stays in perspective mode and lines up with the geo) and it doesn't stay in that view.
I know pressing spacebar does the trick also but i liked the way it used to work and it was much quicker especially when you had a lot of poly's in the scene.
So i hope i will discover a setting which turns the cubes behaviour into that of his predecesor.

Originally Posted by

What do you mean? What’s the difference from the front orthographic view, and the front view in perspective?

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# 37 20-09-2007 , 07:45 AM

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It shows how much I use the new features dosent it!

I pretty much stick to the extrude, split poly and the insert edge loop too thats it really, I probably need to look into the other tools but as I can get away with them I will.

Ive just downloaded the new features video form the platinum members site so ill have a look at that tomorrow.

I'm hoping to see it demoed to get a better idea.

As for the difference in the ortho front and the persp front, well if you rotate the scene it rotates but in the ortho is dosent, quite a difference if your going at speed and not really remembering what view your in.

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

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# 38 20-09-2007 , 08:14 AM

Maniacal boy king of Babylon
Join Date: Aug 2005

Location: the netherlands

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"……I’m pretty sure it’s been that way since 8.5 (maybe 8.0)"

No it's new , and i know there's an other way, luckily in maya there's always another way.
But i find it really strange that when a high end package upgrades it will develope a tool so that it requires more actions then before giving the same results as before ....

"What do you mean? What’s the difference from the front orthographic view, and the front view in perspective?"

Up until maya 8.5 , when you would click on the z, x or y in the topright manipulator thingy, the perspective view would change into an orthographic view and behaved accordingly.
Now when you press front for instance and move straight up with the camera you will see that you rotate around the object which sucks bigtime, because now i will have to press spacebar again to change views which i know will take up a lot more time .
I think Maya is slipping up here, i even think that when they keep this up they will be surpassed by free packages like blender or not so high end packages like cinema 4d
And gster if i were you i would just stick to 8.5 they haven't improved anything significantly as far as i've seen at the moment(i've been at it for a couple of ours and have only found negative changes thusfar).
Ncloth was the last good thing they introduced.
And maya 8.5 has that so no need to upgrade really.....i wish autodesk hadden't taken over alias

:headbang:

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# 39 22-09-2007 , 03:02 AM

Jr.Who

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I just checked out that view thing you guys are talking about. Yeah, it is weird, but it really doesn’t matter. 2 taps on the space bar won’t kill me user added image

. What I do like, is that in the orthographic views, you now have the ViewCube.

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# 40 22-09-2007 , 03:20 AM

Jr.Who

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Anyway, these will probably wrap up my impressions.

What’s New in Animation:

Smooth Skin Weights:

I hate painting weights, so anything that makes them easier is better.

Improved joint management for bound characters:

I don’t have that hard of a time making the joints for a character, but these look pretty cool, especially the Insert joints and Remove joints tools.

View joints when painting skin weights:

Thank God for this! I hated painting weights and trying to figure out which joint went where! :attn:

There’s a lot more new stuff in 2008, so go check it out!

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# 41 22-09-2007 , 07:05 AM

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are you guys doing this professionally.., i mean.., life is too short if your not.., great to see someone can bring us the news though.., thanks

take it easy and life will be easy

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# 42 22-09-2007 , 07:09 PM

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Hey Mastone,

I get a free upgrade anywho so its not like ive shelled out the cash anyway.

I'm finding it very very similar to 8.5 tbh, the bits that theyve added I dont really use, or I should say ive not found a need to use them.

Just started a project so only up to the modeling stage at the moment and havent used anything other than the view cube which for a quick side/top view works fine and dandy for me, saves a few space bar hits

I'll porbably use the rigging toos when I get going as I always find that I could do with adding a joint or or removing one when I get to the deforming stage, just to add a bit more flexability to my rig.

Some of the major advantages to me are the new mental ray core and particles that were only hardware rendered being avialble in mantal ray, thats got to be good

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

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# 43 25-09-2007 , 12:25 AM

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It looks great and all... but I'm stuck with 8.5. :zzz:

Live the life you love, love the life you live

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# 44 25-09-2007 , 09:01 AM

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Saw some of the new Maya 2008 ncloth attributes in action yesterday at the autodesk "Make an Impression" event, looks absolutly superb, the guy was making leaves fall off a tree as a rolercoaster type car went past using the new wind and vortex functions, cant wait to have a go with them.

He also used ncloth to give a nice cartooney bounce to the car on the track too, gave me loads of ideas!

Also some of the new modeling toos like the slide edge looks like it would be great for hardsurface modeling for cars an the like.

If you get a chance its well worth going to one of these.

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

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