Author Topic: Maya as ship modding tool?  (Read 8136 times)

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Maya as ship modding tool?
    Hey guys, I'm starting to learn a bit of maya . . . and wondered if it was a good program to model ships and the like with? Or . . not so much? I don't hear it mentioned too often on the boards (ie never).

EDIT - well, except for the thread three posts below mine. I see Maya in the title . . . :drevil:

 

Offline maje

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Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
Maya is a fine tool to work with, but currently, it has no export formats that can be read by PCS, nor does it have a POF plug-in like 3D Studio Max does (although that plug-in is really wonky in that it'll crash Max BECAUSE IT CAN).
Deuternomy 22:11 explained:

Well there are many different speculations going on about this law about not mixing fibers and at least one explanation claims that it was a symbolic gesture designed to keep a pure sense of culture, people, and religion.  Seperation of crop  in the vinyard, mentioned in Dt. 22:9 and 22:10 seem to reaffirm this idea, though there may be other reasons as well.

And now, an excerpt from the Prayer of Mordecai, the Book of Esther Chapter C (New American Bible Official Catholic version).

Est C:5  You know all things.  You know, O Lord, that it was not out of insolence or pride or desire for fame that I acted thus in not bowing down to the proud Haman.  6  Gladly would I have kissed the soles of his feet for the salvation of Israel.  7  But I acted as I did so as not to place the honor of man above that of God.  I will not bow down to anyone but you, my Lord.  It is not out of pride that I am acting thus.

 
Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
Maya is a fine tool to work with, but currently, it has no export formats that can be read by PCS, nor does it have a POF plug-in like 3D Studio Max does (although that plug-in is really wonky in that it'll crash Max BECAUSE IT CAN).

    So basically I can make a pretty ship in Maya but not play with it?

 

Offline Angelus

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Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
You can, but you have to convert it to a format either 3DSMax or Truespace ( Blender ?? ) can read.

 

Offline Kazan

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Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
Maya will be fine once i complete Collada XML support
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Offline Aginor

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Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
Somehow I knew that it would be Kazan who comes up with a possible solution.  :)
Member of the Scooby Doo model Fanclub "verticies and splines are the medium and he is the artist."

  
Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
     I dunno what Collada XML is but it sounds good.
     In the interim, I've started my first model. Well  . . . technically my second model since years ago I did some rough TBP Dilgar Fighter which got shot down because I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

     I was just wondering, I'm taking like an intro Maya course right now . . and my instructor said something about . . . quads are best, triangles are okay, anything else is bad. Is this pretty accurate? I'm trying to stick to quads, but when I have a screwed up polygon, it's a little difficult to maintain the quads. By screwed up I mean there's no . . . well, basically the surface is concave, or convex, when it should be flat. So typically you can just join the corners, but then you get triangles rather than quads. So . . . yeah, I think 3sides and 4sides are good. Not totally sure.

    Oh, another question. Do people still do those . . . 3d engine flares for fighters? Is that something I'm supposed to do?


    Anyway, with luck I'll post the rough model tomorrow in a new thread. Maybe the day after. I'm still learning this maya/3d modelling stuff. But it seems to be going okay so far.

 

Offline Vasudan Admiral

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Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
I was just wondering, I'm taking like an intro Maya course right now . . and my instructor said something about . . . quads are best, triangles are okay, anything else is bad. Is this pretty accurate?
For making in-game models?...Kinda. If a surface is flat, then by all means use quads or even larger - FS can cope with up to 20 sided flat faces IIRC. This is ever so slightly helpful for collision detection because it only checks the one polygon rather than however many triangles would make up the full face otherwise.

Oh, another question. Do people still do those . . . 3d engine flares for fighters? Is that something I'm supposed to do?
They do still work just fine, but overall no. I wouldn't worry about that at all and just leave everything thruster plume related to the thrusters in the POF data.
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Offline maje

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Re: Maya as ship modding tool?

     I was just wondering, I'm taking like an intro Maya course right now . . and my instructor said something about . . . quads are best, triangles are okay, anything else is bad. Is this pretty accurate? I'm trying to stick to quads, but when I have a screwed up polygon, it's a little difficult to maintain the quads. By screwed up I mean there's no . . . well, basically the surface is concave, or convex, when it should be flat. So typically you can just join the corners, but then you get triangles rather than quads. So . . . yeah, I think 3sides and 4sides are good. Not totally sure.


Just so you understand, that's only applicable to models that need to deform (i.e. organics).  You can use tris when necessary and to keep from wasting time.

Ngons are bad unless you're not making a model to run in game engine.  Still, use them only as needed.

Deuternomy 22:11 explained:

Well there are many different speculations going on about this law about not mixing fibers and at least one explanation claims that it was a symbolic gesture designed to keep a pure sense of culture, people, and religion.  Seperation of crop  in the vinyard, mentioned in Dt. 22:9 and 22:10 seem to reaffirm this idea, though there may be other reasons as well.

And now, an excerpt from the Prayer of Mordecai, the Book of Esther Chapter C (New American Bible Official Catholic version).

Est C:5  You know all things.  You know, O Lord, that it was not out of insolence or pride or desire for fame that I acted thus in not bowing down to the proud Haman.  6  Gladly would I have kissed the soles of his feet for the salvation of Israel.  7  But I acted as I did so as not to place the honor of man above that of God.  I will not bow down to anyone but you, my Lord.  It is not out of pride that I am acting thus.

 
Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
Just so you understand, that's only applicable to models that need to deform (i.e. organics).  You can use tris when necessary and to keep from wasting time.

Ngons are bad unless you're not making a model to run in game engine.  Still, use them only as needed.

   Okay, yeah the class is geared more towards animation I think so that's maybe why there's quads, etcetera
   Man I've been working on my model for like hours . . . and it's still no where near where I want it to show people. Just extrudign the engines and spent the next 20 minutes figuring out what the hell was going on with all these intersecting polygons. Oh well, it's looking okay considering it's my first serious attempt. Though given how much time I'm spending on it, it damn well better look okay.

   Gives a better appreciation for the work that people are doing anyway.

 
Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
Personally speaking, I think maya is the best 3d modeling package out there. I use it for all my models.
What makes it difficult is that most people are using MAX to do modeling and most tools/mods are created for that application.

 
Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
Yah, maya seems pretty intuitive as I get to know it more and more. Haven't done much modelling but I'm getting into the animation side of things now and it's pretty good. Especially with additional scripts added on.

I wonder how Kazan's collada-something or other is coming along. Not sure what it does, but if it helps to avoid Truespace or something similar I'd be all for it.

 
Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
Yea for sure, Going from Maya to Truespace is like cutting your legs off after youve won a 100M sprint.
I dont know what collada is, but if it makes my models and UVs easier to import then im all for it.

 
Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
Gorram. Maya related question.


So I have some 2d reference for a ship I'm trying to model. I have two images, front and side view, exactly the same image dimensions. I import them as image planes into the respective windows, but for some reason they're different vertical heights. All their attributes seem to be exactly the same, but one is simply taller than the other. What the hell??? Has anyone else had a similar problem? I know not many people work with Maya, but grr, you'd think working from reference would be easier but when the reference doesn't match up because one of them's scaled differently for no good damn reason. . . :P

 

Offline Water

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Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
Perspective? or ortho mode?

 

Offline Getter Robo G

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Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
All those gundam models I've posted were HW2 ones. HW1/2 was built with MAYA (and required if you want ti import content to a lot of Relic games).

Most of the problems I had in conversion were with hierarchy (as Kazan suggested) or problems that occurred from cross-type conversions. A direct plugin would eliminate a lot fo that I bet.

 :D
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Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
Perspective? or ortho mode?

      Orthographic. I attached it to the cameras in the front and side view, and then in general I'd work in perspective. Because working in the side/front had a tendency to move things out of alignment when I didn't want to. Seemingly even when I locked the attributes I'd either move the camera or the image plane. Regardless, if I look at them together in perspective one of them is not the same height as the other despite being identical gif files more/less in dimensions.

 

Offline Galemp

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Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
I'm a bit worried because Autodesk now owns AutoCAD, Revit, 3D Studio MAX, and Maya-- all the big professional 3D design packages. Not only does this mean there's no serious competition (and therefore less innovation and higher prices) but there's virtually no support for operating systems other than Windows.

Akalabeth, .3DS model format will preserve your basic model attributes, like smoothgroups, quads, and UV mapping. From there you can use Max or *urgh* Truespace to make a POF.
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Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
I'm a bit worried because Autodesk now owns AutoCAD, Revit, 3D Studio MAX, and Maya-- all the big professional 3D design packages. Not only does this mean there's no serious competition (and therefore less innovation and higher prices) but there's virtually no support for operating systems other than Windows.

        Well not sure about modelling, but I know Soft Image (XSI) seems to be the big competition when it comes to animation, etcetera. At least in North America.

 
Re: Maya as ship modding tool?
Some more questions, so I'll resurrect this older thread.


Does anyone know of an easy way to combine objects? In a recent model I did, the fighter had 3 engines the same size, each with 3 flaps. Rather than try to make two identical engines, from the main body, I just created another object, made the basis of the engine or flap there, and then what I did was "combine" the two objects, and basically did a lot of snapping of vertices to other vertices, merging, etcetera until the second object was a part of the first.

But is there an easier way to do this? Because that was a big pain in the butt. Haven't checked the help files yet, might do that when I next need to do something similar.