Maya or ofp anim?

[AntonVonE 0]

When you guys make animations, which do you prefer, as far as ease of use compared with smoothness of finished product goes?

Anton

[waffendennis 0]

Maya I use its much better then OFP anim and you can create real life looking anims with it.

[void_false 1]

noob question? where can i gat maya? i've never heard of it before..

[Sgt_Eversmann 1]

noob question? where can i gat maya? i've never heard of it before..

Me too.

[Veovis 0]

Maya costs about $500 with a student discount. It's a very good 3d modeling and animation program. It's not nearly as much or as good as 3ds Max, which is in the thousands, but its a pretty steap price if you just want it for ofp animations.

[void_false 1]

but then how can you implement animations made by Maya to OFP?

EDIT:

It's time to run my (*sensored*) again  

Is 147mb ok for maya?

I will ask AntonVonE, when i see it around here...

[Veovis 0]

I forgot to mention, there is also a somewhat 'watered-down' version of Maya that comes with Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004. I have this, but I've never used it, so I don't know how you would transfer. I don't know how you would do it in 3ds either, because animations are saved in the same file as the model itself. Transfering a model to oxygen is easy, but animations are probably a lot of trouble.

[Gameer 0]

Maya is far superior when it comes to moving animations but both programs are fine for doing static ones.

To convert your animations to rtm search the forums for teaCup's animation kit.

[void_false 1]

hey Gameer! do you know how to work with Maya? i'm just wondeing because i have 1/4 of it ATM

[Gameer 0]

I can make anims, yeah, but if you're wanting tutoring there's a lot more useful stuff on the net than what I know.

Still, if you need a helping hand you're free to get in touch.

[Konyak-2 0]

It's not nearly as much or as good as 3ds Max, which is in the thousands, but its a pretty steap price if you just want it for ofp animations.

Sorry, off topic I suppose, but I just can't let it go FYI, Maya is considered the most powerful 3D program out there and is used by most of the movie industry (New StarWars movies and Final Fantasy for instance).   It has a rather steep lurning curve as it's UI is not as conventional as other programs, and has less of the "presets" effects and features Max has.   Perhaps that is why to some it seems less powerful as it's true beauty lies in it's open ended design.  

Max on the other hand is more mainstream, made for the masses and rather easy to use and quick to produce nice effects.  Max has a superior renderer as well, which is often the measure of a programs performance.  Maya users usually don't use the Maya renderer for outputing their work..   *Pant*  ok, rant over

[Veovis 0]

Quote[/b] ]FYI, Maya is considered the most powerful 3D program out there

I've never touched Maya, so I assumed it was worse (since it was 1/8 the cost). My bad. 3ds Max was the first 3d program I ever touched, and I love it. I would hate to learn something all over again, like Maya. And as far as hating other modeling programs goes.... Using oxygen burns my soul. Curse you, czech programmers, CURSE YOU.

[BraTTy 0]

Some Maya links that I have:

http://www.alias.com/eng....e.shtml

http://www.learning-maya.com/tutorials.php

[void_false 1]

Nice. First link is the official. There're probalby 100's of them. just search google. But i'll tell by secret that you wont find d\l link that way

[BraTTy 0]

I'm confused...the first link is official and you can download the Maya PLE edition for free and legal from that link.

[AntonVonE 0]

Here's my next question:

How complicated do you guys get with the IK skeletons? Do you guys use joint limits, or just the sample scene that came with teaCup's kit?

Anton

[teacup 2]

I just dropped in to say: my kit won't work with PLE.

Because PLE has it's (MEL) disk-writing functions disabled.

To prevent it's use for commercial purposes.

I'm thinking, you could modify the export function of the script to print the output to the script editor or a window, instead of a file. Then you might be able to copy-paste all that into a text file and convert it into a binary form by running rtmbin2.exe on it. If this would work, then you could use PLE as well. Not tested though.

[Brooks 0]

teaCup and I had the same idea, using cut and paste to move MayaPLE animation data into OFP. I have made a kit that will do just that. You can thus use the freeware version of a Hollywood-capable 3D animation program, how cool is that?

I would like some some beta tester feedback before I release it, though. If you are interested, email me, with "MayaPLE" in the title so I don't mistake it for spam.

MayaPLE is far faster than OFPAnim in creating animations, for me at least. OFPAnim is still useful for quickly checking my animations. Much faster than making a config.cpp, PBOing the file, etc., so I use both.

I want to thank teaCup for his help and generosity; my kit would not be available without his support.