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Tech Reviews Maya 2022
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t’s been a while since I’ve typed out a review of Maya. This is mostly because Autodesk has been doing a slew of sub-point releases at various times without a “major” release. And it was only earlier this year that Autodesk released both Maya and 3ds Max in a 2022 flavor. First thing’s first — and it’s a thing that the Image courtesy of Gal Yosef
user base seems to be dialing into: Startup time. The 2022 startup time has been reduced to from a third to one half of the startup time in 2021. It may not sound like a big thing, but when you are rebooting or opening up multiple instances of Maya many times per day, a 90-second boot time can add up really quickly. One of the huge talking points about Maya 2022 is the full integration of a USD (Universal Scene Description) workflow. In the past, it was released as a plug-in. Now, it’s fully integrated with a lot more feature workflows. You can import USD data into Maya as a full conversion to Maya data, but full benefits come when you are bringing in a USD as a stage, and the objects on that stage are referenced in. We are talking about differences of potentially tens of gigabytes of system resources. Furthermore, when you manage your scenes with the USD layer editor, you are able to control the states of the stage, being able to quickly setup and save different layouts with similar objects with extremely low overhead and efficient translation to other artists — and other departments who use USD — Katana in the lighting and look dev department comes to mind. With USD becoming more and more the ubiquitous open source format of choice, it truly makes sense. The rigging department got some fancy new tools in the form of Component Tags. These are collections of component selections (polys,
edges, etc.) that you can name, organize and then manipulate. They are akin to selection sets, but more manageable, and can be called by modifiers to affect that area — without affecting skin weights upstream. For animators, a critical tool is the ghosting editor, which behaves like onion skinning in 2D animation. This gives the animator a clear analysis of how the animation is behaving and adjustments can be made on the fly — as opposed to watching it play through and then adjusting. These are the greatest hits, but there are plenty more new features to look into for whichever department you are in — motion capture, effects, lighting or rendering. Website: autodesk.com/products/ maya Price: $1,700 per year; $215 per month
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3ds Max 2022
long with the new Maya release comes 3ds Max 2022, which feels very much like a tip of the hat to all the modelers out there. Some really advanced features have been added to already existing tools, and one that seems like an entirely new tool altogether. The Smart Extrude is something that I’ve been wanting and needing my entire career without knowing that I wanted and needed it. Now, when extruding faces on a poly object, if you extrude in the negative direction, it behaves like a Boolean. [A Boolean operation
by Todd Sheridan Perry
combines two or more solid shapes (say A and B) by checking if a point x lies inside of each solid.] To clarify, if you grab a poly in the middle of an object and push it into the object until it goes out the other side, you end up with a hole. The inside polys have been created. The verts have been welded. Nothing more to do. And if you do it with a poly on the edge, the edge or corner will disappear. Or, if you extrude out and then extrude sideways adjacent to the surface, the verts will weld and you won’t have internal polys. If you understand all of that, you also realize how much of a timesaver this is. Symmetry has been extended with some cool tools for creating symmetry not only on multiple axes, but you can also create symmetry radially — rather than across like a mirror. Or even use the pivot of an external object as the axis of symmetry. These controls are also available in the extended slice modifier. The Relax modifier is also smarter in that it will attempt to retain the volume of the object as it relaxes the edges. The new 3ds Max release now has the ability to make floating windows from your viewports. And so you can throw a window to an external monitor and set it to the new presentation mode which will remove any gizmos and just show the high-quality Gl render — or you can swap to Arnold and have it do progressive rendering for a client or director in near real time. By the way, if you haven’t downloaded Retopology Tools as a free extra for Max 2022, you should. The Mesh Cleaner to Subdivide to Re-
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august 21
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