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Tech Reviews Maya 2023
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aya 2023 was released with a cavalcade of both major and minor features, but the biggest emphasis is in the modeling realm. I feel the most exciting feature is a change in the Boolean (data type with only two possible values, true or false) workflow. I’ve always been both a fan and enemy of Booleans. I love them for how quickly they can help you model complex objects, but I hate them for creating messy geometry, crashing the software — and, most egregiously, not being very procedural. Maya’s 2023 Boolean tool has expanded the toolset to overcome these issues. Now the Boolean is listed as a dynamic stack of operands. You can choose the base, and then begin adding operands —each one of which can have its own math: union, difference, intersection, Slice, hole punch, cut out and split edge (the expansion of math choices alone is substantial from earlier versions). If you want to add more objects to the Boolean you can just drag form the viewport into the stack in the attribute editor. Further, you can access those operands and modify the transforms, thus dynamically changing the results. What’s even cooler is that the materials from the different objects can be transferred to the Boolean surfaces. Maya also gets some updated retopology math — inherited from its sibling, 3ds Max — which has been using these algorithms for a couple versions. The new methods are faster and more accurate, benefitting from a preprocessing of the model to check for and fix problems before the retopologizing. The process becomes an attribute that can be adjusted to taste to get better results. It would benefit from a way to retain UVs and maybe some live curves to guide edge flow. But this is definitely a dramatic setup forward in Maya’s toolset and allows you to get good results without having to
by Todd Sheridan Perry
jump to another program to optimize a model. Grease Pencil has been updated to the Blue Pencil Tool — and that’s not in name only. The base functionality is the same: the ability to draw directly onto the Maya viewport as notes and annotations for feedback to the animator. Blue Pencil increases the functionality dramatically, as indicated by the new toolbar of tools. Along with the pressure-sensitive pen features, you have onion skinning to see the annotations before and after. There’s also Photoshop-type layering. Once you make drawings you can select and modify the drawing — even over time. A type tool has also been added for clear text notes. The notations are embedded into the Maya file, so you don’t lose the context of the notes. There are plenty of more updates, but these are the standouts. I’d definitely push for moving into 2023 if a good deal of your workflow is modeling in Maya. Website: autodesk.com/products/maya Price: $1,785 (per year); $225 (per month)
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3ds Max 2023
long with Maya 2023, Autodesk has released the 2023 version of 3ds Max with some features that have evolved alongside Maya, and others unique to Max that were introduced in the previous edition, but have been refined for this latest release. In earlier versions of Retopology Tools, a number of steps were involved before you actually got to the retopologizing part. In this version, those steps have been automated to not only speed up the process by removing manual steps, but also by handing a clean model to the retopology algorithm. Also, if there are problems with the mesh, the errors are much more thorough to point you to the process that failed. These optimizations, in turn, benefit
Maya as they migrate from one piece of software to the other. The difference is that in Max, there is data propagation during the process, meaning that data like UVs and Normals will be transferred from the original mesh to the retopologized mesh. And there is a display mode that allows you to compare the before and after. In the modeling area of 3ds Max, there have been improvements in modifying your Working Pivot — you’ll notice that this is a focus over at Foundry in Nuke as well. Through Snap Working Pivot tools, you get a bunch of different tools to place, align and snap your pivot to your active object. One specific tool that excites me helps create a grid from a working pivot. In the olden days, creating a working grid was a pain. You frequently want to create new objects on a different axis than your world coordinates. Creating a new grid based on the face of an object that you can then make a new piece on that new axis is extremely helpful. The above pivot tools work great for the Smart Extrude tool, which originally showed up in 2022.2, but is now part of the Edit Poly modifier. The Smart Extrude will automagically merge vertices and edges, or subtract geometry when the extrude is inward. It even works if an extrude pushes through the opposite side of the object and creates a hole complete with inner faces. In alignment with developing Max and Maya to work together, Max’s Physical Material can be set to Standard Surface Compliant, which means that the material will migrate to Maya’s shaders. In conjunction, FBX files will recognize both and convert appropriately. When active, parameters named Thin Film and Sheen will be active, and any renderer that supports the Physical Material won’t have a problem. These are all important features that definitely optimize workflows. Website: autodesk.com/products/3ds-max Price: $1,785 (per year); $225 (per month) continued on page 142
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june|july 22
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