Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence...

[robcat2075]

A (maya) screenshot posted by an AnimationMentor student. Her character is flying apart and even the technical support at the school can't figure out why.

 

That is life with maya for anyone below the guru level.

 

I feel bad for her, I think she has a deadline of midnight tonight for the assignment.

 

[DZ4]

I feel for her, too. But, hopefully they notice her skill and their shortcomings instead of putting her down for trying. She should turn it into a "Don't drink and Maya" concept to use what she's got.

 

I went to a tech school to see what 3DStudioMax, Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator was all about. After getting fleeced for 5G's and sitting through a class about plugging (IDE?) wires into devices, I realized it's a big façade in terms of what I was looking to do. But the industry standard software must be there for a reason, and people apparently make that work, but I cannot explain to a lot of people how just making the content is all that is necessary, then the ultimate hard part is showcasing it to make a living (and the enjoyment has not much to do about money, yet?!?!). So, A:M is priceless to me (can't afford to update), when it comes to putting some video together, or making some meshes, for whatever I'm doing.

 

But do a job search for Animation Master and you find nothing! What's up?

 

I think it was Corel ULead Photo...something that just made Adobe Photoshop look pointless. You could smudge...

 

Oh, and the 3DStudioMax class made me feel like Han Solo stuck in a job redesigning a garbage can with outdated tools or something. What's this key for? € .. Neeto!

 

Then again, it's always important to learn about the struggles and development that others did. Like in my Surveying II class in college, I called it "Ancient Methods In..." at one point, being pompous and sarcastic because they weren't teaching me the Total Station, etc. Yet, (who was that poet about going into the woods?) look what you take for granted and where it came from, right. I tend to make every mistake possible before getting something to work, and I'm sure that's just the way it goes.

 

As far as Maya? Why are you getting into a competitive atmosphere by displaying things in such a manner? Are you waving an A:M flag saying you're the best thing that ever happened to the world? Not to be offensive, but I simply don't understand some things and it's an acquired skill that can only be developed by becoming flat broke.

 

She should go with a "Talk to the Hand" concept, with an occifer in the background.

[robcat2075]

I am indeed a shameless A:M flag waver.

 

A:M users sometimes wonder if A:M is the only program with an annoying bug or if somehow the other programs have some secret that makes everything easy.

 

We typically see the work done in other programs... when it's done. Or we may see a sped-up screencam demo that goes from beginning to successful end... by someone who's an expert user who's omitting all the mistakes and wrong turns he made before he got good at it.

 

Many A:M users come from other programs and already know that the other programs have drawbacks, but some A:M users are in 3D for the first time and it's useful for them to know that the other apps aren't a flawless, magical solution.

[DZ4]

I totally agree with you. It's just odd to me that A:M isn't recognized more by companies looking for graphic artists. Is it a conspiracy of some sort? I think maybe the other software packages are just pushed more by sales and deals made perhaps.

 

I also think the forum rules are not to talk about competing products, so I'm going to be quiet...(He started it).

[robcat2075]

You're right. We should stick to discussing A:M on the A:M forum!

 

Generally I do.

 

However... Martin Hash once made the observation that "Maya bought every customer they have." That means they spent as much or more on advertising and promotional deals as they ever made in sales.

 

How could they stay afloat with a business plan like that? Short answer: they didn't. The money came from outside investors, not the makers of the product.

 

Eventually they ran out of investors willing to put more money into it and Maya, the program, was sold at a firesale price to Autodesk. That happened back around 2005.

SoftImage XSI had a similar business plan and had a similar result: sold off to Autodesk when the money ran out.

 

Much money was lost but Maya, the program, did win the market-share battle. How could it not? They were actually paying studios to drop the software they had and use Maya instead. It's excessively complicated and awkward to use but now it is entrenched and not likely to be dislodged in foreseeable future.

Martin Hash and A:M never had the money to engage in the promotion war, but for those of us who are not in a studio where every part of the process can be assigned a separate expert in that task, A:M is still here (unlike XSI, now cancelled by Autodesk or Truespace, now canceled by Microsoft) and still powerful for people like you and I who want to get 3D projects done and need to be able to do the whole pipeline ourselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DZ4]

Yea, that stuff's out of my league. I think they could make a bigger spectacle out of the "3D image rendering wars" or something to better utilize their time. Autodesk also puts out AutoCAD and went to a Civil3D software plan at the peak of the recession that just made it even harder to find work in the field.

 

My aim (as reluctant as I was at first, not interested in mobile devices except for a quick phone call) is to take whatever you or anyone else has in your respective "tank" and just stick it on the smartphone. Build from there. But it doesn't matter where the images came from, I wouldn't exclude an artist that was lead down a different path, that's not my attitude. But all my "artwork (ha! you pompous jerk to call it that, "I don't know what else to call it, Adrian") was done with A:M, so I'm totally in for channeling my efforts through a method (or class or subroutine) that makes A:M the superclass (for lack of being able to define it better). I don't want to make the mistakes that others did, but they also ran out of $$$, and I can understand why they did what they did.

 

The angle is: The app just looks for content...doesn't care where it came from. That levels the playing field. It's not a competition, it's just a product. So, I would back up and say: let's leave A:M out of it, promotion-wise, let the app (Monoboom Starplayer, sorry:) play animation on the phone.

 

And the girl that developed that image up there with Maya...well...she's just as excited about it too, right? Or somebody that videotaped themselves taking a dump or something. But, eventually, the best "dance music spectacular light show wow" will come from A:M, IMHO. It's like MTV! Eventually, it'll be UnRealWorld episodes, but for now...hmmm?

 

So, are they (on the other side of the fence) thinking the same way?

[nemyax]

So, did the student find a bug in Maya, or did she just screw up and blame her tools?

[Fuchur]

Does not sound to me like a user error if you ask me, if the tech guys can't figure out why too...

Any software has bugs... the big once and the smaller once two...

 

Anyway: We are in the main A:M forum – you should be a little pro A:M here .

[robcat2075]

 

And the girl that developed that image up there with Maya...well...she's just as excited about it too, right?

 

She better be excited about it, it's the only choice she has if she attends that school.

 

 

So, did the student find a bug in Maya, or did she just screw up and blame her tools?

 

 

I'm sure she did something wrong, that's not a typical result she's getting there, but in an overly complicated software environment it's harder to track down the specific "wrong" among all the possibilities. She wasn't blaming the tools, but she was alarmed that she didn't know where to begin to fix it.

 

I lost track of the thread on Facebook so I don't know if she ever got back on track.

 

 

 

Have you seen Matt's Tireman character?

 

That's a great example of A:M being a powerful tool.

 

Matt was at an advertising agency and this tire company came in wanting their logo turned into a 3D animated character. The agency had a crew of Maya guys on staff but they said it couldn't be done, not without weeks of effort.

 

But with A:M Matt was able to turn around a working version of the character in about a day. The client loved it and Matt ended up doing a whole series of commercials and promotions for them.

 

One person with A:M got something done that a whole team of Maya people couldn't get done.

[nemyax]

Does not sound to me like a user error if you ask me, if the tech guys can't figure out why too...

 

But robcat2075 didn't provide a link. Maybe they did resolve it after all.

 

We are in the main A:M forum – you should be a little pro A:M here .

I would, but AnimationMentor don't do A:M =)

[detbear]

I'm fairly confident that:

 

1. Animation Mentor will figure that out and make it right with their student. They do care about their students. And the biggest studios in the world go to Animation Mentor first to recruit new animators.

 

2. and that Maya will continue to be used in just about every feature film blockbuster that most aspiring animator would love to work on.

 

3. and that Animation Master will continue to be a favorite tool for people who enjoy using it(including me).

[pming]

Hiya.

 

I love A:M. I've been an "infrequent user" since "A:M 98" I think it was (box/CD is in my parents basement somewhere). Why do I say infrequent? Mainly because of three HUGE reasons:

 

1. AM's renderer is about as fast as a drunk three-legged dog walking backwards up hill in the mud. (re: s-l-o-o-o-w-!). [although, lately, it has improved ]

 

2. "Quick" and "Modeling" are never in the same sentence with A:M.

 

3. A:M does not play well with others.

 

The first point, speed in rendering. I like A:M's renderer....to me, it has a nice, clean look to it with generally wonderful shading. Vibrant may be the best way for me to describe it. But it is so dog-gone slow I just don't do any final renders in it. Ever. Taking a Cornel box, flat colors only, and rendering it in A:M...and taking the same thing with as close to I can get in identical settings into Softimage or Lightwave...not even a contest. SI and LW blow A:M's time out of the water.

 

The second point, there aren't enough tools to help a modeler. In Hexagon (my favorite modeler), I can model, say, a large back-ally dumpster bin in about 20 minutes (with indentations, bevels, dents, etc) because it's polygonal and I have the tools to do it (chamfer, bevel, edge loop, connect, inset, extrude, bridge, etc). Say what you want, but polygon modeling and sub-D surface modifiers are simply faster....by multiple orders of magnitude. IMHO, A:M needs to develop either (A) full support for polygon objects [re: treated same as a spline model in A:M....render, animation, weight map, bones, etc], or ( needs to develop the same "tool set" that polygon modelers have, but in 'patch' form.

 

The third and last point, and this is related to the first two, A:M needs to have some serious rethinking with regards to where and what it wants to be in the current marketplace. In short, do they want to keep doing what they are doing, or do they want to break into the "real' market? Right now, there is a storm brewing from what I see. Newtek is dropping the ball with Lightwave again, IMHO (too long a story to go into). Autodesk sits behind it's massive desk, in the shadows, smoking a big stoggie laughing maniacally, knowing that nobody can really compete with them...so they can do as much or as little as the want with Maya and 3DS MAX (don't even get me started on what they did to my beloved Softimage! > ), really. Cinema4D has the European broadcast/commercial style stuff pretty much wrapped up. Houdini is trying to become more main-stream....but their node-based system is a PITA for modeling or for people coming from a more "common workflow", and their pricing is still too high. Blender...well, blender is doing a LOT better now that they've finally acknowledged the thousands and thousands of people who would love to use it, but find their workflow just outright bizarre. Blender is making great strides in their overall interface/GUI-design.

 

So where does that leave A:M? At the perfect time to just suck it up and put A:M into everyones pipeline. The "we don't want A:M to be just another tool in a pipeline" craziness needs to die. If I could do my modeling in Hexagon, detailing in ZBrush, rigging and animation in Animation:Master, and render in Lightwave....I'd cream myself. Seriously. For me, that would be the perfect pipeline. Right now, that is my pipeline....minus the A:M part. Which is kind of a big part of the pipeline for making short animations...

 

Sorry for the longish reply, but I just wanted to pop in and give my 2¢ on the whole thing. I really think the time is nigh for A:M to step up and say "Hey, world! Here, have all the animation capabilities of the big packages....at a very low price! Add it to your pipeline today!" (or, baring that, "Hey world! A:M has full support for polygon models and modeling!" ).

 

 

Paul L. Ming

[Ilidrake]

I actually started with 3dsMax. I have dabbled with Maya a bit as well as other 3d packages. They all have their problems. The biggest being the learning curve. And they are steep. When I discovered AM I already new about modeling (though at the time I hadn't developed my skills) so I figured for the price what did I have to loose. Boy was I surprised!!! The curve is high as for learning but it's a much better curve, one that is quite attainable by anyone. But mainly that curve is really imposed by your own talents and willing to learn. I have to say I am a big AM fan boy!!! And will probably die of a heart attack if it's removed from the market. I wish the community would do another movie *shameful plug LOL*

[jakerupert]

Hi piming,

 

Your pipedream is not going to happen.

As Martin stated so many times, a true compatibility between the patch and the polygonworld is simply not workable.

[Zaryin]

That's why I love posting in the WIPs forum. I like showing that there is no "make dragon" button. It takes work to get good and to add detail to models. The same goes for every other portion of the animation process.