MaxtoMaya_Fundamentals

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Disclaimer: This is NOT a Modeling tutorial. The methods used within this tutorial are just a way to explain as many tools as possible by creating a simple object. This tutorial is meant for people that want to learn the basics of either Maya or Max and is no way attempting to do anymore than just that. To summarize: if you are looking to learn how to model, buy a book or ask a friend, if you are looking to transfer software packages from max to maya, or vise versa, this is.. I guess, as good as any place to start.





For those Max artists out there (the ones that learned max first) congrats on your accomplishment. To be honest, If Max was the first software I used I prolly would have packed it all in and quit. Not that there is anything wrong with the software per say, but its overcomplicated, and million step processes make it pretty anoying (in my opinion) to work with.

This tutorial is (hopefully) built in a way that both Max and Maya users can make the transition between software packages as painlessly as possible. I warn you though, I'm a bit long-winded and tend to describe a little to in depth so skimming is recommended

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3d Studio Max

The controls:

controls are universally different between the software as well for some strange reason here are the camera controls

MAX:
Rotate = hold middle mouse + alt
Move = hold middle mouse
zoom = scroll middle mouse wheel or hold alt+ctrl+click middle mouse

Maya:
Rotate = hold alt + left click
Move = hold alt + middle mouse
Zoom = Scroll middle mouse wheel or hold alt + middle mouse + left click

The Interfaces:

If Maya and Max share anything in common it's defiantly not the interface. The 2 images below show the main differences and how to navigate around them.

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moving on.. were gonna create a little house in each piece of software and walk though the Modeling and Texturing. Max first, cause I said so..

Heres what were trying to create :



I know its a lot to take on for a tutorial but hey, I'm hardcore, what can I say?

1.) Alright start a new scene in max and lets make a cube. In the create window on the right side of max click on the Box Button.


2.) Max makes you draw out its primitives first by width then by height. So click somewhere in the perspective window and draw your little box. Should look like this when you are done. (P.S. right click like mad once you are done with your box to deactivate the create box tool)


Note: Max and Maya both use Q.W.E.R for their tool options. Q is select, W is move, E is rotate and R is scale. In Maya T is will activate the last tool used. like if you are extruding from a face and accidentally click W to translate it (clicking W will switch back to world coordinates) you can just hit T and the normal centric manipulator will come back Max doesn't have this feature, actually, as far as I know they don't have specialized manipulators so I guess its no big deal.

3.) Covert your box to an editable poly by right clicking the object.. go down to "Covert to" and select editable poly.

we can now edit this object on a component level.

4.) From the right click marking menu select "Polygon" this will allow us to select individual faces. Now scale down the bottom face a bit to match our concept also, hit F4 to view the wireframe on our box.


5.) Next, from the right click marking menu go into edges. Were going to add some geometry in there to cut out our windows and door. Looking at the concept we want our windows to align where the top of the door is and come down halfway to the ground. Simple enough!
First select a vertical edge and in the modify window select Ring:


6.) in the same window hit the connect option box and set it to 2:


7.) repete steps 5 and 6 on the horizontal edges to shape the door and windows. Should look like this when you are done


Note: If you need to move the edges around but dont want to mess up the overall shape there is a constraint option:

Just set it to edges and it will allow you to move that edge along the surface.

8.) alrighty Now its time for the roof! First we need our upside down V shape. There are a million ways to get a perfect triangle at the top of this thing but were gonna use a modifier just so say we did.
- First add another split though the middle of the mesh using "edge > ring > connect" like before:

-Now select all the verts on the top of our box and were going to assign a FFDBox Modifier to them. We do this by selecting the dropdown menu that says (Modifier list) and selecting FFDbox from the menu:

-Next we need to change the settings so that there is only spans in our FFdbox across the width. Select the SET NUMVER OF POINTS button and set it accordingly:

good work!!

9.) right click your FFDbox and select control points. Now select the center control points and translate them up. If your other verts are bowing try turning the Tension of the FFDbox to 50. It should look like this:

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10.) as much as I like seeing the little orange lines on my mesh its time to apply and get rid of our FFDbox. Right click it on the modifier stack and select collapse to.

Note: as you can see there are a bunch of options you can do here, but the only 3 that really matter are Collapse all, Collapse to and Delete. If you had more than one modifier applied to your object the Collapse all would delete them and apply all the actions to the mesh. Collapse to would just apply and delete that one modifier and Delete would delete it and whatever effect it had on the object. Simple but stupid if ya ask me.

11.) Select your windows (by polygon) door, and the floor. Now delete them using the delete key on your keyboard yay!! your house should look like this now:


Warning: Now I know this is prolly the worst workflow in the world but I want to show you some other tools to use in Max so bare with me. This is a very very simple model and im trying to fit as many things in as possible

12.) go into polygon mode and select the entire mesh. select R for scale.. hold down shift and scale the mesh up. This will duplicate the mesh so position it based on how thick you want your walls to be. A window will pop up and ask you if you want to Clone to Object or to Element. Select Element and hit ok:


13.) now the problem is normals. We need to flip the inside normals so that there is no backface. From the right click marking menu select Element and then select the inside section of the house:


14.) in the modifier dropdown menu (with the interior element still selected) Select the Normal Modifier:


15.) Collapse the stack. Now its time to stitch it all together, using a few methods. ps.. considering were using this messed up workflow your windows and door wont line up perfectly so ya may wanna spend a min and realign everything.. that is if you care... considering this is just a basic tut to get ya used to max.

16.) Extrude edge / target weld: extruding edges is fun in Max. Just select an edge, Hit W, hold down shift and drag your edge out. Now go into vertex mode and select the vert ya want to target weld. In the modify window select target weld:


17.) now left click and drag the vert to where you want it to weld to simple! Done! good Max!


18.) Bridge: Bridge is the same in Max as it is in Maya. Select 2 edges and hit the bridge option. It will create a polygon between the 2 edges and welds the verts.


19.) using these 2 methods lets stitch up our house shall we. when you are done it should look something like this:

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20.) Time to add a roof so first select the entire roof by polygon. Then hit extrude option box on the modify window. Select Local normal in the polygon extrude window.


21.) We are going to extrude out the roof now so its got a little lip on it like our concept. First were gonna select all the edges around the roof using the ring command.

22.) Now its time to covert the edge selection to faces. Right click on the selected ring and on the marking menu select "Convert to Face"


23.) Now just extrude it out like we did before.

24.) Ok im bored of this shitty little model, add your windows / door, and shit and its time to move onto maya. Any questions dont hesitate to ask





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Modeling in Maya 8.5:

First as im sure that you will quickly guess, Maya is my preferred software. Because of this I will be spending a little more time on this section. First of all we are going to customize Maya for modeling our little house. In-case you didn't read the max section of this tut I will repost our little house concept later on in the tutorial.

1.) Open Maya

2.) We are going to focus on the Shelf first. At default maya's defaults set up 4 shelves for you to use (cloth, fluids, fur, and hair (ignore my modeling tab) These are all fine and dandy but useless for everyday modeling/texturing.


3.) We need to build a new shelf with the most common tools within it. so click the little down arrow on the left hand side and create new shelf.


4.) a window will pop up and ask you to name your shelf so name it something and lets move on ok?

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5.) you shelf should now be as empty as the image below. Now its time to populate it with our most used tools


6.) First make sure the menu set drop-down window is set to Polygons


7.) now the fun begins. My most commonly used tools in maya are the Split polygon tool, Merge Verts, Append, Extrude, Split selected ring, and Collapse (we will get to collapse later) To add these tools to your Shelf all you have to do is find the tool in the correct dropdown menu and cnt+shift click it lets start shall we. the below image shows where the split polygon, append and extrude tools are. control + shift click them to add them to your shelf.


8.) when you are done your shelf should now look like this (if it doesn't then you should really learn how to follow directions slacker)


9.) Test: Find merge option under the Edit Mesh dropdown window and control + shift click the option box to add it to your shelf. Adding the option box will allow you, whenever you select that icon in your shelf, to set the merge tolerances and apply it to any vert, or edge you want. the button looks like this:


10.) your shelf should look like this now... wow this is redundant


11.) ok now were ready to start modeling our stupid little house using these wonderful tools from our shelf. Again.. heres our concept:

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12.) lets start with a box shall we? Create > Polygon Primitives > Cube

by default maya 8.5 has interactive creation on so you will have to draw the box just like in max.. I hate this so to turn it off just go back into the Create > polygon primitives and click on Interactive Creation. Autodesk is retarded


13.) Just like in max q,w,e,r works for select, move, rotate and scale so lets resize our cube a little to get used to the controls. p.s The hotkey to focus on an object is "f" (who woulda thunk?) so play around for a bit and get used to the camera and manipulation tools. When you have something that looks like the below image move right along.

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14.) alrighty now, right click on the cube and hold to get the marking menu. Unfortunately maya doesn't allow you to screengrab their marking menus (fucking strange) but it should be pretty self explanatory. While holding down just drag to the component you want to select (Faces (by polygon) Verts, UV or Edge. Lets start by selecting faces, and select the face on the bottom of the cube.


15.) scale the bottom face to match the concept and lets keep going.

16.) Now were gonna add the edges for the windows and the door but im a moron and forgot to have you add the Insert Edge Loop tool to your shelf. Go ahead and do that now the image below shows its location.


17.) Now select your box (it can be in object mode or any of the component modes) and click the Insert Edge loop Icon that you made in your shelf.


18.) your cube will automatically go into edge mode. Left click and hold any edge and place your edge in the correct spot. When your edge is where ya want it let go of your mouse.


19.) Easy enough! now slice the shit out of you cube to shape out the windows and the door. When you are done it should look something like the below image. P.S. Maya will stay in the tool untill you click a new tool or hit q,w,e,r or t happy clicking

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Long Note: if you are anything like me and tend to make mistakes from time to time and undo ("z" in maya) is a close personal friend, you may want to know a few work-arounds incase problems persist. First of all How the hell do I delete an edge and the verts at the same time? Simple, use "delete edge/verts" from the Edit Mesh dropdown menu. (add this one to your shelf) Two, ok now I know I can delete edges, how can I select a edgeloop to delete it? Its harder to find but under the "Select" dropdown menu is all of the selection options you can use while working in maya. I suggest adding Select Ring tool and Select Edgeloop tool to your Shelf. They are very simple to use as well, just double click an edge and it will select either the ring or the edge-loop so to recap.

Delete edges:

Select Edge loop

Select Ring
im not posting another image.. just look under select edge loop tool. If ya cant find it, give up now and walk away.

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20.) time for a roof were gonna use the same backwards ass method as we did in the max tut to show ya some new tools. Like in Max, Maya can use deformers to manipulate your geometry. The difference is that Maya's deformers work First things first.. we need to find them Maya likes to hide shit on us for some reason and although it does make a little bit of sense Maya's Deformers are found under the Animation menu set. So first change the menu-set dropdown from Polygons to Animation:


21.) now select all the verticies on the top of your cube:


22.) select the dropdown menu Create Deformers and select Lattice


23.) on the right side of the screen is your channel box (if its not there go into Display > UI elements > Channel Box ) and you will see the settings for your lattice. From here we can add how many divisions we want our lattice to have follow the image below.

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24.) with the lattice still selected right click on it and hold. The marking menu should show up with the option to select Lattice points. Select the center points and translate them up (using "w") to shape our roof


Note: wanna see the wireframe on shaded?


25.) Every action that maya does it stores in history as a node connected though the hypergraph (save that for a later tutorial) because of this the files can get a little chucky and slow if we dont clean out that history from time to time. Also Maya is known for glitching out when there is to much history stored up so its a good idea to delete it often. To delete history go to:
Delete All history is yet another good tool to have on your shelf

26.) as you can see the lattice is gone now and the effects have been baked into the geometry. Delete history can be undone by hitting "z" so if there are more changes ya wanted to make go ahead and make them now. The final result should look something like this:


27.) lets add a roof shall we? Select all the polygons (by face) of on the roof


28.) Hit the Extrude button we made in our shelf and your manipulator will change to the normal direction of the faces you selected:


29,) Grab the blue arrow and drag out the geometry


30.) Now select the faces where the door and windows are and delete them by pressing backspace on your keyboard


31.) lets add some thickness to the walls now by selecting the whole object and hitting extrude again. Pull out the geometry the same way you did the roof and you should get something like this:


This method does leave the mesh looking a little bit bubbly but for all intents of learning the tools, it works.

32.) now were gonna pull out the rim around roof. So select all the edges around the ridge of the roof:


35.) Now in the Select dropdown menu (go back into the polygon menu-set) select Convert > selection to faces

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36.) now extrude again friends and were done with the base model Go ahead and extrude out some window treatments and a chimney, I think ya can handle it.

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the last thing I wanted to do in this tutorial (mostly because I know most people reading this are max users that wanna try maya) is go though some tools that are useful:

Split poly tool: same tool as the the Cut in Max and works pretty much the same way. Take a look at the settings before you use it though as it is set by default to only cut on edges and snapping is turned on


Append: Append is a much more powerful version of Bridge in Max. When the tool is active it will highlight any and all border edges in your mesh. From there you can select what edges you want to create a face between: Example:


Bevel: located at the bottom of the Edit Mesh dropdown it's the same tool as chamfer in Max.

There are a million tools I could walk you though but considering my intention was just to get you started with the basics im gonna leave it at that. If you have any questions, dont hesitate to ask them in this thread or email me directly. Thanks
-Kev

[Jpowers]

I know it seemed like such a useless tutorial for you, but that really will help me understand Maya better. I am so consumed with Max that I don't know the difference between Maya and a hole in the ground so this is useful to people like me.

Thanks bro!