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Athey — Maya - setting up ref planes
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Published: 2010-11-15 18:15:49 +0000 UTC; Views: 4803; Favourites: 49; Downloads: 101
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Description
Very simple tutorial that goes over setting up viewport reference planes in Maya.Related content
Comments: 24
I wonder if this works for maya 6.5 I seriously need refreshing of how to do things >.<
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Great tutorial. I think I'll save a copy of this for the time being for later use. I'm in the process of learning Maya for the first time. I mainly want to start off doing 3D models/art for the time being and then animation later on.
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Oh wow, I wasn't expecting to learn anything from this, but I did, ha ha. That's because I get to the camera attributes differently,
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I'm now jelous.I wish i could find this info 4 years ago 
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lol - yeah, I was setting this up and I sort of got a flash back to years ago when I remember desperately trying to figure out if there was a good way to do this in Maya and not having the faintest idea how to do it. And I was like - you know, this would be a really quick and easy tutorial and I bet there are loads of people who don't know how to do this in maya - so I did it.
It's one of those 'why the hell do you have to go in HERE to do this?' things.
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"why the hell do you have to go in HERE to do this?"
That goes along with developing software where a smaller section to develop is handed off to a smaller programmer who has no idea how the rest of the program works. They are just supposed to implement their section and hand it back to the lead, and the lead fits it in wherever they see convenient. Thus leads to all sorta off awkward implementations that "get the job done" but aren't intuitive to anyone but the programmer who developed it.
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So you have those two hand references which are awesome. The thing is, the refs are top, bottom, and side, rather than top, side, and front. In Max you set up your planes by breaking up a cube and had the top and bottom planes show their respective view of the hand. It works in Max because one of the two images becomes transparent depending on the way the normal faces. That doesn't work so well in Maya because I could still see the image, regardless of the normals.
I tried to work around this by adding a new ortho camera for the bottom view and setting up a top and bottom image plane the old-fashioned way (i.e. this tutorial). But that still doesn't work because then if you're looking through the top, for example, all you can see it the bottom hand image plane because it's in front of the hand.
Do you know of a workaround for this? Did this explanation even make a lick of sense?
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Assign your camera's to layers and turn on and off the visibility. It'll let you turn the viewport reference planes on and off.
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That would make sense. Thanks!
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.... *pssst*.... She looks scary. Like, I'm gonna' get you in your sleep scary
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Maya? 
Happy to see tutorials though.
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I will always and forever prefer 3dsmax over Maya. However, at work, we use Maya.
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3DSMax FTW!!! I've been using it since it was a DOS program and didn't have the 'Max' on the end. I also remember when Soft Image and Maya were owned by other companies... What happened to SGI anyhow? Hmmm...
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heh - yeah, my first 3d app was 3d Studio 4 for DOS. My strongest memory was having to close the program, reset to my bootup screen, get into windows to load up my graphics app to edit the texture map, shut down, go back into DOS, load up 3ds, load my file.... And heaven help me if I still needed to change something. lol. I also strongly recall that it did not have an UNDO. lol.
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My re-education is coming along nicely. I've done 2 body models (low-low-res) a head, which I finally unwrapped the mysterious UV monster. It's the minor details, and like which buttons get pushed that created the issue. The rest was easy. I don't know why people complain so much about it. Then again I kept every face a quad. The tutorials on You Tubby said I'd end up with tri's. I scoff. Mudbox is great. It's definitely the equivelant of Zbrush. I learned Zbrush quickly when I was trying to find free/cheap alternatives to using Autodesk software for school. In-law issues. Sorry to end this on a hanging note.
laterz
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Oh yeah. . .
How's that going anyhow? I know, can't talk about projects or anything, but still at the place you had just started at back when you two had financial trouble?
I do prefer some places that don't use 3dsMax at times because of games like (iirc) Neverwinter Nights where any custom models had to be made in 3dsMax to be compatible.
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Current project has been a bit of a roller coaster for a while now. Definitely can't talk about it, but I will say that if we manage to actually accomplish what we're aiming for, it'll be pretty awesome.
This has been one of those huge transition projects. New engine, new software, all sorts of crap. Basically our engineers have been in crunch for.... well, a long while now, because we've made a whole new engine for our current project. Since we were starting with a clean slate, the studio finally decided to make the switch to Maya since all of the other Sony-owned first party studios use it and the hope was that we'd be able to share tech with other studios easier this way.
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And they're too cheap to shell out for 3ds. . . 
I have a pretty in-depth idea for a series of games, been working on it since '99, but I don't really trust the big companies not to kill it. 
I prefer the first option because I've seen what SOE has done to most games it acquires and I'm not thrilled about their handling of such. They don't take any pride in property they buy instead of make it seems. Terrible customer service and they keep reformatting how the durn things work.
I like Blizzard's pride in their games, just not the execution of some of their projects such as WoW.
Unfortunately I'm just an idea guy and, unless that's all a team leader in development needs, I don't have the skills to get into the biz on my own.
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Actually, they keep up to date liscenses for 3dsmax too, so we've got 3dsmax, maya, zbrush, mudbox, and motion builder all on our systems. It's a bit... excessive. lol. But sony has this deal with autodesk, so it's sort of a huge package deal.
SOE and SCEA are actually semi-separate entities. (which, I know, sounds retarded). Just like SonyMusic/BMG, and Sony Pictures, and Sony Electronics are separate entities from SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment). So while it's all 'Sony', we don't seem very capable of productive communication.
But anyway... yeah, idea stuff. There's actually a mandate from corporate that if anyone (like, someone who lives local) tries to drop off some pitch for a game idea, we're supposed to instantly chuck it in the trash. Some sort of legal thing, really. If we never saw it, then there's no problems. Intellectual property rights is a touchy subject and they don't want to even risk any sort of lawsuits about people claiming that such and such idea was stolen, etc.
But anytime that you pitch an idea to some sort of corporate entity, you are basically giving it away to the wolves. They WILL devour it and it WILL end up a completely different beast when everything is said and done. No idea ever remains fully intact after going through money people with focus groups. People in suits who control money tend to be responsible for some of the dumbest decisions made about games.
If you ever play a game and there's some specific game mechanic or 'feature' and you can't help but think 'why the holy hell would they even DO it this way?' it's probably because of someone in a suit who was in some sort of 'producer' capacity and didn't even actively work on creating the game. Some dictate on high for the purpose of fulfilling some marketing goal. Or to suit some arbitrary mandate that filled a bullet point on someone's powerpoint presentation.
Those are the sorts of decisions that actual artists and designers despise because they often have no choice but to implement it, even if they think it's absolutely retarded.
In the end, it's still a business.
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Thus why I like option 1. 
I wouldn't be in it for the money; I'd be like those on the original EQ team. Barely funded and pretty much scorned by Corporate, but making for the fun and the innovation. In the end, they had a damn good product seeing as it's lasted what, almost 12 years now?
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