Alias Maya 4.5 Win32 - Can You Handle It?... Discuss-Ting!>>>

BellicoseBloke

BellicoseBloke

A very capable powerhouse with a few weird issues... One being the high price tag back then-

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The other was that at that price there was no actual 'Symmetry' feature... There were some workarounds like just modeling half the model then mirroring over for an occasional look the finalizing when finished... Or you could instance parts which will model right along with you until you are forced to combine them... Having a brain about planning the model helps in that regard...

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What's nice with Maya is the MEL scripting which leaves 3ds Max's MSscript in the dust as far as power... Scripts in Maya are like plugins in Max, It's also nice not to have those ungodly thin MCP panels like in Max... Also many sectors to Maya, I really like PaintFX as you can paint in 3D space or on a canvas or on a texture on the model, friggin' paint hair!....

I like 4.5 as it's right before mental ray was injected so quite stable & the maya software render is quite nice but at any rate I also got VirtuaLight render engine which is GI... Also 4.5 is first for smooth proxy...

Grab a brochure-

https://web.archive.org/web/2003070...t.com/en/products/maya/pdf/Maya45Brochure.pdf


There are but a few issues... If you got OpenGL 2.X the PaintFX canvas may have to update manually & for any machine using the scrollwheel in the viewport is a NO-NO which will offset where the cursor is to where the actual action is... But you still need MMB & ALT for screen pan function...

clayDough MEL script mimics Mirai's sculpting function, coolest script ever-

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connectPolyShape very powerful smooth proxy workflow plug/script...

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Anyways one can get 4.5 here, someone gave a tut on the cracking procedure in reviews... The only problem you might have is the machine code you get in the utility might be one of 2 or 3 but it's usually the first 12digit code....

There was some other issue I think maybe it was the INF file wasn't pointing to the maya installer, open in notepad & correct this & save-

https://archive.org/details/maya45

Got a maya book in the mail today was lucky to find at a great deal on a new old stock this ain't the case on obsolete software books on ebay anymore they are going up in price like crazy...

Some were doin' real good work even before Maya 4 shoot Steven Stahlberg was hittin' it even before it was Maya... Here's a head he did in Alias PowerAnimator back in 1995-

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Later on>>>

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OK... Well VirtuaLight Render engine works pretty good with Maya 4.5 which will also give you caustics as well as GI...Here's caustic scene-

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Since it was a bit of buggery to find I am giving direct links...

Here's VirtuaLight 1.4.0 which is as far as it went, it's freeware-

https://web.archive.org/web/2006031...tualight.com/Download/VirtuaLight1.4Win32.exe


If you have trueSpace 5 or up you probably already have an instance of an old version of VirtuaLight... When editing environment variables you see a virtualight down in paths don't delete it just edit it with the new version path...

Here's the mVL plug-

https://web.archive.org/web/20030421020411/http://www.a-toy.net/mvl/mVL-1.0pre3.exe


Might as well finish off with more Steven Stahlberg-

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One thing to note about Maya's Paint Effects as per above renders is that 'Out Of The Box' painting fibers/trees/gross crap in the 3D viewport like the kodiak hair ONLY works with the Maya Software Render Engine... The first render where I just paint onto NURBS Ball Texture well any other render engine will see that...

You see, a couple versions after Maya 4.5 they had to make a feature that could make Paint Effect strokes as POLYGONS so then other render engines like mental ray, VRay, finalRender or other could actually render Paint Effects...

But you can imagine the poly count... Paint Effects expert Ethan Sommers said that some just SINGULAR Paint Effects plants could get as high as a half-million polygons!!... Well that's a great way to bring an XP machine to a halt... NO THANKS!... Now 500,000 Zbrush pixols would be OK but those are not actual polygons like the rest of the world...

Personally since I plan to use Paint Effects ALOT I'll be just fine with the Maya Soft Render... It renders Paint Effects rather fast as it's a post effect... It took a bit longer on the kodiak hair because I have domeGI active which has alotta light bouncing around to simulate global illumination & in Paint Effect settings I have it set to respect scene lighting...


So here's a gal Stahlberg had back on his site in 1999 I had to convert from WMV which sucks plus as GIF it's downgraded to 256 colors but you can see he has the movement down pat... Model kinda looks like Winona Ryder-

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Here's animation of Mika by AmazonSoul Looks like she's saying 'Shut-Up' & someting else-

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Getting to mundane tasks like placing MEL scripts to shelves you can make the 'MEL' label text or use a 32x32 BMP or XPM...

I find the old AxiomX PixelToolbox very handy you start out choosing the 32x32 template then just pixel paint for a few minutes... You can copy to clipboard after or save as ICO then convert... This actually has quite a few cool toolZ, Warp, Smear, etc...

This website had been offline but it's back now-

http://www.axiomx.com/PixelToolbox/index.htm


Here making a BMP for domeGI-

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Whelp, whelp... Messing around with the LightEngine3D Plugin which is based on the rayDiffuse node but also has the rayDiffuseLight which one must use... The rayDiffuse node appears to need to be hooked into the color input of your surface shader to work at all...

Before this all I got was white BG with model black... No unfortunately there ain't no help or instructions...

I only used one light but you could use a number of them i'm sure... No this is not something that was on the wayback I found it on the CD of the Maya 4.5 bible though I had previously scoured the wayback machine for it...

Yea, it will install a shelf if you wish but still no info on how all this works together... Pretty cool plug though I see that it is kinda a 'domeGI on Steroids'...

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Installing SEGA Animanium 1.2E... I had previously installed on a machine some years ago but that machine had graphics go bad (not from the software) no it was crappy nVidia... Perhaps the best as far as ability but crappy for longevity...

Anyways it do have a plugin for Maya 4.5...

 
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