As a 3dsmax user I barely find what I need in Maya.

I promised myself while I study Maya I would build a tutorial for the most needed things.

Meanwhile I have some questions and could you be so kind to help me?

- how can I attach 2 meshes in Maya. How can I detatch a mesh from a poly shape?
- if I have a rigged body, how can I replace the mesh? (attach the new one and delete the original one?)
- copy-paste works nice comparing to Max. However the pasted mesh gives errors in filemaker. I think I need to unparent/ungroup/freeze transforms/rename but I am not sure. How do you manage to use pasted meshes?

I would add laissemoirire's good question: how can you mirror a mesh in Maya?

And more questions to come. Please help on these ones.

- how can I attach 2 meshes in Maya. How can I detach a mesh from a poly shape?

http://wiki.xmoonproductions.org/index.php?title=Backgrounds_and_lighting
About half way down the tutorial there is a section about separate and combine

- copy-paste works nice comparing to Max. However the pasted mesh gives errors in filemaker. I think I need to unparent/ungroup/freeze transforms/rename but I am not sure. How do you manage to use pasted meshes?

For me i just use ctrl + d and move the object where i need it but these are just basic objects with only textures applied


I would add laissemoirire's good question: how can you mirror a mesh in Maya?

[url]
http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/m ... y-htm.html[/url]


Hope this helps

Thanks a lot!

My rigging question is because I dont understand Max rigging either but I just want to replace rigged objects meshes.

I have models ready to rig but it is a pain for me.I have in mind to use a premade skeleton.

The mesh is too much attached to the skeleton and its a pain to find out what to do. In Max I remember I have to activate/deactivate somehow the relation between them. Tried only once and hated tje bone menu.


Regarding paste, Maya has different duplicate ways I dont get the difference.

Iv never tried to rig anything in maya but the creating a character tutorial might help with that

And here is some infomation on duplication
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2014/en_us/index.html?url=files/Edit__Duplicate_Special.htm,topicNumber=d30e54155

beware when mirroring with maya. This f**** piece of software s*** will f*** everything up ! (that is said)
because filemaker works only with standard mesh (shape), everything else in your mesh other than shaders will break it. polycut, polysurface polysomething, polysomeelse....
"delete history" works when it wants, and turning off history don't prevent some transform attributes to appear. (try to mirror cut a mesh, and you will understand)

When dealing with mirror, you have to :

- always use reflection tool from the beginning, never forget to turn it on. Because maya blackmagic keep tracks of original vertex/pivot position somewhere, and don't care about the actual object space to calculate reflection. do not cut / merge or anything else than move vertex with reflection ON, and extrude edges with selecting BOTH mirror edges; or you will have to do the second option.

- (when reflection is not working because.. we don't know.. maya stupid black magic) :
delete half of your object (don't mirror cut or anything cut).
move your mesh near 0,0,0.. if you want a left/right mirror, put your whole mesh to the left/right of world center.
put the pivot at 0,0,0 (because maya black magic reflection is done by "where is the pivot when I first create my mesh" )
duplicate special, scale x -1
combine 2 meshes.
NOW, and because you set the pivot to 0,0,0 before merging, mirroring is working again.
move one "side" of your object toward your mirror plane, using reflection.
when your centered vertices are about to "merge", select them 2 by 2 (left and right side) and use "edit mesh -> merge to center" .
it's done, you have a full mesh working with filemaker, reflection option is working in maya, and it's a 1 piece mesh. you can now move it where you want in the scene.

I probably lost 2 full working days of my life to find this, and all forums are fulls of total useless things.

I dont really know how to move the pivot.

But I am using an easier way to reset it and even make the mesh work in filemaker if it doesnt.

I place the mesh where I want, thinking the pivot in origin. Then edit-freeze transformations. This sets every scale rotate and trans value to zero and moves the pivot to origin.

home key lets you move the pivot
but this is why i just use max for everything and export them over as obj's