03 of 25, things i miss from Blender

Yay time for a rant on Blender VS Maya!

The main thing about Maya that still bugs me even now, is it lacks some of the most useful things that have become well known tools inside Blender, such things are a thing called Modifiers, such useful modifiers Blender has that Maya could benefit from is a..

Subdivision Surface, this basically work the same was as Mayas Smooth, /Smooth mesh, but unlike Maya's Smooth view that doesn't render at times if its not set up, or that when you apply a Smooth node you cant go backwards, unless its added at the very end.


But blender's Modifiers can be turned on and off at any time, and the Subdivision Modifier can be used at the very start and you are able to edit the model With the modifier active and the effect will be the same. this means you would have fare less polygons to move around, the better part is the most if not all the modifiers never have to be applied,,, so the seemingly low poly model could contain 100000's of faces, yet the program wont slow down and in addition, the render time is the same wither you use an active modifier,

Mirror modifier, its as the name suggest, you select witch axis you want to mirror and IT Mirror the model AND connects ONLY the edges that are on the center line for you, best part of this modifier is, you can keep it active and skin (bind) a rig to it,, and along as you have the new Armistice modifier above the mirror, then the rig will work, ie you move the left arm and ONLY the left arm moves. Cool right?

the top image shows the model (Elder Brother) without the SS modifier on, the one under it has it active with level 2. the polygon display is the same tho its polygon count has quadrupedal 

and below that is what the model looks like if the modifier was applied, and it also slows down the system a small bit and adds a bit extra to render time. how ever apply the SS modifier is helpful if you are going to take the model into sculpt mode to create a normal/ bump map,

But here is a small area that people might like in Maya unless i'm missing it or rigging wrongly.  is a pose [Copy and mirror past].. meaning you can Copy the current pose for a controller, say the foot. select and copy, then select the other left and past, the mirror past would take the local location in relation the the models center point and past it accordingly with a negative value. now this is where it gets annoying in Maya,, i know most bones you can do this with, but in Maya there is this HUGE annoying problem where when you make the rig you have to mirror the bones over, this create the pones with a negative value, and when you add controllers to said bones they also need to rotate in a negative value..



They is one thing, the only real thing i don't understand with Maya, and that's, whats the point with the History? it serves no purpose other then to bog down the scene and break the model if you try to change any one of the nodes...that and the fact you always have to freeze transformations and delete the history otherwise things like UV mapping, Rigging, and simulations becomes rather buggy... i really don't see a reason it needs to be there, its not like the History nodes can even be used for anything.... needless to say back in Blender it doesn't used History nods, any edit you make is set, (well you have 100 Undo's) so you don't get any unexpected errors...