First Impressions Blender vs Maya - Animation Workflows!
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- Опубликовано: 30 июн 2020
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Maya vs Blender! Today we compare the animation tools to see which features work better for character animation. I also share some of how DreamWorks' software PREMO works, and what I'd like to see Blender add in version 2.9+!
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► Graph Editor 101: • How to Animate with th...
► Maya Tips 1: • 5 Tips in Maya You NEE...
► Maya Tips 2: • 5 Tips in Maya You NEE...
► Blender Exploration Part 1: • Maya Artist Tries Blen...
► Blender Exploration Part 2: • ATTEMPTING 3D Animatio...
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Do you agree with my feature requests? What differences did I miss that matter to YOU? :)
The biggest problem with Blender in modeling is exture. In maya I dont have to use thichness or its tools after I press extrude, after extrude I like to use scale or move to change the object. In blender If you gonna extrude you have to use extrude or offset tool and in certain faces you have to use normal pivot to make it better. Blender has to change that.
This is gonna blow your mind. In Keymap settings, put "Grave Accent/Tilde Action" on "Navigate," that way you can hold tilde for a pie menu. Dragging bottom right is a quick substitute to going numpad Dot.
I think you grave me an idea for a blender addon with your profile ideas. :3 the beauty of blender is that you don't have to relay on devs for adding a feature, you can make your own scrips or addons yourself very easily, or commit new features to blender if you know C/C++.
Have you tried turning on both Location and Rotation gizmos at the same time? You can adjust their sizes in the settings. Also, hitting GZZ for example goes from global to local or vice versa. G shift X is change across Y and Z and not X. If you look at the bottom of the screen in Blender it'll show all the hotkeys for these neat little tricks
You can hit G and the amount you want it to me moves say g+axis+0.1, hotkeys are there for super fast workflow , specially when modeling. Thing is blender is a well a blender, you can do modeling, sculpting, rigging, simulations, texturing, composting, animating, video editing, 2d painting, 2anmation , thus shortcuts are will have to be different than a software that does less things and has more keys to spare.
• The colours are changeable in the Theme preferences.
• Changing the line weight can be done under Edit>Preferences>Interface>Line Width and set it to Thick. (this will change all lines though, more of an accessibility feature)
• The view pie menu (which includes zoom selection) is on the button to the left of the alphanumeric 1 (normally tilda on US layout).
• You also have Shift+B to do a zoom marquee.
• Add a transform gizmo on the gizmo menu to the left of the viewport overlays. You can even have a gizmo with grab/scale/rotate all together as one gizmo with different handles.
• To change the transform orientation the shortcut is , (comma) or obviously the menu at the top if that's easier.
• Press and hold Shift to make transforms 10x more sensitive.
• Ctrl will snap to the active snapping mode (selectable from the snapping menu at the top (the magnet))
• Shift+Ctrl will snap to 1/10th of the division
• Set the keying set in the timeline so you can just press I to keyframe (or auto keyframe for easy animating)
• (I'm not too hot on animation stuff but) G, S and R all work everywhere in Blender so in the graph editor, grab a handle and press S or G to move it around.
• If you want things (keyframes, nodes, 3D object etc) to snap to an axis while dragging, start dragging and press Middle mouse button and it'll stick to axis. Otherwise, X and Y work to constrain to axis in the graph.
• Select a keyframe in the graph editor and press L (for Linked) to select the entire curve (shortcut works everywhere in Blender)
• You have F-curve ghosts as the button with the square and a diagonal through it t the right of the graph editor header bar.
• The macro stuff, I've seen a lot of people with rigs setup that have those kinds of bone constraints built in and you just set up a custom property with the python data path to give you a slider in viewport. (Blender is 100x more powerful if you're not afraid to spend an hour learning specific python things)
• Jump to first frame is Shift+Left Arrow, jump to last frame is Shift+Right Arrow.
• Left and right arrow move you to previous and next frame respectively.
• Up and Down arrow move you to next and previous KEYframe respectively.
Something I love about Blender is that your shortcuts that you learn in 3D work in the animation tools, in the shader workspaces, in the sculpting workspaces, in the motion tracking workspaces. It's really consistent across the entire (massive) platform. I think it would really suffer from fragmentation if they tried to align certain workflows to other software standards. That being said, I do architectural visualisation and procedural stuff, not animation AND I've used Blender for 12 years vs 1 of Maya and 1 of 3DSMax so clearly I'm acclimatised to Blender. I've probably missed a few things here but it's great to see you giving Blender some coverage! It's an exciting time to be using it!
Just wanted to add something to what you said:
5: You can also use Alt (Press and relase) + G/R/S to change gizmos
14: Your solution of selecting linked with L isn't complete, go to View-> Only selected curves keyframes (I know this is a workaround, you can asign it to the quick menu if you're unure and you don't want to break with another hotkey)
Extra: Pressetter Pro Addond allows you to have presets for overlays, shading, snapping, and many other parts.
This why I love the Blender community. Everyone helps each other.
Epic explanation
Nice explanation.
Well Thank you
14:16 Timeline Editor > Keying > "Active Keying set" choose LocRotScale (or the one you prefer) > now every time you press "I" it will automatically key LocRotScale
this is all i wanted to tell him!
yesssss
Was just about to comment this too!
Also you can set keying to available so that every animated parameter gets keyed by pressing I
He didn't read the previous video's comments apparently 😅
Sir Wade... just a suggestion here.... when and if you discover solutions to the issues that you have raised within this video it would be MOST helpful if you could produce and update episode showing how you managed to solve them. I'm sure a lot of viewers would be most appreciative. Thumbs-up buddy !
wouldnt make sense for loads and loads of update videos.
@@thebarnold7234 so you don't wanna know the solutions?
@@rogerdltj I dont want to see video after video clogging up a channel
@@thebarnold7234 He could also add it in the description
@@thebarnold7234 As Geth270 said, once he has all the answers posed in this video it's just one big update
if you click the little + icon at the top right, next to all the different layouts in blender you can save the current layout with all it's view settings :)
also when you hit G to move an object, you can press middle mouse button to quickly select a movement axis, instead of using the x y and z keys
for your move sensitivity problem, while moving stuff you can hold shift to do very small movements
Oh and all the shortcuts works everywhere in layout really.
G - move, S - scale, R - rotate.
Works everywhere in 3d view, dope sheet, graph editor, node editor, name it..
Middle Mouse also works in every view, as well as holding shift for finer control (combined with middle mouse should have the effect you're looking for)
Also if you want to select a curve you can select a single keyframe of the curve and hit "L" to select all the keyframes in the curve (select linked)
If you want to isolate a curve you can select a handle of your curve and hit shift+H (alt+H to unhide)
The envelope-modifier is kind of like a lattice but less visual and much more difficult to use
You can also create ghost-curves but they can only be used as visual refernece and not in a non-destructive way to quickly switch between
@@d0ppelgaenger115 Oh damn - so many useful little tips. And from those I just discovered half a dozen more. Animation in Blender is feeling better already - thanks ;)
The problem is... he's using a drawing tablet/screen thing so he uses the screen everytime since his keyboard is far from him. Big issue
instead of using G,S, R for movement, scaling, and rotation why not use T for the universal transform.
The 'X' key does the same thing as the delete key, you don't need to reach across the keyboard.
The X key has an extra confirmation step though
@@zunainfaisal though you can disable that in the hotkey settings (uncheck Confirm).
@@ninjadodovideos thanks a lot
@@zunainfaisal I like that confirmation key, just in case I forget that I am not about to do something else, like move along the axis.
There no confirm option
WADE: Opens two software and runs at the same time
ME: Opens chrome
PC: NOT RESPONDING
........
ok
I have rtx so i fast
Me : try to plug out the power supply
Power supply: not responding
We have potato
blender hotkeys
shift E - break down poses
ctrl E - push pose
Alt E - relax pose
Ctrl tab - for switching between the graph editor and the dope sheet really fast
11:45 No need to hit keys to change sensitivity at all: the sensitivity of rotation and scaling is dependent on how far your mouse is from the object origin at the time you hit the transformation key.
You can also press shift or cmnd to make it more sentive
@@_J_Plove that. Comes in handy
18:08 You can move the key by pressing G in Blender, just like You would in Maya with the middle mouse button. You can also select / constrain the axis of movement for the key in the graph editor with g + x,y,z like You would in the viewport
Graph Editor uses X and Y only but not the Z. May be edit what you've said
Thanks for the tip. But I think in terms of workflow it would be nice not to always keep turning your head to the keyboard, look and presses g+x,y,z For me, you losses the rhythm and it's hard to concentrate when animating and have to look away from the monitor.
@@somboun416 Yeah I agree with you
@@somboun416 Blender always had this sort of hand glove mentality, once you start to memorize the keybroad shortcuts and work with it for awhile you should be able to just feel it out by not moving your hand's resting postion all that often, then you can keep your head looking at the screen 99% of the time, for me this ended up being Wayy- faster then doing the same tasks in 3ds Max, never used Maya.
@@JohnnyThund3r exactly! The biggest issue here I think is he's not used to the Blender workflow, which is completely valid. I use Blender just for fun and I'm far from an expert, but I don't have to look at my keyboard for the shortcuts. Since you have to use them a loooooot, you get used to them very quickly.
And what's even better is that most of them work the same in the different Windows
26:20 - Yes, Blender has "ghost curves" (there's a button to create them at the top right of the graph editor)
with the hotkey comlaint about focus on selected: the "~" key brings up a pie menue that lets you do that
also, with the having to aim in the graph editor, you can use g to grab (or s to the handles) and if you press middle mouse while in the grab, it will snap the motion to vertical/horizontal
EDIT: looks like you allready knew this one. also, if you hit "i" over the dopesheet/graph editor, you can choose "all channels" or "all selected channels" rather than selecting location/postition etc.
Hi Sir, I have a few suggestions that might be usefull:
you don't to have to switch from Pose mode to Object mode all the time, you can turn off "lock object mode" in the Edit menu, this thing lets you select objects that are in the same mode, but not the other ones. For example you can go from an armature in pose mode to another armature that is in pose mode as well, but not to an object in sculpt mode, and it's the same thing for every mode. So when disabled, you can click on any object, it will switch to whatever mode it's in. It's cool to have it because it prevents you from misclicking on something behind what you tried to select, and on some occasions waiting for the soft to change the mode, wich can be long sometimes and frustrating depending on the mesh, especially if you misclicked.
Then, if you press Shift Space in a bunch of editors, it will bring a set of tools right under the cursor (move, rotate, scale, and so on), and it's contextual, so in edit mode, the tools shown in this thing aren't the same as in the object mode, even though there are similar ones (move scale rotate once again). It's an active on release type of menu, so when you press it and go to another tool, releasing will active, but if you press shift space and leave the cursor on the tool that was already active, the menu will stay even if you release.
For the precision stuff in the graph editor, I think you already know this, but you have "value" and "frame" sliders to move keyframes with precisions (you can type in numbers), it's in one of the menus when you press N.
You may also know this, to be able to go at the beggining or the end of the timeline, you have to press shift left or right arrow (arrows are used to go frame by frame).
One final thing not related to animation, but to addons if you have some, there's a filter feature in the workspace propertie panel (the top panel in the properties, where you have the modifers, render settings, contraints and so on, it's also in the N menus in the viewport) wich allows you to disable addons on the fly in one project, just so you don't disable them in preferences, wich will disable them in every project you have and will keep them disabled when starting a new project if you forget to reenable them.
(Note: I'll avoid commenting on things you've got completely right, such as on Maya's strengths or things from Primo that could be added to Blender. This post only serves to correct you on some things.)
6:00 -- Lol, you can just use the ~ key instead of the numpad.
10:00 -- Hit either G, R or S, then click-and-hold the middle-mouse button to pick an axis, and then leave the middle-mouse button to rotate/translate/scale in precision. But yeah, gimbal customization would be great to have.
14:17 -- What's wrong with having to select what you want to key an attribute you aren't going to key repeatedly? Although, if you want to get rid of needing to select it in cases of keying repeatedly, just create a keyring for what you want to key, and the mean pop-up will go away (Hint: The "Available" keyring is best-boy). Also, fun-fact: "Almost" everything can be keyed in Blender with a "I" by simply hovering over the values, colors, etc.
16:30 -- You're correct on the curves -- the fact that I can't select by curves in Blender drives me up the wall too. That said, I don't agree with you on "deselecting the key to deselect the tangent" stuff; I personally appreciate the decoupling, because it allows me to scale / rotate / translate just the tangents and not the keys, which can be very useful sometimes, especially when I'm doing Motion Graphics in Blender.
18:00 -- ....Just press G like you do in the viewport, man. The hotkeys exist for a reason, but you're still taking the slowest route by doing it with a mouse. The middle-mouse intentionally kept for panning / zooming around throughout the entire interface (not just in the viewport), and that should clue you into Blender's biggest strength when it comes to interface design: Consistency. If something works at one place, it's likely to work at another, hence why it's not really as much as a learning-curve as most people make it out to be. (Edit: Seems like you've already covered this in 25:45.)
21:00 -- You might be correct on this, but honestly, I've never even needed to use the Normalize feature considering I can easily just hold Ctrl + Middle-Mouse to quickly zoom and stretch the graph as I like. It's much more flexible, and faster, for me than having to tell the computer to do it for me, especially in very specific and finicky situations.
22:07 -- This is probably just an interface gripe, that's fine. The other two in the menu are actually useful, especially for cleaning up redundant keyframes. If you're animating fast, this can be super-useful. ...Although, I can understand the reasoning behind getting rid of the other two options now that we have "Add-to-Favorites" menu, which can be configured for speed, and thus you can manually add those other two options to Q.
25:55 -- Yeah, because Blender seems to have been, from the start, heavily hot-key driven, which only started to change from 2.5 onwards. Don't worry though, like you said, somebody would create a patch or add-on or something eventually to make it easier for non-hotkey users. (Also, I've always animated with a mouse because I have no money for a screen-tablet. Why would someone "animate" in 3D with a tablet rather than just drawing, sculpting, or 2D-animating with it is beyond me.)
26:15 -- Yeah. It's "Create Ghost Curves" on the top-right menu of the graph editor. Though, since I've never used it before, I'm probably the wrong person to point this out.
27:00 -- There might be a Blender Theme that you might like that could address this for you. Speaking of which, do start exploring themes. ;)
31:22 -- Blender has a Pose Library (although, you probably knew that).
35:15 -- Unpopular opinion, but gotta say it: Legends animate on spreadsheet. 'nuff said.
Some of the gripes you've had are plenty justifiable, though some are simply a problem of you not knowing of good alternative options that Blender already has. That's understandable though, considering the fact that Blender is MASSIVE, and even I still don't know everything it's capable of doing, let alone somebody who just started using it. And new features keep being added frequently on top of that.
Considering that EVERYTHING in Blender is python touchable, most of the 'profile' options and such can very very easily by scripted. You can set up entire scene builds, window setups, settings, display, literally anything with a simple script that can then be assigned a hot key or control combo. There is an amazing level of power in python scripting and fantastic documentation and support for getting it done. Highly recommend. You don't even need to have any coding skills, Blender itself will hold your hand and tell you what to type and what to do!
Maya has Python scripting too. It's about how good the defaults are before you need to start scripting stuff to get what you want.
@@NymezWoW I 100% agree
Blender is not an out of the box experience
I think blender operates with a subconscious artist protection mechanics, because it's free, it's fair game for everyone, blender is so ripe if you want to develop your own trade secrets on it, that is if you have coders on your arsenal, or you're a coder-artist yourself
'Blender itself will hold your hand and tell you what to type and what to do!'
The point is, you're aren't supposed to type while creating 3D Graphic.
11:45 i don't really know if manipulators sizes in Blender can be changed but if you rotate the object manually (via hotkey) the more your mouse cursor is far from the object the more precise you are XD
Oh and... 8:25 bonus trick for the first AutoKeying keyframe: just hit G, R or S and left mouse quick (whitout actually doing any transformation) to set the keyframe
it can, it's in the preferences
Did not know that... and it even works when using the gizmos! I feel like this functionality should be explained or highlighted more somehow.
You can effectively select a whole curve by selecting a keyframes on a spline in the graph editor then pressing 'L'. The L hotkey usually grabs links items in blender windows, for example it will select all connect parts of a mesh you have selected.
I think ctrl L will deselect the whole curve. Correct me if i'm wrong
You still have to aim for the key though
why cant we just select the whole curve? Its more intuitive and takes less effort
@@TodorImreorov Because no one has implemented it yet. :^)
(A formal feature request for this has been made only 2 weeks ago on the RightClickSelect forum.)
But srsly, it would probably be very useful - but only if it doesn't get in the way of selecting keyframes themselves.
@Zineddine oh come on Blender is awesome, being open source and all, Blender is made with pure love
When moving handles in the graph editor, you can use the same transform hotkeys as when in the 3D viewport (g= location, s= scale, r = rotate) and you can also contrain those movements to horizontal (x) or vertical (y). I agree that it's not as fast as the middle mouse button in Maya but I actually appreciate that Blender's transform tools aim to be consistent throughout the various modes/panels. Thanks for this video. Very helpful while trying to learn
This is a pretty huge plus, I think. Works on main keys, and on the tangent handles too which gives some lovely control and consistency (with other windows in Blender). Just ensure that your mouse cursor isn't on top of a key when you activate or the effect is amplified. Tighter control the further away you are.
You can actually use middle mouse button. Hit G first then middle mouse.
Sir Wade, you are getting a ton of love from these Blender videos. I hope this encourages you to do more of these. I think they're fantastic, and it's really helping the Blender developers. Keep going.
I use Blender without a numberpad on my keyboard, and while it wasn't obvious at first, anything you do with the keypad can be done easily with only the left side of your keyboard and the mouse.
I see lots of comments with help on your other complaints, but I didn't readily see another comment suggesting this, so I'll add this 1 suggestion:
Hold ` (backtick/grave) and you'll see a circle menu that lets you easily switch to any view by dragging your mouse or hitting the associated number, including focusing on the selected object. (It's super fast to hit `3 or press ` and drag the mouse to the bottom right)
You can also hold Alt then drag/swipe the mouse while holding middle mouse to snap to orthographic angles. If you instead drag while holding middle mouse and THEN hold Alt, it'll snap to 45-degree angles, which is also useful.
Pose Breakdowner and Relax tool in Blender definitely sounds like what you had at DW, including with overshoot etc. Built in and I use it all the time. And pose libraries are a big part of my workflow in Blender, and super quick with shortcuts once they are set up for the rig. Thanks for the vid, and great to see you exploring with an open mind! Keep it up! PS +1 for checking into keying sets. Not perfect yet, but powerful.
11:04 you can choose (move rotate and scale) from show (viewport gizmos) and you will have all the three showing at the same time or select only what you need or when
26:20 Yes there is a ghost curve option in Blender: Its in the menu bar of the grapheditor left of the funnel symbol (filters).
30:32 - The tool in Blender is called "Breakdowner" and it only appears when you're in POSE MODE context (select a bone, switch from object to POSE mode), in the left side panel tools (under Measure It tool).
Some useful tips:
G, followed by Shift + X would isolate the translation to y and z axis, Shift + Y would isolate it to x and z, etc.
G, followed by X once translates in global space on the x axis but pressing X again switches it to local space. If you have the default set to something like 'Normal' then it would switch between Normal and Global but in reverse.
This isn't a solution for the undo problem but since I'm used to this I never switch spaces the traditional way unless I need to set a new default space so it's not really an issue for me.
This also works with rotation and scale of course.
I hope the undo thing does get changed though, it doesn't make much sense imo.
As mentioned in another comment, Timeline Editor > Keying > "Active Keying set" lets you select the default keyframe type so pressing I just adds a keyframe of that type directly.
In the graph editor,
Selecting things in Blender is pretty fuzzy so you don't have to worry about aiming at the keyframe exactly.
After you select a keyframe, press L to select the entire curve. Pressing K also selects the entire column of keyframes on the same frame as the selected keyframe.
Once you have the desired keyframe(s) selected, you can use the same transform hotkeys as in the 3D view to manipulate them. So you could do something like press I to add a keyframe and then press G then Y to move it up in the graph. (I guess you knew this one, got a bit further into the video after typing this.)
Blender doesn't have a lattice tool but it does have proportional editing (can be toggled by pressing O) which lets you propagate the transform of the currently selected keyframes to other frames around it by the selected falloff preset.
After pressing G, if you press Ctrl and Shift together then it translates the keyframes at 1/10th of the default increment. This also works in 3D view.
Yes, Blender has Ghost curves. It's the kite like icon at the top-right of the f-curves window.
Blender does have pose libraries. If you select a rig and navigate to it's rig properties (the tab on the right which looks like a running stick figure), you can see a section titled pose library. The functionality sounds exactly like how you describe it.
Blender can do stuff like "Macros" you described using "Custom Properties" and "Drivers". My hand rigs work the same way. It's a bit complicated to set up so I'll just leave it at that.
Good video btw! Probably the most unbiased and fair comparison between Blender and Maya I've seen. I hope the developers see this video and implement some of the features you want. Can you explain that first feature on you wishlist again, though? I didn't really understand it. Maybe someone else can help me out here.
18:12 In Blender Use G while moving keyframes in graph editor. Just like in 3d viewport. You can also use s and r and other shortcuts :)
You can hit G and middle mouse drag drop for locking on axis or you can press y to lock vertical axis.
You can hit ctrl + click to select left or right side of current time
Alt + click to select all keyframes in same time
When you select a keyframe, you can ctrl + rightclick to anywhere to create new keyframe in vertical line
...
Hey Wade! I just discovered your channel today when I saw you were learning Blender. I wanted to touch on something you said near the end of the video about posing fingers. In Blender, that kind of automation of having a "Bend control" and a "Splay control" and things like that are handled by your animation rig. It takes some work to get the rig operating like you want it (it's something I really enjoy. The engineering behind the relationships for various bones.) but once you have it set up it works just like you described. For instance, I can position my IK hand target where I want it, then just scale up the finger splay bone to spread the fingers out. Rotate the palm curl bone to get the pinkie to drop. Move the finger curl bone to get all the fingers to curl up. And then make adjustments to individual fingers. So posing becomes additive. You just work with the bone that approximates the pose you're trying to get, then go down the line into more and more granular control. I hope I understood your question there and my explanation made sense.
This is an incredibly detailed and well reasoned comparison! Please do more with different software and different features! Very few people doing this.
You can select the entire curve by ctrl+alt right clicking a keyframe in the graph editor
13:02 to open graph editor in Maya you don't necessarily need to go to "window>animation>graph" , you can easily split the view by right-clicking on one of the Layout View buttons in Toolbox , choose "two pane stack " which will split the view like you did in blender, and then change the bottom pane to graph editor. but here is the cool part, right click on one of view buttons again and choose "Save Current Layout" now anytime you run maya single click on that button and it will split the view and open graph editor in buttom pane for you, which is a lot quicker than blender!
You can enable the manipulators for rotate, scale and moving at the same time in the Gizmo panel, next to the Overlays panel, (11:45) to change the sensitivity of the manipulators you can press shift for fine adjustments
17:37 You can hit G to move keys in the Blender graph editor and hold down middle mouse button to lock onto one direction.
26:19 Ghost curves. The little button on the right of the triangle with the exclamation point button at the top of the graph editor.
33:20 Shift+Left or Right Arrow goes to beginning or end frame.
man I needed this video
30:36 That sounds like Blender's Pose Breakdowner tool. In the 3D viewport while in Pose Mode, check out the Pose menu, then In-Betweens -> Pose Breakdowner, and it lets you blend the pose of your selected bones from the previous keyframe to the next keyframe, by dragging left and right.
It was 2005 when I first tried Maya 4.5 as a 3ds Max animator. Maya's Graph Editor came across so much easier and more intuitive compared to the one avaialble in 3DsMax. This is important stuff, As the animation process has to feel fluid and easy with as few clicks as possible. Insightful video, Thanks!
4:31 You can use the “Append” function to import a workspace from one Blender document into another.
15:33 "I hate not being able to grab the curve" Relatable lol
Frozen Man L key
@@danielpool2039 No the same. you still have to select the key. he wants to be able to click on the curve itself not the just the nodes to select or activate it. You can't do that in Blender at the moment. His issues is that he can't select all the nodes on a curve it's that he has to click on the nodes in the first place.
@@danielpool2039 I was making a joke but thanks.
About the middle mouse thing, blender actually does have this! If you press “G” then middle mouse drag, it will lock to whatever axis you’re dragging closest to!
Aye. I think a lot of migrants to Blender take a bit of time to get used to the fact that pretty much every keyboard command for editing works in just about every window to do the same thing. Context-sensitivity is not really Blender's thing. It's just got a pile of shortcuts to use, and you can use them pretty much everywhere. Once you learn them, tho, you've learned them for the whole app, not just the one part.
His point was that he wouldnt have to use the keyboard for that in maya
@Cy you Can use only two axis by using shift and the axis that is going to be frozen, the middle mouse thing only allows for one axis as far as I know.
@Cy JTBC: You can also use the gizmos without changing to industry standard keymap:
- by pressing+releasing Alt, then pressing T/G/R/S
- by pressing Shift+Space, then selecting from the pop-up menu (or pressing T/G/R/S)
- by enabling _Object Gizmos_ (arrow-icon on the top right of the viewport)
- by re-assigning the G/R/S hotkeys to the gizmo tools (either in the preferences, or by right-clicking on the tool icon > _Assign Shortcut)_
Good video! I learned a lot watching it! By the way, some answers to your questions.
9:45 You can hold the middle mouse buttom and it automatically locks the axis (also works for the graph editor), or you can look at the axis gizmos icon on top right to know which axis you want to move along
11:40 hold the shift key after pressing r to make it rotate less sensitively
33:00 In Blender you use Shift + Left Arrow to do that, Sift + Right Arrow take you to the end key, and NumPad 0 takes you to your selected key
Great video! At 14:48 in Maya you say "the fastest way is to right click - insert key". You can hold down the "i" key and middle mouse button on your selected curve(s) to insert keys. Much faster and gestural. As you middle-click drag, it shows where it will insert the key, and when you release the middle-mouse, it inserts the key.
24:55 I think you don't realize that G, R, and S from the 3D viewport work in every window. Graph editor too.
Yeah this is my FAV think in Blender - that those keys work in every window almost!
Works for UVs as well, pretty cool
He does realize that...maybe you missed the part where he doesn't want to have to play a piano level of keys to move something quickly...and leave the screen to look at the keyboard??
@@bradclark5686 yeah it is really hard to press a key without looking at the keyboard, and really shamefull to use shortcut. Lazy
@@bradclark5686 after 12 years of blender Gz Gy Gx is like blinking, can't remember that I did it unless I think about it. No issues just got to practice. it's like a new language hard at first. but soon you will not think about it. gx gz gy, sx sz sy, rx rz ry, ex ez ey, the language of blender. I know all keys left handed even Ctrl + shift + alt + c. lol that one was hard at first.
31:30 - Blender has a Pose Library feature, but it's a bit bare-bones at the moment
It does???
The thing about saving certain poses, you can use the pose library. And the really good riggers can make the hand control things but I personally don’t know how to do it.
From my experience -- Shift+Left/Right arrow takes you to the first/last key in a set timeline. If you have a selected object/bone, and you hit the Up and Down arrow keys lets you go to the next or last keyframe.
The best thing about blender is the hotkeys make sense and appplicable in almost all the viewports and panel.
1- You are bothered in key framing. There is a feature in upper border of timeline to lock keyframe type after enabling that you can place keyframe only by hitting "I" key.
2- use "Ctrl+tab" to switch from timeline to graph editor more fluidly.
Maya keyboard shortcuts actually make a lot of sense.
They have been thought for people muscle memory to kick in faster: QWERTY is actually the type of keyboard, which makes the sequence a lot easier to remember and to connect to those particular functions.
It's been explained in 1998 when Alias|Wavefront released the software on SGI. I remember the presentation like it was yesterday (I was literally impressed by the immediacy of the UI and hotkeys system).
The main thing also is that it's fine to "get used to" a completely different interface if that's the only software you'll be using but if you're frequently switching between different tools, it's literally impossible to insta-switch your muscle memory back and forth between them. This is why people gravitate towards a standard set of inputs for simple stuff like transforms.
@@ninjadodovideos
Totally, yes.
Though sometimes you are required to use different pieces of software where the navigation and shortcut systems are different.
For example I have to constantly switch between Maya, VRed, MuBox, 3D Coat, plus many others for work needs.
Een though it's been decades now, I still find myself hitting the wrong key every now and then (e.g. the ALT key in navigation from Maya to VRed. In VRed the ALT key inverst the normals, LOL).
Blender includes these hotkeys via the Industry Compatible keymap.
BillRey which most maya users who transition to Blender conveniently choose to ignore right before they start complaining about how useless Blender is lol.
Enrique Raphaël Page Pérez I know - it’s somewhat infuriating
You've actually just covered every issue I've had with Blender animation tools since moving over to it, I was using Maya for over 15 years and had my workflow dialled in for maximum speed. Many of those little speed things just aren't there in Blender Animation tools at all. Looking forward to them updating the animation tools if that's happening in 2.9
I've used maya/Alias/softimage/XSI for 24 years now in VFX animation, and have been messing around in Blender recently as so much seems to have been thought through smartly, and quality of life changes are on rapid turnaround by the Blender Foundation and community which is great. I haven't delved into animation hugely yet, but on top of some of the very helpful suggestions below here are a couple of additional tips for the graph editor:
Proportional Editing - Select a key to T/S/R whilst this is on (hotkey 'o'), and middle mouse drag to change the falloff. Really great when adjusting dense data keys.
One other for dense data - select noisy curve keys and hold 'alt 0' to smooth. The longer you hold, the smoother the curve gets. Handy.
Curve vis - not ideal, but I'm starting to get used to click dragging the eye icon to the left of the curve list to quickly show or hide curves. Not being able to directly select a curve is indeed a pain, but selecting a key and hitting 'l' for linked keys is a decent workaround for the time being?
In blender, try pressing g and then holding the mouse weal. The object will snap to the axis you move to. you can let go of the mouse weal and it won't stop snapping. It's working in the graph editor too, and also for rotation and scale.
also you can set a hot key to anything by right clicking.
Sorry for any mistakes, English isn't my first language.
Absolutely agree with the transform gizmo and graph editor complaints.
What i've noticed is that blender usually prioritizes improving modelling, rendering features more than anything else in every release. Animation is probably on the lowest priority. Modelling is quite fun in blender and probably 70-80% of blender artists are modellers. They never go beyond that. And those who do animation are those who do small animations here and there for their scenes. Hence, rigging and animation gets less feedback to devs...(thats what i think). There is scarcity of free quality rigs as well....which again i think because most people dont go deep into rigging.
I hope the blender devs watch this video and work on the graph editor especially. Maya is much superior when it comes to GE and whole animation in general.
Also because it's quite damn cumbersome and frustrating to actually properly rig in Blender. And thus so few people use it professionally for animation (and rigging). The other areas, especially modeling and sculpting and rendering are top notch, but rigging (and now I sound like a broken record, if anyone here reads multiple comments by me :) ), that really, REALLY is the Achille's Heel here. For example in Maya rigging is super flexible and fast to do and that dictates a LOT when you'll enter the professional production environment.
@@blaablaa22 Rigging is always frustrating
Hello Sir Wade, glad you're giving Blender a shot! For the gizmos on keypress, you can right click on the Move, Rotate, and Scale buttons on the left sidebar and bind any Shortcut key to them. These will override the keymaps in the Blender settings and allow you to switch to those tools quickly during your animation workflow.
The point about hotkeys being all over the keyboard is so spot on. I talked to a Blender user at work, and he could not understand why moving your hand to frame selected was a bad thing. He even said to just move my right hand off the mouse to the numpad area. QWER F and the pivot snapping to grid or vert are perhaps my favorite things about using Maya.
CHANGE THE INTERFACE THEME TO MAYA. Go to User Preferences -> Theme -> Drop down to Maya. It will make the selections much clearer. You can also change the line thickness of various things I'm the 3d view by scrolling down in the Theme tab to your liking.
that's a really cool shirt ngl
24:42 you can click "g" to move it freely (and you can also set an axis to move on (only x and y, of course))
that shirt is so clean, good stuff
3:00 linking and appending is very different. If you link it from a blend file, you basically have the same object as in the other file, if you edit it in the other file, the changes will persist. Which means, animation too will stay the say from the other file. A usefull addon is "edit linked mesh". What you need to to is use append. It fully brings the mesh and all of its data from the other blend file to the current project, so non of that Proxy stuff is needed and you can start animating just like you showed in maya
This is more of a note to myself than for Wade, since it's something I just discovered while messing with the graph editor:
The "Home" key is "Frame All" in many many viewports in Blender (e.g. the 3D viewport, the graph editor, the node editor, etc). You can use it to quickly zoom to see all of your curves in the graph editor. It definitely would be better if hitting Normalize automatically did that, but hey, at least there's a workaround.
You can also use Numpad . to "Frame Selected," if you only want to zoom in on a particular portion (just like in the 3D viewport).
10:46 to display the manipulators when applying a transform via hotkeys, just press alt + the corresponding key (S for scale, R for rotate and G for grab). That, or middle mouse click when doing the transform (the white line allows to point to which axes you want your transform). If you want to constraint your transform to a plan, use shift + X, Y or Z.
You can also type the factor of the transform so this is very precise.
25:40 That micro movement with G + Z in the unwanted axis (if that was what you were talking about) doesn't matter because hitting the axis key snaps it back to the axis.
It should be G + Y actually. There is no Z axis in the curve editor so I don't know why Blender shows it LOL, it doesn't even do anything.
@@rohitaug 3d curves coming up! :D
It does matter, because you're still already moving it on that remaining axis... so gizmos are still preferable for many.
Btw the work blender works to easily snap to one direction in the viewport and the graph editor is to holding middle mouse button which is really handy sometimes.
5:58 you can press the ` key to access most of the operators that are bound to the numberpad in a nice pie menu layout
Edit: you can also press middle mouse button after you press G, R or S to lock it to the axis that you've moved on most. What I mean by that is if you move an object 1m on the Z axis, 0.2m on X and 0.31m on the Y and then you press mmb, it will constrain the transformation to the Z axis.
This was very thorough ! I work mostly in Maya and trying to learn some blender so this was a great video for that situation , thank you !!
I love how unbiased you are comparing both tools, i am a blender and 3Ds max and houdini user, i think i might give maya a new shot, have used a while ago but wasn't really in love.
Which do you prefer for animation and modeling between 3dsmax and blender?
Multitasker eh? How cool
@@supernova8252 hahaha i see what you doing i'm looking for answer too hahaha
@@supernova8252 Maya for Animation, Blender for Modeling
@@severfifteen994 Exactly. I don't know why Blender fanbois can't just admit Maya is heads and shoulders better for animation/rigging. I'm not going to say it's better at modeling, that's why I use Zbrush but after using Blender for anim and switching to Maya, I'm saving hours doing the same stuff I used to do in Blender. Hell sometimes even days since I rarely get crashes compared to Blender.
I also notice most people who shit on Maya for "bad performance" have terrible specs or assume their gaming rig can run it ignoring that a good CPU and at least 24GB of ram is borderline needed at this point.
Using both Maya and Blender consecutively, I really hope the Blender Devs make some updates to the graph editor and how keys are made.
You can also view selected with “~” and then “3” I think it’s a little faster than going across the keyboard and once you start incorporating it into your workflow it becomes pretty natural and fast as opposed to going across the keyboard
18:04 for move , scale, the keyframes in graph editor you should try to use the hotkeys: S for scale selection, G for grab and move those hotkeys works in all the panels diferently
I'm still experimenting with both programs (We have to learn on Maya at my uni), but I'm starting to really prefer Blender. Mainly because when I first opened Maya my brain ran away in terror 😂
I really appreciate this video comparing the two 🤩
to add onto this, and someone who's less experienced, a big thing for me about blender, is i get something to look forward too. blender is always trying to add new features and improve, while maya's 2020 update was like *hey, ughh, we have faster rendering!*, while blender 2.83 added various sculpting tools, tweaked some stuff with the video editor, vastly improved the grease pencil tool, and some other stuff. which to me, ontop of naturally preferring blender, makes the software a lot more exciting, cause there's new tools every few months to play with.
You could always use maya while in class, use blender at home, just remember to send your mesh to maya so you dont get in trouble, and that you actually know maya too.
Blender isnt industry standard YET, but I'm sure it's gonna be
@@seanakima50515e Yea you're right and I hope it becomes industry standard cause my lecturers are complaining that Maya changed increased the student costs or something so they want to move to Blender cause it's free but we can't since it's not industry standard 😒RIP
Everyone feels that same "runaway in terror" kind of feel 😂 But it's apart of learning all this. When you fight through it, you get super powers 😀🤙
@@BlueJayPlayz Interesting! As someone who didn't go to art school (and TBF only does art as a hobby - and not well :D), I'm always baffled by how much those seem to focus on teaching a specific software, instead of teaching the general concepts. Do they also teach painting specific to a certain brand of brush or paints or whatever? :P
(Okayyy fine, I guess it's not a perfect analogy, as the tool itself is more complex. The basic point remains though - If I understand the concepts & got the artistic skills, I should be up and running in any software within weeks. Plus, it really weirds me out how dependent schools (feel they) are on some private software quasi-monopoly's whims.)
There is a gizmos option where you can turn on the move, rotate and scale gizmos, so that whenever you select an object, they are there by default.
Edit: You can also assign your own hotkeys to different buttons at your wish
25:15 the need to move keyframes in time AND value at the SAME time is in my experience super rare!
We once developed a little sequencer tool where it locked into one of these very quickly with OPTIONAL unlocking!
I think that was pretty nice 🤓
33:15 The hotkey for going back to the beginning of your animation in Blender is SHIFT + Left Arrow Key. To go to the end is SHIFT + Right Arrow Key.
When you are selecting curves in Blender, have you tried pressing 'L' when the mouse is over a key? L stands for 'linked selection' and should select anything that that point or key is attached to..
If you want to lower the sensitivity you can just move mouse further from the object.
All of Blender's hotkeys for the timeline use the arrow keys, you can move forward or back a frame with the left or right arrows, and jump to the beginning or end of the timeline with shift + left or right arrows. Up and down arrow keys jump to the next keyframe, while shift + up or down keys jumps in ten frame increments.
14:20 in your timeline you can click on keying(top left) under Active keying set you can choose a type of keyframe you want set every time you click "i"
3:07 I think it might be possible to change thickness in preferences > themes
My thoughts:
4:12: great idea!
5:31 it's possible that the "," key on the number pad was chosen without using a tablet was in mind. When I am modeling I use the number pads a lot. But for animators using a tablet it's too far away
16:00 I agree this should be possible to uncheck curves
Pipeliner try my addon PresetterProfessional
@@danielpool2039 thank you!
I think you can more easily isolate a curve by holding alt while clicking the eye i think.
You can move keyframes in the graph editor from anywhere in the window with g/r/s. Those hotkeys apply in most windows in blender.
In Maya, for selections, you can do "Turn off all Selections, and only on for Nurbs Curves (beside the magnets below the menus). This is with what you are talking about with the 5 min mark. It's what I was taught to do while working on productions.
Blender is very well rounded, but it has a couple of areas that need serious improvement in my opinion, animation is definitely one of them, along with UV mapping tools and texture painting
I agree, although personally I wouldn't really use it for texturing, maybe stylized hand painted. UVing could certainly use some love
11:18 You can switch transform modes and gizmos in Blender using Shift-Space to bring up a menu at the mouse pointer to select the new transform. As mentioned by others, one of these is a combined 'Transform' mode with all three gizmos in one space.
I love videos like this, almost all of your nitpicks have solutions listed below by one user or another and I'm seeing a lot of great advice! I remember when I was switching from 3ds Max to Blender and I complained about a bunch of things on the forums and a bunch of people were like, oh that's because you do it like this, and my brain exploded when I realized how much easier it was to do EVERYTHING in Blender from that point on!
One thing to know about blender hotkeys are that they try to be consistent between windows, so it's the same in graph editor. G for grab followed be X or Y to constrain axis.
I think you can skip the "Add a proxy" step by just linking the armature directly.
EDIT: Nope, my mistake, you do have to add a proxy.
I am not animating at all, but need some other stuff all the time in every file. I set them up and save it as the default for that workspace. So everytime I call a new file that stuff is just there. Maybe that works with the proxy, too?
You can even make your own templates and have a specific default file for each of them.
I have a video which shortly touched that topic, where I showed how to use your own splash screen by setting up a new application template.
Comparisons like these are really helpful for the development of blender, especially for Animation, which is still kind of a weak point of Blender. The community needs the opinion of experienced animators to make the tools better and more efficient to use.
So thank you for this and your hard work! Blender Foundation will listen.
you can bind program buttons to buttons on the keyboard in blender, right-click the button in the program, "assign shortcut" then choose ur bindings
16:40 Handles can be manipulated separately from the actual control points. For example, you can move a single handle up and down or all around; you can select both the handles, excluding the control point, and slide them back and forth through the control point; you can select the two handles between two consecutive control points, and alter the curvature of the in-between part of the curve without moving the control points, etc.
Blender users should really stop trying to be "experts" & preachers in the comments section that's not how you communicate, don't take his video as a bashing but his points are valid, if the defaults are not good or usable for a new users then don't expect them to dig in a sea of settings & workarounds just to make it a little bit better, if you have to work hard to do some simple stuff then it means there is a problem.........i know enough Blender and i could even add more issues to his list but i already know that people have complained about them to the Devs but since the Developers don't have someone to work on them , then everything will remain the same until they find developers who have time to tackle them.
Pascal I agree that preaching isn’t helpful, though there are some things that are definitely possible or even arguably better in Blender around his points that he has clearly missed. Maybe not obvious enough, sure. But learning new software takes time. And its not necessarily always best for Blender to change it’s spots to cater for what Maya users find familiar. So some informative comments are valuable, and invited. Kudos to Sir Wade for having a go, openly, and sharing his ideas and impressions.
@@HamacekS The big issue is that if Blender was to conform to Maya, then people will wonder, why not be more like Unreal, Dreamworks, CAD, SketchUp, DAZ, MMD, Modo, or whatever else is out there. And those all work differently with little in common.
@@HamacekS I am not talking about him, i am talking about the comment section where people are suggesting workarounds & tricks , I actually agree with him that certain things should be straightforward and simple not complicated, look at the flaws of the workflow & improve them, can't get simpler than that.
OmniscientWarrior I agree! And despite my inherent bias, having used and taught Maya as well, My familiarity with Blender means their way feels most logical most of the time. +1 on that lattice tool though!
I cannot stress, how useful the comments were! Thanks everyone!
6:00 You can press the tilde (~) key which brings up the view pie menu from where you can choose "view selected". A faster way is press and hold the tilde key, hover your mouse cursor over "view selected" and lift the tilde key.
31:30 Again, you can use the “Append” function to import a pose library from one .blend file into another.
If you really want to Push Changes to Blender that you want to be Seen implemented you could maybe write a proposal on right-click-select Share the link to the proposal on one of your next Videos and get it upvoted. That May be the Most efficient way to See it getting implemented into Blender. Maybe Just in a few weeks/months xD
I agree! And when he has videos here and gifs on RCS it's really to understand the proposals
So good
You’re great Wade! I began following you as I realized the similarities between softwares myself and I was intrigued by your rig reviews.
I’m so happy you give Blender a fair shot and aren’t simply saying, “rahhhh one is better than the other!” This is a perfect video for comparing the two when people say that Maya is still better in animation and Blender has a long away to go.
This is a great breakdown of it and will probably be referenced from here on out, whether going from Maya to Blender or vice versa.
Please put on your list to update this for future releases of both softwares! Like you said, 2.9 will add a lot and fix a lot as their updates always do! Will be interested to see how your opinions evolve with the updates!
Again great video!
Blender has this thing called keying sets. In the timeline, on the left there's a few drop down menus. One of them is for defining the keying set. This makes I for insert key frame choose what option for keying there is. From "available" to a single option. I believe the idea behind this is to make animating between pose/extreme frames less painful.
This is more like an “I wish Blender had this and I don’t know if it has this but I want it anyways” video using the praise input praise method.
Here is a thing. If you worked with blender hotkeys more, all the curve stuff would be vanished.
No man. The curve editor is like. The lifeblood for people who learned it.
Hotkeys are great, but they're no substitute for intuitive direct manipulation. Hotkeys are a workflow multiplier, not a workflow in themselves. They're also extremely opaque and impossible to guess for new users, so relying on them exclusively is a recipe for an unfriendly interface.
@@ninjadodovideos I agree, but using gizmos is always painful for me after 10 years using blender XD. The hot keys are just so much better.
I'm not sure if this is what you want, but you can make the gizmos appear every time the object is selected, the option next to visibility let you show gizmos and all, sensitivity depends how far you are from object origin for scale and rotation, but you can make it more precise it with shift
to get whole line in graph editor, select a key and hit L, L is for selecting linked and as probably every shortcut, works in every window in similar way
Thanks to this video, I've been able to solve most of these issues, and Blender 3.0 allows you to select the curve
maya is comfortable to me, but blender seems like its worth starting to migrating to.
give it a try :)
@@_Chad_ThunderCock to add onto this, a big thing for me about blender, is i get something to look forward too. blender is always trying to add new features and improve, while maya's 2020 update was like *hey, ughh, we have faster rendering!*, while blender 2.83 added various sculpting tools, tweaked some stuff with the video editor, vastly improved the grease pencil tool, and some other stuff. which to me, ontop of naturally preferring blender, makes the software a lot more exciting, cause there's new tools every few months to play with.
@@_Chad_ThunderCock I have been learning it from grant abbits channel