3ds Max® translation to Maya®

Character TD jobs require cross discipline understanding and something we get often are artists transitioning to Maya from Max and have a hard time with the way Maya approaches things like transforms. To make it worse, often times the same name means something diffrent in both software but they almost do the same thing so let Rigging Dojo help you out.

If you need more rigging focused training check out our ondemand class

Check out our “Max to Maya Cross-Training”  Ondemand class for character TDs

Max speak

Artists coming from Max ask us questions like

What are the accepted use (if any) of Joints(Bones) vs Locators(Point Helpers) and more importantly, when, where, and how to use Groups effectively?
Is it best to group a bunch of objects together first before skinning them to a Joint?
How do you create a Dummy control in Maya?
What are shapeNodes?

There are more but simply understanding the makeup of your 3d objects goes a long way to understanding the software.

Translation to Maya

First let’s look at some Max tools compared to Maya then we will talk details.

Bones == Joints
Point Helper == Locators
Expose Transform == Locator + Maya math nodes
Dummy == Null Transform (Group no children and no shapeNode)
Editable Poly Object == Transform + shapeNode
Geometry type (poly/nurbs/shapes) == shapeNodes

For more details read over the node attributes and features in Maya

“Group” nodes in Maya are everywhere. Think of them like a 3ds Max editPoly object with no geometry in it or a “Dummy” helper. It is a simple basic node that exists in Maya…nothing fancy it is a pivot, that can be a child or a parent of other nodes. ( in reality it is a bit more complex than this but lets start with that)

Creating a “group node” with nothing selected creates an empty node automatically named “Null” in Maya

Grouping transform nodes together before skinning doesn’t do anything extra for you because grouping isn’t doing to a mesh combine. You still have separate skin clusters for each piece of geometry, it isn’t like attaching many meshs together under an editPoly mesh object.

If you group geometry together you are just parenting the nodes under a new transform node. It creates a “Null” renames it to “Group” and automatically parents any nodes you had selected under the new “Group” node. These are not like the groups in Max that act like diffrent objects are combined in to one, locking the selection of the children. Maya has “Assets containers” that allow for similar functionally.

If you did wanted to have all your geo and just one skin cluster (for speed sake..the fewer skin clusters the better) you would have to do a mesh-combine operation first to put all the geometry shapes under a single transform node….like attaching mesh objects in Max.

(Note that Maya 2015+ allows you to mesh-combine with an option to also combine skin weights, allowing for some cool workflows and more flexibility to update models later)

Locators in Maya have some extra attributes in addition to just their transform node. They have some independent control over their size and location of the cross shape.

Locators can also output their world space location. You can then connect out their location in world space to other nodes. Similar to the expose transform tool in Max, but not as complex unless combined with other math nodes in Maya.

(example the Maya distance tool uses the locators world location attribute to drive the distance measurement so you can parent them in to any hierarchy and still get their true measurement.)

Joints are the most costly in Maya and have some diffrent attributes than regular transforms. Think of Joints as a transform node + orients (where they aim) and scale inversion (causes child joint to translate instead of scale when parent is scaled) etc..

They offer the most control and act almost like a Max list controller, combining what you would need to use 2 or 3 group transform nodes and some math operations in to a single node.

Note that they are not a “bone” with length.  See our Joint orient post for more details.

Shape Nodes are a type of node that is responsible for displaying and holding the geometry and other icons like the locator cross and the cone on a light.  They are a child node of the “transform” node (our Null node that holds translate, rotate and scale). If you edit a polygon cube in Maya, moving the points around or extruding faces happens to the “shape”.  Shape nodes can be re-parented to other Null nodes but you have to do this with a script, you can’t re-parent them directly in the Maya GUI.

Hope this helps,

If you are looking for some other “translations” in tools check out the post from Paul Neale, Max Master of rigging

Here is a handy infographic quick guide.