Maya 2012 support?

Pipeline
#1

I’ve been scouring the internet to see if there’s any support for maya2egg2012 to no avail. Thought I’d ask to confirm, though it looks bleak.

So, is there any current or forthcoming support for egging from Maya 2012?

Thanks!

#2

Hello,

Just so everyone’s aware of how this has played out in the past: The ETC department has traditionally hired a student programmer to compile the new eggers for each new version of 3ds max and Maya. That person changes each year (although we were fortunate to have Andrew do it two years in a row for us).

However, the ETC will be using Unity3D heavily this coming semester so finding someone to write the new eggers is still up in the air as Panda3D is now a notch lower in priority. However, it has been confirmed that there is still a very real need for it which is all we need to confirm allocation of time/resources to make it. We just don’t have that person yet.

What expect in Panda3D's new version?
#3

And now ETC uses another engine. Expect even less updates on Panda?

#4

Right now there are no plans to completely abandon Panda3D within our department. It still drives a large number of things here.

The only thing that’s changed, so far, is that Panda3D has been demoted in priority. That doesn’t mean it gets no attention at all.

However, remember that all the work we do here in terms of development of Panda3D is to serve our own, specific needs. If any of that helps the community, even better (the eggers are a good example). The general development of Panda3D was safely put into the hands of the community quite a while ago.

Also, an update on the 2012 eggers: we have someone now working on it and we’ll have an update by the end of the week. The Maya egger appears to be within our immediate grasp. The 3ds max egger is less clear, so we’ll be doing that one second.

#5

I think the development of Panda was progressing alot faster when one of the teachers from CMU was working on the engine. There are few people working part time here and they are doing a great job, but Panda needs a real dev team (if from the community, then a larger community) to keep up with other engines, it already lacks quite a few features from similar engines like Unity which you meantioned. The community and students do contribute some things from time to time, here and there, but the engine is still behind, missing some features which are already not considered next-gen. Sorry if this sounded like a rant, I still like Panda and use it for my projects, but there are some times when I’m frustrated because I’m forced to consider other option because of some missing feature.

BTW, nice to hear. Right now our Maya modellers use Blender as a bridge for exporting egg files.

#6

Why did you take this decision? Imho working with an open source engine is more formative for students. With this weird decision, they will only learn how to use a specific tool; before they could learn much more things. Poor students… This decision seems against them. Anyway, it’s only a personal opinion.

Moveover, why did you choice Unity, specifically? Why did you evaluate Unity better than CryEngine, UDK and so on?

#7

I’m guessing “cause everyone is using it”. It’s kind of like a standard these days, like Photoshop. The chance of being hired as a Unity programmer is always higher, so why take the time to learn another library if you are most likely going to use Unity at work? It’s sad, but they have always just done what is better for “their own, specific needs”.

#8

Ok, I would prefer an approach where a student is exposed to the development of an engine… So they can learn every (not only a specific one) engine fast (in the future, when they will need that at work), since they know the concepts below better. Imho.

#9

To be sure, moving focus away from Panda3D was an extremely tough decision and, as I said, we are still dependent upon it to an large extent.

Despite how we feel, our duty is to give our students the best experience possible to prepare them for careers in the entertainment industry.

I’m not sure why Unity3D, specifically, but I do know that other engines such as UDK, Cry and so forth, although very capable, are not well-suited for rapid prototyping, which is a must for our BVW class.

(In my personal opinion there is still nothing as well-suited for rapid development than Panda3D).

#10

And on an up-note: we have built 3ds max 2012 eggers. We’re testing them now. I hope to have an update very soon.

#11

Thanks to the ETC’s help, the latest daily Windows SDK build now has Max 2012 and Maya 2012 support.

Let us know if there are any issues with it.

#12

Hi, glad to see Maya2012 supported!

I have the following issue generating the Maya2012 egg converter, when running makepanda on a Windows 64bit platform AND Maya2012 64bit version

1>built/tmp/mayaegg2012_loader.obj 
1>built/tmp/mayaeggimport2012_mayaeggimport.obj 
1>built/lib/libpandaegg.lib 
1>built/lib/libpanda.lib 
1>built/lib/libpandaexpress.lib 
1>built/lib/libp3dtool.lib 
1>built/lib/libp3dtoolconfig.lib 
1>built/lib/libp3pystub.lib 
1>advapi32.lib 
1>"C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2012/lib/Foundation.lib" 
1>"C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2012/lib/OpenMaya.lib" 
1>"C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2012/lib/OpenMayaAnim.lib" 
1>"C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2012/lib/OpenMayaUI.lib" 
1>Foundation.lib(FOUNDATION.dll) : fatal error LNK1112: module machine type 'x64' conflicts with target machine type 'X86'

The issue comes from the fact that the batch makepanda.py is generating 32bit code and that apparently since the installed Maya2012 libraries are 64bit, the linker would expect to see a 64bit code for this utility.

Is there a way to force a 64bit generation specifically for Maya2012 utility?
For instance what kind of possible patch is advisable on makepanda.py?

Thanks

#13

Sorry, that’s not possible. You’ll have to compile against a 32-bits version.

#14

too bad :cry:

#15

You can install a 32-bit version of Maya 2012.

David

#16

Just done it! thks

#17

saudia, thanks for the update. Forgive me, I’m a little confused - we’re running Maya 2012 x64 on Windows 7 in our labs, do we have to install a 32 bit version of Maya also just to use the egger?

By the way, I hope Panda will continue to have support and development. We also teach Unity, but we’re continuing to use Panda as the other core 3D engine in our curriculum. It’s Free Software, it has a lot of good features and is good for rapid development, and it gives students experience with something a little closer to the metal while still being approachable for fast projects. We also use Panda for VR applications.

There are also things you can do in Panda that you CAN’T to in Unity without buying some form of the Pro license, like shadows, render targets, writing your own plugins, and doing any kind of collaborative work with source control.

I’m also always very nervous about putting all my eggs into one proprietary platform, for lots of reasons.

#18

You’ll need to install the 32-bits version, I’m afraid.

#19

ugh - do you have to install all of maya or just the libs? One of the labs has a kind of tight disk space issue with the system drives.

#20

The libs should be fine.