Is purchasing Maya really necessary?

Question

Hi folks.

I'm part of a team developing the same project. Our graphic artists make their models in Maya and drop them into assets in the .ma format. Now, I know that if they exported as .fbx files then I could actually use those assets, but they argue that the amount of added time considering the size of the projects and the number of models involved would be a ridiculous waste, especially if an export had to be made every time a model received any kind of adjustment, no matter how small. I see two options: either all models are exported to .fbx and we lose time, or all team members install Maya. I, myself, am never going to use Maya. I have no talent for graphics. I would have it for the sole purpose of being able to view .ma files in Unity. That seems like a tremendous waste considering the price of Maya. Is there a legal solution? Maybe, a version of Maya that allows viewing of models without being able to edit them? I'm curious to see how other teams have handled this situation, if any.

Answer 1

Answer by Piflik · Jan 03, 2013 at 02:30 AM

Tell your artists they are lazy and make them export their models. I export all my models to fbx and the effort to do so is negligible. I created a simple shortcut to export the selected object(s) and it's usually just three button presses to export the new iteration of a model into the correct folder, after I exported it once.

Also having single objects as fbx is a lot more tidy than having huge Maya scenes with dozens of models, at least in my opinion.

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Fattie · Jan 03, 2013 at 01:04 PM 0

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Philip is of course correct.

This question is really bizarre -

if your artists don't know how to "save the file" for use in the 3D industry,

just forget you ever knew them and don't talk to them again.

Find other artists :)

Answer 2

Answer by laurentlavigne · Aug 25, 2020 at 09:33 PM

use a cache server on your lan they do the import within unity

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Is purchasing Maya really necessary?

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