Maya question

[Soln]

Anyone work with Maya before?  Have a question -- does Maya support collision detection?  If so, how?  Does it just have the ability to "render a collision" or does it include some physics handling? e.g. "walk model into wall, and render collision and a collision is auto-generated".  Never used it, so it's why I'm asking.  I was reading the Gamasutra article about the God of War team and they mentioned the below.  Thx.

The most important decision for the project was total asset creation in Maya. "Art, collision, camera, entity system, everything was based in Maya."

[Trippy]

Maya supports both rigid-body dynamics ("hard" objects) and soft-body dynamics (flexible objects like muscles and springs) which includes collision detection. There are also more specialized simulators include fluid and particle effects, and hair and cloth simulators in the program.

[Samwise]

The amateur digital artists I know reliably cream their jeans whenever you say the words "MEL Script".

[Jobu]

In the context of the article you found, they could just mean collision stuff was built alongside their art asset in Maya. So you build your fancy super hi-res room. Then you build a copy of the room, with ramps instead of stairs, and squares that surround the columns, remove all the trim and extraneous geometry. You use that model to calculate collisions with in the game. Both the "art" and "collision" models get exported and linked up in the engine at the same time.

Within Maya, yes, it does support various collisions like people mentioned for physics simulations. All that shit is super complex, and rarely get's used in the actual game. Exceptions would be baking the simulation data into normal keyframes and exporting it for your "exploding robot monster death animation" where he flies apart at the joints. But these days, even that style of physics is modeled within the engine.

[Soln]

In the context of the article you found, they could just mean collision stuff was built alongside their art asset in Maya. So you build your fancy super hi-res room. Then you build a copy of the room, with ramps instead of stairs, and squares that surround the columns, remove all the trim and extraneous geometry. You use that model to calculate collisions with in the game. Both the "art" and "collision" models get exported and linked up in the engine at the same time.

so sounds like for prototyping or actual export?  regardless, cool, thx for note

Within Maya, yes, it does support various collisions like people mentioned for physics simulations. All that shit is super complex, and rarely get's used in the actual game. Exceptions would be baking the simulation data into normal keyframes and exporting it for your "exploding robot monster death animation" where he flies apart at the joints. But these days, even that style of physics is modeled within the engine.

so most things like collision detection are available from a separate physics engine, that's usually baked into the larger "game engine" (Unreal, ID, Alchemy, Aurora, etc.) that companies use?  I guess that makes sense, if game companies need more robust or less complex collision rendering and control by their larger sim (game engine) application, while people like animators use it for non-gaming movies etc.(?)

thx for info

[Margalis]

I agree with Jobu. Most likely they used Maya (possibly with their own plugin) to just draw collision boxes around things and saved that as parts of the scenes/models.

In most games the only collision stuff that has to do with modelling are the bounding boxes. Everything else is handled by the in-game engine.

[bhodikhan]

Aside from the dynamics issues I've done a lot of freelance work for game companies and it's been using SoftImage. Maya may be king yet SoftImage is really catering to the game devs from what I can see. The built-in Direct3D rendering and specific rigging features are making inroads in gaming. They're not as big as Maya but more focused.

[Llava]

Okay, I only know basic Maya stuff, but this one I know for certain.  And I don't care that other people have already answered it.

Yes.  Maya does support collision detection.

[Soukyan]

Aside from the dynamics issues I've done a lot of freelance work for game companies and it's been using SoftImage. Maya may be king yet SoftImage is really catering to the game devs from what I can see. The built-in Direct3D rendering and specific rigging features are making inroads in gaming. They're not as big as Maya but more focused.

Yes. I've used Maya a fair amount, but have been using XSi for the past year or so. Softimage has come a long way and is really incredibly robust at this point. I would give it a try if you're just getting into modeling/animating/rendering. In addition, you may want to play with MotionBuilder for animating if that's what you enjoy most. MB is a powerful, powerful tool.

On the other hand, the "big players" in the industry cling to Maya so it's always good to know it. A friend of mine frequently gets work from folks who model in Maya. He then takes it into Softimage and fixes all their fuckups. Uses MB and mocap data to animate and sends the finished work off to EA for their games.  :-D

[Yegolev]

I suggest watching the extras on the GoW disc and you can see the collision surfaces are pretty simple and quite divorced from the visible environment.

[Margalis]

Yup. Generally in any sort of game collision info is totally separate from model/image data. In 2d games collisions volumes are typically boxes, in 3d they are also typicallu just boxes and often axis-aligned only.