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Why are Maya Paint Effects so primitive and bad?

Why are Maya Paint Effects so primitive and bad?

Paint effects needs to be completely revamped, they don't  even work with the built in renderer without massive rebuilding.

9 Comments
1006138663
Advocate

Maya paint effects is a tool of the previous era. It is estimated that it will not continue to be developed. I also marveled at its backwardness. You can pay attention to Bifrost. A Japanese TD has developed a vegetation system

rkovach
Enthusiast

Paint Effects are from the very early days of Maya, and at the time, they were quite powerful and revolutionary.

They are very dated, especially compared to all of the modern procedural tools available today. I would not recommend using them.

stigla
Enthusiast

Actually this is not right. PFX is lsystem and still powerful tool, but certainly they lack direct render ability and better control over instancing. If they could do this, they would be excellent.
They also stopped developing them, which I think it's shame, but they can be still used, plus in combination with SOUP plugin to improve instancing.

Combination of bifrost, MASH and PFX tools is certainly needed, but it takes too long to get there.
It seems bifrost will replace them, but until then, they are still useful, and I will be sorry to see them go, unless they are really covered.

jeremyraven
Enthusiast

I agree with stigla, PFX is still relevant and provide good functionality for some effects. Its massively procedural in nature although like most of the stuff in Maya this is hidden from artists, has good animation tools and collision detection. As mentioned SOuP and MASH add to the proceduralism.

Alexx31
Advocate

They are outdated, there are more modern tools, up to photo realistic photogrammetry in UE5, so why waste ressources on this?

JacksonLamme
Advocate

I actually would retract this post because I've been painstakingly researching how to get animated trees and plants in bulk, and paint effects is extremely useful for this reason.  I am also able to animate standins because maya automatically saves a cache which includes all the frames in viewport.  

sean_willis
Participant

PaintFX is awesome. Yes it shows it’s age but it’s tried and true. I would not use it for extreme closeups but a good amount of detail can be brought out with the right parameters.

 

I still use many PFX brushes as templates in my plant library.

aerys.bat
Enthusiast

I imagine this is going to be replaced with Bifrost

stigla
Enthusiast

They could be very powerful if used like in SOUP, which added functionality needed on top, and works great.
Main issue with Bifrost is user interface, which is better then in the start, but not user friendly.
For example why can't I use PFX to instance my objects on them ?
Why I can't export particles as nparticles, or instances as maya instances ?
I just don't get why, that is so simple and straight forward demand.
Do those things FIRST. Establish FAST and clean workflow. Then do it complex way after.
Maya was always capable software, but way too complicated workflow without need for that complexity.
More users = better software.
AREA is still horrible, please fix.

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