Rig It Right – Maya 2024

The first steps in exploring edgeloops for the third edition of Rig It Right is to get Maya 2024. To do that, I needed to finally upgrade. The old Mac laptop was from the first edition of Rig it Right, had been dropped twice, had water poured on it once, had the battery replaced, three replacement chargers, a larger hard drive that interfered with the network installed, a network dongle so that it could see the internet, and a missing function key.

All of that, and the final straw was that Maya 2024 would not install on it. Sigh. But, then the announcement came that Maya would now support the Apple M2 Pro chip natively- so, time to upgrade and test. Never have I ever really used a Mac for 3d. But now is the time to do so.

My first clicks in Maya 2024 (while installing everything else I need to write/make art) was in the newly imagined retopologize feature. Oh yes, that is beautiful and puts out controllable edgeloops now. See hilarious video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru2rks1rIT4 That’s about how I feel seeing the new tool. I’ve loved this thing since 2019 when it was just a hidden command. We’re going to put that right into the prop modeling class syllabus and test it out.

So, I didn’t get word count today – but I did get a little testing in on Maya 2024 and can’t wait to sit down and sculpt. I’m tossing around the idea of doing a twitch stream of me modeling/sculpting/rigging over the summer. I could pull some speed sculpts from it, I suppose, to use as class material.

I need a new unicorn sticker.

*Funding for the new Edgeloop chapter in Rig it Right 3rd edition received as a sabbatical from Savannah College of Art and Design 2023