To my shock and sadness, it doesn’t support multiple UV sets, which killed it before I even started for us.
Has anyone been using it for genuinely-useful game previews?
In 2011 it’s only really basically supported, nothing that makes it useful, no cgfx support, poor manipulatrors etc.
In 2012 (out on Friday) it’s a whole different beast, been completely over-hauled and upgraded so it’s finally production ready, and feels nice!
I agree Viewport 2.0 is barely functional in Maya 2011. I have only ever found it useful for previewing blinn or lambert shaders with a normal map applied… it is faster than doing a test render. Sadly, it does not support ramp shaders, so I cannot usually see a whole scene in it, since I use them a lot.
You can’t select in it, but you can still select via the outliner (objects, not components) and you can then move or rotate objects.
I haven’t seen Maya 2012 yet myself (other than the preview videos), but that is one of the features of 2012 I am looking forward to, although I am skeptical that the release will happen on a Friday, they always seem to release stuff mid-week. It would be nice to be able to work in Viewport 2.0, instead of just switching back and forth.
<* Wes *>
really excited to see how well the shadows help visualize volumes when modeling.
( now that component selection/manipulation is supported )
been wanting as much for the past 14 years!
Since I made my previous post I have downloaded and played with Maya 2012 and the new VP 2.0. It is much better than I expected. I found an issue on some of my older files where a color set was deployed (must have been added by the FBX importer). That cause everything to show up white.
Simple to delete that, and I get nice textured, normal mapped renders in realtime. Motion Blur, Ambient Occlusion and Anti-aliasing require just clicking on a checkbox. Pretty good work, AD.
<* Wes *>
In 2011 I have only ever found it useful when previewing massive amounts of geometry (IE forests). What sold it for me in 2012 is the addition of component mode.
When we tested in Maya 2012, there was a major bug with motion blur on a moving camera. If the camera was moving along (parallel, not chasing) with an object, the object was still blurred as if it was passing the camera.
Autodesk said it was a known issue, but we gave up on it at the point (for now.)
viewport 2.0 api whitepaper
http://mayastation.typepad.com/maya-station/2011/07/viewport-20-api-white-paper.html