Choosing the right 3D computer animation software.

Jeremy Wright

Hey, guys. I'm currently doing graduate studies and am trying to come up with my problem statement. After seeing my interest in character modeling and animation, my instructors are pushing me to research different animation problems and softwares. I'm having trouble finding peer reviewed articles on the difficulty associated with choosing the appropriate 3D computer modeling/animation tool for a particular business.

Maybe you guys can help me, or push me in the right direction. Any and all help you can give me concerning possible search topics, databases, or what not is greatly appreciated.

Thanks a million.

animatr

maya all the way.
i used to be a max guy, but if you want to learn animation, there are a ton more learning resources for maya, and it really is just more powerful for animation.

I dont know about modeling or any of that stuff in maya, as that is not my interest, but for animation, it's pretty nice.

Max has the biped, which is fast to set up, but can be frustrating because it is limiting. If you want to do animation, grab a copy of maya, grab some free rigs of the web(cgtalk has a free rig thread, and there is rigging101.com too) and then just animate. dont bother modeling or any of that stuff if you want to be an animator.

thats my two cents.

aesir

Animate in maya. Model in max, silo, xsi, zbrush, or mudbox or whatever. Just avoid modeling in maya (imho). Of course you can model in maya, I just find it much easier not to.

Mark Dygert

If you want to dig in and want the potential to make things look good, go Maya for animation. Like Animatr said, max has biped but it is limited and it hard to fight it to overcome those limitations, but it is quick and easy to use. You can also go the custom rig method in max and its tools are almost as robust as Maya but the learning curve is counter intuitive and IMHO needs to be rebuilt but since they came out with biped they won't be doing it.

oXYnary

XSI animation tools seem much more powerful and refined than Mayas. :P

EarthQuake

I'm going to have to go ahead and agree with oxy on the xsi standpoint. We use maya for animations at my current job and they used xsi at the last place and xsi just seemed to have so much more. But this is an entirely ininfomred opinion since i dont actually do any rigging/animating.

SkullboX

Well in the end it's just a matter of preference. There is indeed more on the subject of character animation available for maya, but Max' bone system really allows much of the same stuff and in the end the difference between a good and a bad animator doesn't have anything to do with the package. I find Maya's bone and rigging syetm to be a bit more complex than max' (not talking about biped, avoid that) but of course maya allows much more.

I'd personally go for maya, even though I've always used and loved max. Maya indeed isn't as suited for Character modeling as many other packages, but definitely sufficient. Especially if you're also going to be rigging and animating, you won't spend as much time modeling either way.

JKMakowka

There is also the open-source (free) alternative called Blender, which is quite feature complete too.
So if you are a small business that might be a very worthy option.

edit: http://www.gamasutra.com/
might have interesting text about that topic... or at least it's the only site I can think of that might have something like that.

Rick Stirling

Motion builder

Justin Meisse

Maya with MJ Poly Tools works fine for my modeling needs. Hopefully future releases of Maya will have more devoloped mesh painting and sculpting tools since they've become pretty popular (zbrush, mudbox, silo)