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How I feel about Maya

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polycounter lvl 7
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Karmageddon polycounter lvl 7
Maya to me is like dumpster diving. I'm in a giant dumpster filled with garbage bags. I don't know what's in each bag but I'm going to have to open each one and search through all these unrecognizable objects to find the tossed goods.
Actually, let's make it a trash compactor because all of us know the stress of time and the walls get smaller and smaller.

I'm fluent in Max but if I was in Maya Land, I'd be able to only speak friendly introductions and name off colors, numbers and family members to the local Mayans. I guess that's a start.

Any funny animated gifs and images to make my day?

Much love and cookies,
-Zilk

Replies

  • aesir
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    aesir polycounter lvl 18
    a garbage bin where all the objects are tied together with string, in order.
  • brandoom
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    brandoom polycounter lvl 13
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
  • glib
    MEL. That is all.
  • [Deleted User]
    glib wrote: »
    MEL. That is all.
    Yeah.

    That is all.
  • Murdoc
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    Murdoc polycounter lvl 11
    After being away from Maya for a year I can say I don't miss it, just it's hotbox and shelf, those were pretty cool.
  • Ben Apuna
    Maya is like trying to start a fire with some sticks, yeah eventually you get it going and the fire's just as hot and bright as any other, but it sure took a lot of needless effort.
  • Pope Adam
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    Pope Adam polycounter lvl 11
    LOL we had this discussion at lunch today. We decided that learning it in college was pretty much a mega waste of time aside from animating purposes.

    Coolest thing about maya - insert edge loop tool.

    What game studios use maya as their primary tool anyhow? I worked at SCEA for almost a year and that seemed to be all the Sony permitted their employees to use. From what I hear 90% of other game studios use Max.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Honestly, 'permitting artists to use only this or that' is the dumbest attitude ...

    So yeah Maya? so powerful, yet so flimsy. Assuming that artists are supposed to write their own tool is, huh, weird.
  • CastratedWeasel
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Well Castrated you might be disappointed if you are looking for the same kind of layout or interaction. However you will soon notice that the modeling tools are much more powerful. It's just that the Max interface feels quite clunky in comparison.
  • dyf
    Zilk wrote: »
    I'm in a giant dumpster filled with garbage bags. I don't know what's in each bag but I'm going to have to open each one and search through all these unrecognizable objects to find the tossed goods.

    congratulations.. you just described ALL 3d creation suites..
  • Pope Adam
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    Pope Adam polycounter lvl 11
    I disagree with Pior on the interface. Hmm Clunky - I think I see what you're saying, but I'd rather have a somewhat unoptimized interface than a crapload of weird shelves with icons that have absolutely no semblance to their function. What the fuck do those weird icons mean anyway? You think they'd hire a more clever designer to make new ones... then again - i suppose the functions of 3d modeling programs would be hard to illustrate as an icon... sorftof abstract.
  • EarthQuake
    Everything i do in maya i do from the menus or pie chart thing, those buttons up on top seem totally useless
  • acc
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    acc polycounter lvl 18
    My opinion on Maya? Oh I had one, but for some reason I'm drawing a blank. Oh yeah, that's cause the interface disappeared again. Let me just go delete my preferences for the 10000th time and I'll get back to you.

    What? The renderer doesn't load anymore?
    What? All my normals are randomly reversed for no reason?
    What? Face selection is now selecting the farthest objects instead of closest ones?
    What? An unlocked object with no ties to anything in the heirarchy is totally locked?
    What? I have to save 20 copies of my file because it still doesn't have an auto-backup feature?
    What? It's the standard program for Vancouver-based studios for absolutely no reason at all despite the fact that the rest of the gaming industry uses programs that actually have decent modelling functions? Godamnit.
  • Zotter
    Maya, to me, is only good for animation and rigging, and the latter is taken care of by using chugnut with max. I may be biased already because I love max so much but the one thing that pisses me off the most about maya is when you have a subgroup selected, you can accidentally select another object. Then you have to go back to select the previous object and it's subgroup again >.< .

    This and the fact that connect gives you better control (slide & pinch) than edge loop tool may seem like small things but the throw my workflow waaaaay off.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Pope, a good portion of my maya custom icon set involves stuff like boobs, two lesbians kissing each other or a girl taking it's tshirt off (create selection set, isolate selection and unhide all)

    I guess that's partly why I feel like parts of the interface are elegant :P Helps getting through the day, plus it cracks everybody up ("OH what does that one do haha!!!")

    YAY!
  • bounchfx
    pior wrote: »
    or a girl taking it's tshirt off

    oh shi-
  • CheeseOnToast
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    CheeseOnToast greentooth
    Maya = less clutter, less useless legacy stuff. Nice animation and rigging tools. Still playing catch-up as a modeler (badly). Great, easy scripting, even for a non-techy artist. Needs hours of downloading scripts from highend 3d and making your own to make it competative.

    Max=huge messy interface, great modeling tools. Still has crappy legacy stuff (editable mesh anyone?) Needs a good spring clean. Stack rocks, and works unlike Maya's oh-so-fragile history.

    Silo=great modeler, fantastic interface, missing some essential features (deformers). Mouse customisation <3
  • Pope Adam
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    Pope Adam polycounter lvl 11
    ugh Maya History. I've had saving without deleting history completely destroy and corrupt some of my high rez gun models before... so retarded.

    I've heard some Maya jockeys argue that Maya does in fact have an "autoback" like Max... their argument being "you just have to go in and turn it on in preferences"

    To me, this isn't fucking AUTOback... it's MANUALback.

    @pior - roffalz bewbage
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Haha Bounch I'll leave that unedited, for the records :P
  • brandoom
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    brandoom polycounter lvl 13
  • [Deleted User]
    Maya = less clutter

    Max=huge messy interface

    tuttotal.jpg


    lol.
  • greuh
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    greuh polycounter lvl 15
    oh the good old max/maya pissing contest thread.
    max or maya, in the end, is there really a difference? They are both just as broken. In addition of being mostly a matter of personal preference (and also practice), the shortcomings from one are usually somewhat implemented better in the other.

    In the end, what does matter is feeding the game pipeline with proper data. Ideally you want to use whatever software that allows you to do it the fastest. And when you don't have that choice, you better start trying to learn the rope and whistle of the app instead of lamenting :)
    They are both capable of doing the job, it just requires a user willing to get it working the proper way (give or take). Because it really is just that, if you try to use Maya as you did Max, well, you won't get very far (and vice versa).

    anyway, feel free to dismiss my useless post in a pointless thread :P
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Honestly Kaskad, both are horrible here!!
    In Max I remove everything that is below the viewport, but expand the modifier panel to two columns. Also I float a few palettes for some extra scripts.
    I maya, same thing : I remove pretty much everything below and on the left of the viewport, and the recently added viewport preferences eating up space. I hide the shelves too. I put all my icons in a floating shelf that remains even in fullscreen mode (cant post the script, sorry). I also force AA through the nvidia driver, and set a nice viewport gradient.

    Greuh, this isnt a VS thread. (please everyone, don't turn it into one). This is more a "both suck" thread!
  • [Deleted User]
    Pior, I agree, both need heavy customization to be efficient. But saying that maya has less clutter than anything kinda tickles my funny bone :)

    I didn't mean to suggest that Max has a shining great example of a UI or something.
  • JacqueChoi
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    JacqueChoi polycounter
    I prefer Max, but Maya is pretty much the same shit in a different pile.

    You end up spending most of your modelling time extruding edges, and moving verts no matter the application.


    I prefer max by a LOT, but Maya has better Unwrap, and navigation tools, and if you ever get used to node base shader editing, you'll probably like the shader system more too.
  • kary
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    kary polycounter lvl 18
    I really like Silo. If they would get the scene management and snaps sorted (just steal XSI's rotation and scale snaps and call it done) it would be able to do most of what I need painlessly.

    Maya is a migraine, max is just a headache :).
  • Renaud Galand
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    Renaud Galand polycounter lvl 19
    Ok, now I'm affraid :p I'll learn maya very soon, hopefully this should be ok.
  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666
    maya is the dirty tramp of the cg world, max is the ambitious hobo.
  • MattQ86
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    MattQ86 polycounter lvl 14
    "Poor workers blame their tools. Good workers build better tools. The best workers get their tools to do the work for them."

    Now lets stop this petty pissing contest of which overcrowded interface is the least crippling to our artistic abilities and get back to learning about our tools.

    ...besides, everybody knows that Poser 3 is the best. Just look at these bullet points.

    • New user interface
    • Facial posing and animation
    • Human figures with jointed fingers.
    Jointed fingers!
  • Frump
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    Frump polycounter lvl 12
    Funny, I felt this way about max today while trying to do some pretty basic stuff, but it was only due to my ignorance of the program. I eventually got what I wanted done. And once I get used to it I'm sure there will be a lot less to complain or start a thread about.

    ... Reading this thread was a waste of time. Except for Pior's posts. They gave the idea to use boobs for shelf icons. :)
  • Jay Evans
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    Jay Evans polycounter lvl 18
    both are full of problems and broken features. Hugely expensive software packages on what.. their 10th versions? The entire entertainment industry software section of Autodesk, is a very very small slice of the pie for them. I think I remember reading it was under 15% of their product sales. A primarily engineering software company, trying to make highly specialized tools for an industry that is constantly evolving. Actually now that I think about it, I'm surprised they work as well as they do:P
  • RyanB
    About three years ago, I had to learn Maya after seven years of using Max. It was quite painful because I ran into a lot of Maya's quirks and bugs early on. This isn't to say that Maya has more bugs than Max, it's just that I ran head-on into them due to the nature of my work.

    After six months or so, I found fixes for the bugs and learned to avoid stepping into certain traps.

    Maya's node-based architecture is very powerful once you learn to manipulate it. You can connect inputs and outputs in so many different ways. This allows you to solve problems and create your own tools on the fly.

    Max is still a great package and comes with some excellent tools, especially for games. Max doesn't allow you to work with inputs and outputs with as much ease and flexibility, but Max has tons of great tools that are honed for game production.

    The strength of Maya's nodes is also one of its drawbacks: it requires the user to be comfortable with a more technical way of working. If the user isn't a technical person, they will need a greater amount of support than Max.

    My advice: stick with learning Maya. Don't give up. The learning curve is steep but ultimately worth it.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    My advice to anyone that dislikes maya is to give XSI a try, essentially the are the same type of program. The only difference XSI is no where near as buggy, the performance is great, ICE is amazing, XSI tends to be more game oriented with a lot of its tools and features as well, a lot of big games are made with it, look at MGS4 for a great example.
  • jocose
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    jocose polycounter lvl 11
    Yeah XSI is pretty much the greatest thing since sliced bread. I have to agree that I have never quite found as good a balance between all the 3D packages (Modo included) as XSI.

    Lots of people love the way Maya's snapping system works. Well XSIs works just as well. In fact almost everything in XSI is just as functional, cleaner, intuitive, and stable.

    The only thing I have found slightly problematic is the lack of scripting tutorials due to the smaller user base. Other than that its pretty much the best package I have worked with. This is based of my experience with Modo, Maya, & 3dsMax.
  • CrazyMatt
    It's funny i'm in the same boat here only in the opposite direction.
    I've spent 8 years using Maya straight and was pretty upset every time I opened up Max.

    Though over those years I developed a fast pace working speed in Maya. But soon came to notice that my body wasn't going to take it much more (soreness, pains) to complete many complicated modeling operations.
    After realising and wondering why so many artists of the modding community were producing more content & faster at that. I knew there was something the whole time with Max that I wasn't opening myself up to. Which was the reality it does have a better overall package to work with for any 3D artist out there. (Except for it's snap system) which I argue Maya has the best over any 3D package to date. (not to mention it's shortcut keys are brilliant for easy clean model/component snapping).

    I think the best solution is really. If anyone from maya moves to Max. You have to keep alot of this in mind to make things easier..
    - Max is more like photoshop layers (for it's modifier stack)
    - Max = alot of middle mouse manuvering

    As for Maya it's mostly
    - Left mouse manuvering
    - Right mouse button & (+additional major keyboard buttons)
    - Click to drop functionality
    - To get the best tools, you have to make you're own shortcuts for them on you're own shelf.

    But really for those making the switch to Maya for it's use in 3D artwork. Drop Maya if you have the option and stick with "Silo". It's a wonderful little package that I alone cannot understand why Autodesk didn't buy the guy who built it. But it's all like maya in terms of Navigation, but with a much much better modeling package that's on par with programs like 3ds Max, XSI, Modo.
    (so funny i mention all these other packages and still maya hasn't come to terms that they need to seriously update, lol)

    But yeah, it's you're choice and preference. Based on the work you do, ect.
  • tokidokizenzen
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    tokidokizenzen polycounter lvl 17
    I remember when Max's interface was just a list of words. And you couldn't rotate the view port in real time. Max, you come a long way baby. I love you.
  • Noia
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    Noia polycounter lvl 13
    I learned Maya first then got into Max. Maybe it's because I was more self taught at Maya and had more instruction available with Max, but I give credit to Max for being the easier to use program. I probably would've been better off learning Max first.

    However, there's something cumbersome about navigating in the viewport in Max that I haven't gotten used to. Sometimes the pivots don't seem quite right when you rotate even if you adjust it. Maybe Max hates my mouse. Any Maya-to-Max people find a way around this?

    XSI sounds great. I'm going to go check out the free trial.
  • onionhead_o
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    onionhead_o polycounter lvl 16
    Max

    Pros:
    - connect tool
    - edge extrude with shift
    - snap tools (compared to maya)
    - mirror tool (compared to maya)
    - UI not as cluttered
    - shell modifier
    - autogrid(better than make live in maya)
    - biped

    Cons
    - material system (kinda limiting at times)
    - broken cut tool
    - x-form(equivalent to freeze transform in maya) flips normals sometime

    Maya

    Pros:
    - insert edge tool
    - edge loop selection
    - smooth preview
    - nCloth seems to be better than max cloth simulation (in general mayas simulation seems to be better than max imo)
    - Animation

    Cons:
    - having to delete history
    - viewport texture
    - bridge tool is broken
    - selecting in sub object mode is annoying

    i think in the end max is a better for modeling, maya is better for animation. btw ive only used maya for few months only. so i havent found all the good stuff that maya has to offer.
  • stimpack
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    stimpack polycounter lvl 10
    Unreal is Garbage...There, i said it. The elephant is out.
  • danr
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    danr interpolator
    I remember when Max's interface was just a list of words. And you couldn't rotate the view port in real time. Max, you come a long way baby. I love you.

    that's why it's called 3DS(tudio) Max rather than 3D Studio

    user since v1 and i STILL don't know what the basic menu operations are called without having the thing in front of me, causing a generally not-that-useful trend of replies in the technical tqlk forum
  • foreverendering
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    foreverendering polycounter lvl 12
    Having used both, they each have their strengths and weaknesses. Overall I think I prefer Max because the modeling tools seem a bit more robust. However, I think the viewport navigation, locked orthos, and sticky snap in Maya is a lot more intuitive. That's why I use Switcher for Max :)
  • Snefer
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    Snefer polycounter lvl 16
    *cough*Modo*cough*


    /runs away
  • Gannon
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    Gannon interpolator
    Favorite thing about Maya is the hot boxes. I fly through motions and shapes starts forming without seeing any options pressed, it's great. Max I've gotta flip through more tabs and crap, or attempt to use the crappy right mouse button second cousin to the hot boxes.

    @Onion - Maya has all the pros that Max has that you've listed they're just called different things. Cons, I can agree with everything except the history, because if used appropriately it's fantastic. But hey that's what updates are for anyways

    @Kaskad - Ctrl + Space. Nuff said :p
  • ericdigital
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    ericdigital polycounter lvl 13
    l2 marquee menu noobs
  • maltuna
    I'm the only Max user at my studio, everyone else uses Maya. It was mentioned in a previous post that most studios use Max, but I feel like alot of studios are switching to Maya. I keep telling myself I will get better at Maya but get frustrated everytime I start poking around in it and try to find stuff. >_< However, I think XSI is amazing.

    Im sure autodesk will make a mega program that is max/maya/mud all in one. The interface will be menus on menus, with 100x100 pixel viewport for modeling. :D!!
  • kickzombies
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    kickzombies polycounter lvl 17
    I learned my basics in Max.
    Somewhere along the lines I switched to Maya, at the time a daunting task I hate having to learn to UIs.
    But I quickly began to love maya, its pretty intuitive, more streamlined(in my opinion) well... any program can be with customization.
    Maya just seems more suited to my work flow, its good we have the choice of programs out there though.

    Really though, you can make a list equally as long for most of the major 3d packages weighing out pros and cons.
    Ultimately it is up to the artist how well put to use and the efficient the program is is.

    mayaui.jpg

    This + space bar pretty much gets me by anything.
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    stimpack wrote: »
    Unreal is Garbage...There, i said it. The elephant is out.

    You're an idiot Phil!
  • d00kie
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    d00kie polycounter lvl 17
    brandoom wrote: »
    http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1918771 - maybe this will cheer you up.

    ^^ i lol'd ^^

    aaaaaaaaaaand im throwing in my vote for Maya.
    I think it's because it was the underdog to Max when I attended school and I am one to always root for the underdog.

    :shifty: always. :shifty:
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