It is just my opinion, one of many that you have already heard in this thread...
But I would side on Maya as well. For environment modeling you will want to be able to quickly block out the necessary shapes and snap points to the grid or along another meshes. If you can learn to incorporate curves into your work flow, it will all start making more sense.
The way I see it, the industry is moving more and more towards Maya. It seems working with UDK and CE3, Maya becomes more friendly in how you work between the two.
This isnt to say Max is bad. Its a great package as well and its strengths are really in its plug ins. Keep in mind, many of those neat plug ins will also cost money.
With Maya, you will be able to work much faster.
Also, I would recommend you switch over to Zbrush as opposed to Mudbox. Mudbox is great for its projection painting, but other than that zbrush wins when it comes to organic and high poly sculpting. If you want to make a tree for your environment, just pop out some zspheres, sculpt and then retopo into a low poly (using high poly to make normal map). You will find zbrush in more studios than you would mudbox.
Also zbrush allows for retopoing, and if you want something even better you can spend a little and go for another package like 3d coat (which will also make UVings much easier as well).
Like others have stated, it never hurts to learn more than one package but I would highly recommend sticking with Maya. For game and film rez environments, its quick and painless.
Replies
It is just my opinion, one of many that you have already heard in this thread...
But I would side on Maya as well. For environment modeling you will want to be able to quickly block out the necessary shapes and snap points to the grid or along another meshes. If you can learn to incorporate curves into your work flow, it will all start making more sense.
The way I see it, the industry is moving more and more towards Maya. It seems working with UDK and CE3, Maya becomes more friendly in how you work between the two.
This isnt to say Max is bad. Its a great package as well and its strengths are really in its plug ins. Keep in mind, many of those neat plug ins will also cost money.
With Maya, you will be able to work much faster.
Also, I would recommend you switch over to Zbrush as opposed to Mudbox. Mudbox is great for its projection painting, but other than that zbrush wins when it comes to organic and high poly sculpting. If you want to make a tree for your environment, just pop out some zspheres, sculpt and then retopo into a low poly (using high poly to make normal map). You will find zbrush in more studios than you would mudbox.
Also zbrush allows for retopoing, and if you want something even better you can spend a little and go for another package like 3d coat (which will also make UVings much easier as well).
Like others have stated, it never hurts to learn more than one package but I would highly recommend sticking with Maya. For game and film rez environments, its quick and painless.