Maya vs Modo
Slightly odd variant of this question.
I'm moving jobs at the minute after a decade and more of using 3dsmax for a branch of Microsoft. Part of the new work will be switching over to more of an apple based environment and I've been told I can pick whichever program I feel I'd be most comfortable with.
Can anyone weigh up the pros and cons of each for a 3dsmax artist? My main concerns are modelling (including spline to poly modelling), connection to 3dsmax, ideally scripts that allow uv island to hard edge creation and other game related stuff.
What I'm not really needing is a 'my app is better'. They're all great. Hell - blender is rocking nowdays.
I'm moving jobs at the minute after a decade and more of using 3dsmax for a branch of Microsoft. Part of the new work will be switching over to more of an apple based environment and I've been told I can pick whichever program I feel I'd be most comfortable with.
Can anyone weigh up the pros and cons of each for a 3dsmax artist? My main concerns are modelling (including spline to poly modelling), connection to 3dsmax, ideally scripts that allow uv island to hard edge creation and other game related stuff.
What I'm not really needing is a 'my app is better'. They're all great. Hell - blender is rocking nowdays.
Replies
Maya is definitely more powerful when it comes to animation and things like that but given how quickly modo is evolving into a full 3d production suite (modo 601 is fantastic) I'd say that modo is the better program if you're doing game asset production or something like that.
I use Modo for mostly modeling my high poly, low poly and unwrapping in Windows and OS X. I generally bake inside Maya since it's on OS X as well.
Lots of scripts for Maya related to hard edge stuff that Modo doesn't have.
As much as I love Modo I'd have to say, simply go with Maya.
Selects some edges.
Selects bevel
Stares incredulously at the non interactive type in and flees back to 3dsmax.
And as it sounds like you use them both Drew - what hard edges stuff would I be missing from Modo?
But not something I would recommend if you need to set up mesh normals, bake maps, or otherwise get your asset ready to export to game. Max/Maya are better in that regard.
But modo is one of the best, most natural feeling modeling tools out there.
If you know you'll be using maya exclusive features a lot, it'd make sense to go with maya, but if not I'd definitely give modo a try. Have a look through this thread
http://forums.luxology.com/topic.aspx?f=83&t=69241
and see if there's anything in there you'd really need. Also, you can set hard/soft edges with PipelineIO, but it'd be nice if that were built in to modo.
From a maya to modo switch - what kind of modelling tools would I be gaining or losing? Bar a few oddities (quad bevelling, certain tweaking a model functions) 3dsMax is a very good modeller and there's that frustration of looking for a similar way of doing things rather than just biting the bullet and finding another workaround.
Also slightly off track but - if I'm ending up on a Mac OS - anyone know of a substitute for xnormal? That one in particular is making me grimace. I'm aware they have a theoretical xnormal 4 coming out for macs and linux but well... its been promised for years.
Maya have a strange behaviour, you can adjust parameters interactively in the Attribute Editor:
Or in the Channel Box:
You can also take a look at Cinema 4D, if you also going to use Maya (as like modo lacks proper baking functions):
http://www.mattrittman.com/3d-modeling/migrating-from-3ds-max-to-cinema-4d
It's very fast and stable other than having some nice features, also its modifiers are similar to Max modifiers stack.
i also have my own script that creates interactive versions of a lot of tools, if you would like that.
I COULD export OBJ files to xNormal but it's just so much faster to stay in Modo. For me, anyway. Iteration time is way faster which easily offsets not having a cage to bake with.
Modo also does not use a common tangent space, so while you may have an engine synced to Maya, Max, or Xnormal(mikktspace)'s tangent spaces, you're not going to have an engine synced to modo.
Modo also does not support traditional hard edges/smoothing groups very well, there are some scripts from Chai that are great, but again, what sort of support does modo's baker have with hard edges etc? No cage, so does that mean gaps anywhere you use hard edges?
IMO modo just isn't there yet in terms of baking, and I absolutely love modo.
Yeah, that's true, but you can use Solid Chamfer for that
The top would be to have modo to bake normals with cages, otherwise on Mac OS X, I don't really know what you can use other than Maya to bake them correctly.
Cool. It works for me but I'm not doing really complex stuff at the moment. Maybe I'll see problems in the future but for now it's smooth sailing.
Modo is quirky but I'm certainly getting acceptable results out of it.
Other than that modeling in modo feels really natural and it simply flows perfectly without any rudimentary extra steps.But I must say modeling in modo is a different level.If you're coming from max then you have to unlearn some of things you knew about modeling before. Modo modeling tools might come to you a bit wild at first because of no modifier stacks,but modo has it's very own benefits that people really love.
Are there any more videos like that? I love watching pros using modo because they always use the tools in ways I would never have thought of
Should find out pretty soon - 701 is due to be released any week now.
For me, as I said, it's iteration time. Being able to hit a hot key and bake a new normal map whenever I want to is hella convenient.
I hope they do add cage baking because it would be nice to have a choice.
Luxology, as much as I love them, seem to value their renderer over everything else so it tends to get the most love these days. See : smoothing groups.
Thanks for the input though - sounds like the real thing to do is hang fire till the Modo preview and the Autodesk announcement later this month....
Good call on waiting for any announcements Asyme, hopefully luxology releases something awesome and your decision becomes easier.
The last sentence made my day. I hope it will come soon. I love new Modos. They usually add cool stuff.
I also can't agree that baking in Modo is ok. I like getting as good bake as I possibly can. Unfortunately it adds some hussle. Worth it though.
I guess we keep an eye on it and hope
http://www.luxology.com/store/special_offers/
I've been wondering, which one of these softwares would you recommend to learn for someone that has high hopes to work in game dev ? I am not really sure what are industry standards right now and both of these softwares look really powerful.
Modo is great!!! but... yes if you are looking for a job in an established studio you are better off looking up what they use and go from there. Some studios are more focused on Max while others are Maya.
BUT what you see with a lot of Modo uses is the skill and knowledge to use those applications when they have to but have Modo for when its usable as well, whether its at home or in the studio itself. Really situational. Maya will qualify you for the most though...
But as i understand In game development, Maya/Max are the standards. and like its been stated before, you'll find much more documentation on those. Modo not so much
But I have to say, Maya has improved a lot in the newer versions. A few years back modelling in Maya was a chore to me, now the behaviour of the tools is more in line what I see in other packages.
So far so good they've got a great base toolset that preforms well. Which is more than I can say for 3dsmax, they have a vast number of shallow animation tools that haven't been refined in years and they preforms horrifically.
I like how Luxology seems to approach adding a few core features and making them as solid as possible, rather than loading the shotgun full of buggy buckshot firing and forgetting.
What gave you that impression? I'd recommend giving the trial version a go.
https://farfarer.com/resources.htm