Animation/Rigging for games - Just how much more used is Maya then Max?

PolyHertz

I think everyone knows that Maya is the industry leader for animation atp, but what I'm wondering is just how much of a lead it has? My guess is that Max has about 1/3 of the market share in this area that Maya does, but is that accurate?

Even though I don't think PC has that many animators (it's no 11 Second Club at least), most here have probably worked with animators at studios or on freelance gigs. For you guys, whats been your experience in regards to the software divide (strictly for rigging/animation) ?

ExcessiveZero

I can't say on a professional level as I have only ever done hobbyist animations, I would be very interested to see what others say about this because I felt max had the superior rigging bone system via Cats, yet painting weights in max for some reason seemed to always be 10x more of a nightmare than Maya which after max felt like weight painting was on easy mode, then animation wise I found them to be largely the same once its all rigged and properly weighted.

Eric Chadwick

There's an animation subforum here. Probably get more targeted replies in there. Would you like me to move this?

Most of the studios I've worked with have used Max for their rigs, but that's because they were already using Max for modeling, animating, and exporting too. It's not that easy to switch packages once you've built a nice art pipeline.

Having said that though, Maya definitely makes it easier for riggers to build custom setups, since scripting gives you deep access to the software. Scripting and coding in Max is a bit more of a tacked-on setup, with lots of caveats. I've seen great rigs in each though, so to each their own.

You could also try asking this in the Tech Artists forum, where they have a Rigging sub-section.

MiAlx

Yeah, like Eric said the tech art or animation subforum would be more helpful for you maybe, but for me personally at CD Projekt Red, we use motionbuilder for mocap stuff (like mocap clean-up and editing) and some keyframe animations. The rest of the keyframe animations are done in Maya. Same at the animation studio I worked before and same for the smaller indie studio I worked before that.  In my case, rigging is done both in motionbuilder and maya, again depending on what the character is going to be used for. But from my experience, the custom rigs for maya are a LOT more in-depth than say motionbuilder. In reality it depends on the studio though, lots of studios in the UK use Max for animation for example and obviously it works well for them.

thomasp

animation side in mid-sized places and up is normally maya in my experience. not so much for features but simply because it's the standard and what a lot of experienced people are used to work with. you can quite easily attract hires and adopt solutions from animation and film places. try that when you're strictly max-based.
you wouldn't be asking me to texture with paint shop pro either, would you?

littleclaude

Another plus to knowing Maya is that you can change jobs into film, TV, commercials, idents as it's more or less Maya pipeline in all the studios, espically since XSI died.

PolyHertz

@Eric Chadwick  Yea looks like it would be better for this to be moved to the animation forum.

slipsius

In terms of animation, it sounds like Max is on it's way out in a professional setting. Autodesk is apparently cutting animation support in the next few years, so studios are jumping ship. 

You`re more likely to find a studio using maya or motion builder for animation. Most gravitate towards motion builder for mocap stuff, but not all. 

If you`re trying to figure out what software to learn for hand keyed animation and rigging, I`d say just go with Maya. The skills will translate over to max, should you run into a studio that uses it. As long as you can demonstrate your skills, and your ability to learn on the job, most studios will not have an issue with learning their software in your first couple of weeks. For instance, I only had used Maya. When I went to my first AAA job, I had to learn max on the job, and they were fine with it (that studio now switched to maya). When I went to my second AAA job, I had to learn motion builder and they were fine with it. 

PolyHertz

Wait, AD officially announced they're dropping animation from Max? Have any sources on that?

Eric Chadwick

IIRC this was a rumor that AD then debunked.

slipsius

Ah, I editted my post. I think eric is right on that one. I have seen a bunch of studios switching over, which i think is why i thought the rumours were official. that's my bad. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/z8o09/autodesk_is_no_longer_going_to_develop_3dsmax_and/

AnthonyAnimation

About 95% of my professional work has been done in Maya. Some indie studios seem to like how Max works with Unity though.

Archanex

Out of the studios I've worked for, 7 used Maya, and 4 used Max, 2 of them used something else. If I get to choose, I always choose Maya for rigging/animating