Stable 3D Software that doesn't crash and cause problems? Cinema4D, Blender, Modo, Or LightWave?

3DSlayr

Maya is not stable. Something always goes wrong to where I have to restart computer, delete Maya prefs, etc. Is this common in all 3D software such as 3DS Max, Blender, Modo , or Lightwave? Or is it just a Maya thing? Because I am seriously considering moving to another app after I learn Maya (learning at University). 

vertex_

could be computer specific, although as a 3ds Max user I rarely crash. If you're encountering regular interference with your workflow due to the software it's worth trying another application. I'd recommend trying a different version of Maya first

3DSlayr

I'm using 2017. However, I always encountered weird bugs in 2015 as well. I didn't use 2016 all that much. I've been using student versions and it makes me wonder if Autodesk purposely makes their student versions buggy. Also, what 3D app outside of Autodesk realm does not crash and is light on resources?

JedTheKrampus

Softimage is the most stable. Blender probably comes in second out of the apps I've used (at least since about 2.63.) I haven't used Houdini or Lightwave. Max and Modo are both pretty crashy in my experience. I haven't used Modo 10, just 901 and it was crashier than I liked, although still pretty useful.

Save often enough and you shouldn't have too many problems with any app, as long as you have the appropriate drivers installed and don't have other hardware problems (e.g. you can try running memtest and prime95 to diagnose problems with CPU and RAM.)

Zack Maxwell

It's fairly ironic since Blender is the free and open-source software without a conventional dedicated dev team, but it's been the least buggy software I've used. The others I've used extensively being Maya and Modo.

@JedTheKrampus
Crashes are the least of the issues you can encounter.
As an example, I was constantly getting an error in Maya that would cause the actual UV window to vanish from the UV workspace, forcing me to reset the workspaces to default. Happened like once per hour on average, completely out of nowhere. Made customization impossible.
Or in Modo, being unable to use certain settings with the Pie menus, lest the whole screen go blank any time a Pie menu is activated.
In fact, I recently had to abandon Modo outright because I ran into a crippling animation error that I couldn't get any help with, due to the nearly non-existent community it has.

aggelostsif

I work with Maya 2016 for a few months now and I never got a crash. To be honest I'm suprised myself now that I think about it. For me it definitely has been the most stable version so far. Note that University computers have their own limitations and permission issues (maybe leftover settings from other users or it even clears user settings on log out) so that may be the case for you. A few months ago I tried to do a small project in my uni's workstations (i7, GTX 1080 and SSD) and got lots of crashes and such nasty things. Try running Maya on a different PC (preferably not your Uni's) or try the 2016 version.

antweiler

When Maya crashes or freezes its mostly an error by me, corrupt data or a known bug. (I do rigging modeling and texturing) Its only a problem it somehow the autosave was disabled. Deleting the prefs is almost never a solution for maya problems at least for me...

Chimp

Only work with max here, and apart from new major versions (indies forget that businesses avoid new updates until they are stable), the only thing that ever causes crashes are badly made plugins.

gnoop

But since plugins in 3d max  is what makes it great,  it does crash a lot.        I  dare to say "stable" and "convenient" soft are oxymoron .       Surprisingly Blender is most stable of all of them.                

ZacD

JedTheKrampus said:

Softimage is the most stable. 

I can back that claim. Maybe get one crash every other week, and it's normally my fault, like doing a needlessly computationally heavy operation. And it's auto-recovery normally loads up the scene exactly where it was after a crash.