Maya, Max, or Blender for my specific needs? Sorry for another comparison thread...

discoharuhi

The consensus on that seems to be that Max is better for game art and Maya is better for film and animation, then I'm hearing very conflicting replies about blender "sucking" then being "better than both"

Quick background: Video Editor / Motion GFX artist with AE have modeled and textured models in Wings3D and Metasequoia (I'm almost content in modeling in Metasequoia)




Here's what I want to do:
I want to learn a new 3D program for 2.5D CG, anime 3DCG, with mocap / character animations, VFX / Particle Simulation and composite the animation in AE.


Here are references:

https://orig00.deviantart.net/f78a/f/2015/056/9/e/untitled_by_keiichiisozaki-d8jfztd.gif (BLENDER, Freestyles
https://twitter.com/paint002/status/916984184035360768 (3DS MAX, Pencil, Fumefx)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOEHegW_NK8 (MAYA)
https://youtu.be/kyHn1DndgXs?t=48 (3DS MAX, Pencil, krakotoa, xparticle)


About Blender: I found it very annoying to use, it felt very unfriendly, however there are a couple people who are getting results like the first one with it's "freestyle" shader, I also see it reccomended everywhere, every max vs maya thread ppl say "just learn blender, it's free" It's the biggest 3D community online, and people preach it everywhere like "Why get houdini? Blende's free"

About Maya: Everybody says if you're doing character animation, choose this, but I don't want to do "advanced" character animation, I don't want to like mesh destroy/muscle morph etc, the most I'm going to do is what is in the videos I linked. I watched a beginner course and it seemed easy to understand, it seemed comparable to C4D almost.

About MAX: It seems every 3DCG magazine in japan, when they release their "making of" shows them using MAX to animate, only a few showed maya compared to like 15 others showing MAX. MAX also has (Xparticles, Fumefx, krakotoa, pencil,) and many other useful plugins. I haven't understood max's interface yet, it's a bit confusing, but I think everythings pointing to MAX so far.


what I'm really after here, is the program to get started up the quickest with. but can get the style I want.

BLENDER is very tempting, because no money! But I get the feeling I will be spending 10x the amount of time, trying to learn it, or use it, compared to MAX or MAYA... WOULD you say this is TRUE? I feel like I could get started up the quickest with MAYA, but I feel like I should learn MAX instead...

I just want to pick the program and stick with it and try to learn it, What do you guys think I should do, for my specific needs and style I am going for here? I'm really big on ease of us lol

gandhics

3dsMax is good generalist package. You can cover every aspect of CG within 3dsMax.
CAT is easy to use. Character Studio is production proven motion capture solution. 

thomasp

the animation/skinning side in max has been neglected for years though, hasn't it? at least i couldn't believe my eyes when i saw what blender can do/how easy it is to do in that regard. CAT is 2009 hype with very little development done after. character studio ... much older and clunkier. skin modifier - urgh, this thing was old and lacking in 2005.

anyway, none of these packages are quick to learn and really understand the underlying concepts. might as well try and do a hobby project with them before committing. max has the plugin power for sure and is quite interesting if you can make use of the stack and are willing to pay the protection racket in monthly installments. it can add up quickly with the cost for plugins though.

if you learn max, hopping to maya or any realtime engine or whatever will be a piece of cake. blender with it's nonstandard interface is a much harder nut to crack if you already know 3D apps. it's also quite the versatile interface in comparison but customizing it to make it all friendly will take a good while.

discoharuhi

Hello, since I posted this I took beginner courses on Cinema4D and 3DS MAX and Blender... (My post was waiting approval)

I feel like I know Cinema4D fully already, the interface just speaks to me, the 3DS Max series was okay, I feel like I can understand it a bit more now but the way it's setup is still confusing a bit, but I get the basic idea on how all three of these packages work, they all use the same type of things to do stuff pretty much.

blender was the messiest/hardest to follow, I think I'm almost ruling it out here. I'm going to try this "Blender for Artists" version.

I'm now trying to decide beween C4D, Maya, or Max.... lol

I feel like C4D IS the EASIEST, but it doesn't have "toon rendering" options that are "good enough" for the style I want. I believe. I haven't seen it's toon shader in any type of "anime" like looks so far. It's animation tools are also lacking compared to other packages I think. But it's really easy to setup some procedural / physics / motion gfx animation and stuff....




to recap: I want to create cellshading like this 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQLgn9-xqQc  (3DS MAX PLUGIN)

Results are like these:


And it seems blender is able to do it, but I struggle with blender everytime.

Maya and Cinema4D has the "Most understandable" "easy" interfaces to me, with Cinema4D being WAY easier. But I think it may lack animation tools (no animation layers etc) and it's "toon rendering" options may be limited.

Maya has "pfx toon shader" and I have seen pretty good renders with it, so Maya could work. I heard "rigging in maya is hell if you don't use other ppls setups" or something of the sort.

But then again, most of the pictures and references of these I find, in Japanese companys, are all 3DS MAX. But I keep hearing "Autodesk is going to take 3DS MAX out next!" 

It would make sense, since the Japanese industry loved softimage, now they switched to MAX... A few use Maya but I think most render with the Pencil plugin in max...


Anyway, GRRR I feel like I could be up and running in a week with C4D, but shit I wouldn't be able to get the style I want. I think MAX is going to take me atleast a couple months if I go with it.

Axi5

I think if you spent half the time testing a program instead of reading the drama surrounding it you'd be closer to your answer.

It's going to be tough to setup and do those kinds of renders in any software. It should still be possible in C4D, even if it requires getting a 3rd party renderer or utilizing some hacks for the camera (since these things mostly do anyway). Or even tweak it in post.

Ignore the rest. Max isn't going anywhere

thomasp

maya is pretty technical. probably not what a one-man-band should be using if you're not already very familiar with it.

the results from that max plugin look cool to me. if that's what you're after anyway then it's an instant solution that you'd need to spend time and effort in how to replicate in all the alternatives.

i think you better take max for a spin then to see if the character-setup and animation-side are to your liking. the built-in CAT and perhaps 3rd party rigging scripts are where you should investigate. CAT does have animation layers.

discoharuhi

Thanks everybody, and yeah maya seemed a bit technical, a lot of the tuts showed scripting lol

I decided just to plunge into MAX, and so far, it's not so bad actually. It looked way more intimidating than it was. There's so many resources for learning everything, which makes it easy... I found full on hour tutorials for doing everything till animation of a character. I'm also trying the Pencil+4 Plugin and the render samples it comes with are amazing... I'm not sure how to do all the VFX/Particle/Nurbs, displacement map type of stuff yet, I need to find a series for that.

I've only tried the biped system yet, I found it kind of weird but it works in the tutorials I just need to follow everything more. 




BTW, If any MAX users could help me figure some stuff out I'd really apperciate it. I think I'm sticking with MAX.


This was made in MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-PudD1UrvU


Here is another video by the same group showing max being used.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjZ1xRhIX58
Then here is a video explaining some of the FX from that video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWaIoo_64T8&t=9s
Can anybody understand what they're doing in that scene? It seems like he's saying for the line/trail FX he used some photoshop files on a plane texture or something?




Here's a quick write up:

Background in beginning is 2D and projected using a camera map:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KuUoaGsrxk <------ Is that just creating flat plants on the ground and using the road as texture?

Facial expressions
In

addition to the "facial controller" which makes it extremely collapsing and scaling in order to produce a soft movement, the following three blue bones are used to realize a soft bouncing movement.

Anybody up for explaining this to me? I only have google translate, I was trying to figure out the Facial Rig, and wondered if they used CAT or Biped or is it all custom?
 Also does anybody know how they did the "sweat drops / tears" that built up on the face durring the scene she first meets the cat?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCPra2ZBk90
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRPpeF9BLRE






This effect, I believe he says "this is 3D FX"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVwQTAa2NUE

Any idea how that's done? lol

Explosion effect

Produced with overlapping planar polygons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJiIcjEnrt4

Any idea what he means there?

RN

Really cool stuff, seeing the facial rig for that.
But it doesn't look like anything that can't be done with skeletal animation, plus blendshapes \ morphing if needed (edit: I'm talking about the facial animation only, not the special effects).

It was just meticulously done.
The high amount of bones around the mouth and eyelids seem to be just what they're using to control these parts in Max.
I think there's some compositing work being used as well, to make the eyelashes always overlayed on the hair.

All programs you listed are capable of doing these things. 3ds, Maya, C4D and Blender all have ways to do this type of animation and this style of rendering. Most of the theory is interchangeable anyway. Pick what you feel is best for you.

RN

This video here is important, showing that the result of a facial expression on screen is more important than having it make sense in 3D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcjXTGYUdpw

- It also confirms that compositing is being used to layer the eyelashes and eyebrows on top of the hair. See how they follow depth as expected in the viewport.
- It also shows that the eyelashes and eyebrows are mesh objects (look at their wireframe near the end).

discoharuhi

RN! Nice! The compositing of eyelashes and eyebrows I didn't even think of that. I've decided to stick with MAX for now, I can afford the subscription, there's just too many resources like that video to learn with.

They're using After Effects, and a few scenes are hand drawn (the beginning of the transformation) and the lines when she's transforming are either an AE filter or hand drawn as well. I think he said the FX when she's kicking and punching the cat (the quick flashes of light) are hand drawn in as well, because it was so short to draw it wasn't that hard. but the spinning hammer  animation part is supposedly CG.

For the eyelashes and eyebrows, they must of hid everything except for them, and rendererd them out seperate to composite ontop of the model right?

Do you think the "water drops / bubbly eye droplets" were 3D? And the wavy eye effect, is that a "displacment map" in 3DS Max? Or is it some kind of texture used? Or are those "green controllers around eyes" being used to deform the eye texture/mesh? 


Here is their whole write up about it, http://www.cc2.co.jp/chu/?page_id=302 if you translate with google you can somewhat understand. I think the last video with the red lines, was used somehow as a "deformer" over the meshes the explosion/hammer to make the mesh animate like it's being deformed, do you think I'm right here?


Anyway thanks for the write up, that video is created by CyberConnect2 they create all the flashy anime games for PS4 lol


There was a lot of particle FX, like the scene right before the explosion with the stars, do you think they used MAX or xparticles/krakotoa to do those? Or was it just composited with AE particular or something here? 

RN

discoharuhi said:

For the eyelashes and eyebrows, they must of hid everything except for them, and rendererd them out seperate to composite ontop of the model right?

You don't hide everything, otherwise you get the eyelashes and brows showing through everything. If you hide everything during the eyelashes pass then they will always be visible, even when the character is looking away from the camera (they would be visible through the back of the head for example).
So for the eyelashes pass you should use everything that can occlude the eyelashes (the body, environment, props etc.). By "use" I mean that these objects shouldn't be actually visible in the eyelashes pass, they should just occlude the eyelashes (the eyelashes should look like they vanish and appear out of nowhere), which is called Z \ depth masking.
The hair can be hidden completely, it should not occlude anything. Then you composite it all back in some video editor.

Do you think the "water drops / bubbly eye droplets" were 3D?

They look like billboards \ cards (a simple 3D quad with a transparent texture).

And the wavy eye effect, is that a "displacment map" in 3DS Max? Or is it some kind of texture used?

Based on the face wireframe from one of those videos, the eyes seem like separate mesh elements (physically disconnected from the body, regardless if they belong to the same mesh object or not) fit snug within the eye socket (like this).
The iris seems to be texture-based: you control it by sliding \ offsetting the global UV coordinates of the material, which lets you animate the position of the iris texture within the sclera (this effect is known as UV scrolling or panning, example 1, example 2, example 3), giving the illusion that the character is looking around.
You can also animate the texture itself (different iris shapes, like a heart or star etc.) using a multi-frame bitmap (edit: this is usually called a "texture flipbook"), with a 2D frame-by-frame wavy eye animation that you drew in Photoshop or TB Harmony etc. You need to search how to import a multi-frame bitmap in 3ds, I've no idea.

Or are those "green controllers around eyes" being used to deform the eye texture/mesh?

I think those are bones and they're being used to deform the skin geometry around the eyes in order to cover them like an eyelid, so you can shape the eye to make facial expressions, or even blink if you close it all the way. It's not clear how they're animating the eyelashes, maybe they're morphed (blendshapes).

There was a lot of particle FX, like the scene right before the explosion with the stars, do you think they used MAX or xparticles/krakotoa to do those? Or was it just composited with AE particular or something here?

In the blog they talk about using FumeFX to render some smoke I think.
I think most of the particles are just simple meshes animated with morphing and with UV scrolling, using textures with transparency. Any sort of cheap trick that's enough to give the visuals they're after.
Good luck!

discoharuhi

Dude! Again thanks so much! You seem like you know a lot about NPR / Video game toon stuff. I've learned so much about this style in the last week and advanced techniques (guilty gears vertex normal/texture line setup, etc) If you want any resources I could PM you some stuff, like I have some actually Maya scene files of anime characters from some professional company, I haven't got around to installing maya and checking them out yet. I'm really good at research these things but tend be slow at learning/figuring them out lol

 I didn't know textures could be animated, that makes a lot of sense then for the eye wavy effect, you can do a lot of stuff then with compositing FX and textures.

 I've been learning everything about rigging the past few days, CAT,Biped,HumanIK,psoft CharacterBox. Idolmaster used HumanIK in motionbuilder for the new PS4 game, some others use CAT, but a lot of rigging tutorials I find are biped. Psofts new plugin looks really cool, and btw the "psoft pencil+ plugin" that's used in all the animes pretty much is coming to unity,AE,modo, and maya, they announced a few weeks ago lol

 I'm still learning max for now though, maybe I'll restart the trial when I install a new OS, it seems like autodesk favors maya though, and all the amateur japanese ppl are using blender, and some studios are starting to use maya... (cause XSI support stopped, the ones using XSI are deciding what to invest in next) lol I also feel like, for some reason, modo's going to be really good soon for animation. And houdini/nuke is also used in some animes believe it or not lol But I feel like if I learn how one 3D program works, if I decide I want to go for another, I'd easily be able to swtich lol