Making The Switch: From Maya to Blender 2.8

Daustin_3D

Hello Reader! 

Since Maya will be changing it’s licensing so that it is no longer free for non-students, I’ll be making the switch to Blender! 

I’ve had this on my to-do list for a long time (3 years or so) but I’ve never felt the need to actually move forward until now. I love using Maya (as much as one can love Maya lol), but with blender getting more and more powerful, Maya getting a little more restrictive, and quarantine keeping me in the house, I feel that the stars have aligned.

On a personal yet relevant note, I have recently been diagnosed with Adult ADHD. I find this information to be relevant because I have always had difficulty learning, especially on my own. So teaching myself something new has always felt impossible. But now that I can put a name to my struggles, I’ve been doing my best to research learning techniques that would best help me absorb information as well as apply it to my everyday artwork. (I’ve also been given a prescription so that helps a lot)

I’ve been reading online about a lot of tutorials to follow, digging through YouTube and forums. The most comfortable approach for me would be to take a simple step by step learning approach though a tutorial series. I don’t want to do anything too complex right now, I also don’t want to spend any money on a series of tutorials since I just started my freelance career and I’d like to spend my money wisely while I go through this transition in carriers. 

My search led me to a few YouTube tutorials, I’ll be starting with Mort’s YouTube series  Free Blender Course, Zero 2 Hero!  (  )

If you have ant suggestions or feedback, I am open and welcoming to it all!. If you have any other tutorials that you think would be helpful to my learning process, please share! 

I’ll be documenting my learning here on Polycount! Stay tuned, and thank you for joining me on this journey.

prosaicgod

Since Maya will be changing it’s licensing so that it is no longer free for non-students, I’ll be making the switch to Blender!

First off, welcome to the world of Blender. If you haven't already, you'll soon find that it's as capable as the pricey commercial apps and is, in some respects, functionally superior. Open Source has come a very long way over the past decade and it is now possible, with some adjustment, to create an entire $0 pipeline. Best of luck on your Blender journey.

Unless I'm mistaken, with regards to Maya licensing, it's still status quo. Nothing has changed. There's this fundamental misunderstanding that Maya is free for all just because it's free to download. That's wrong. The EDU license is and has always been reserved for student, teacher, and school use alone. No exceptions.

In the past, Autodesk used to verify student/teacher credentials by way of school e-mails and/or identification. I suspect that the validation process became more time consuming on their part over time. Consequently, they switched to the honor system and trusted that the downloader was indeed a student or teacher.

However, let's be real. This is the internet. It's a magical place where a 50yo dude from Bangladesh can pretend to be a 16yo cheerleader from Texas and the rule of law only applies to people on the outside world. So, if there's even a slim chance to get something for nothing, many somebodies will try.

Just because Autodesk stopped verifying EDU status doesn't mean that those EDU licenses were up for grabs for non-EDU users. You still had to be a student or teacher. Autodesk knew very well that a huge number of people were "scamming" free licenses off them and probably even ended up using them for commercial use, especially since they haven't had watermarks in years.

However, Autodesk turned a blind eye time and again? Why? Who knows. IMO, they probably let it go on for as long as they did because it enabled them to further widen their user base in the key industries, which is where the big money is.

Why crack down now, if that's what they're doing? There could be any number of reasons. For starters, COVID-19 has put a lot of people out of work worldwide. That has to be making a dent in Autodesk's coffers. You have to think that many people have had to abandon their subscriptions and have, instead, turned to EDU licenses as a "viable alternative" to paying. You also have to wonder if Autodesk is trying to push the Maya Indie product. Perhaps the "numbers are in" and Autodesk no longer feels that the benefit outweighs the risk. It could be as simple as the long game didn't play out as anticipated and not enough "party crashers" translated into paying customers down the line.

Whatever the case, if you weren't a student or teacher enrolled at or working for a legit school, you never actually qualified for the EDU license in the first place. You got lucky that Autodesk didn't audit you and cancel your license. Worse than that, they could've asked you to pay up. It's well within their rights and has happened.

However Autodesk chooses to control those EDU licenses going forward, it's not going to affect students. They're still covered. It won't affect pros. They or their bosses still pay. It won't affect the homebrew game artists since the low cost Indie version still exists, for the time being. Any shift in EDU status validation will only affect the hobbyists who have been getting something for nothing lo these past 8 years or so. They'll likely just shift back to warez.

IMO, you're better off switching to Blender anyway. Maya may have deep industry penetration, which matters if you're job hunting. However, like 3dsmax, its development has felt scattered and half-hearted for a few versions now. Both are long overdue for some big fixes, bigger new features, and maybe even core rewrites. That's just my view on that. Blender, otoh, is on the upswing and going at it full throttle. It still lags behind Maya in some key areas, but the app itself continues to evolve and grow every other month. If you eventually need to go pro, learning or re-learning Maya isn't that big of a deal. It's only hard if you need to dig into the more nitty gritty technical aspects.

So teaching myself something new has always felt impossible. But now that I can put a name to my struggles, I’ve been doing my best to research learning techniques that would best help me absorb information as well as apply it to my everyday artwork

Personally, if focus is your problem then I'd address it head on through small, tangible goals. As you get more advanced and the project sizes increase, just break them down and treat every section as a mini project. It's hard enough for any artist to stay focused on larger projects and concepts when they try to digest them whole. I'd imagine that, for you, it's even harder. If maintaining prolonged focus is the issue, lean into the curve. Size the individual goals so that they turn your weaknesses into strengths. At least that's what I'd do.

teodar23

Just my 2 cents:
- complaining about something that was given for free and now it isnt, is not cool.
- mentioning you have a learning disability but you learned maya (probably the hardest dcc to learn, apart from the old blender), probably in a time where there weren't as many tutorials aka you had to do all the learning by yourself... doesnt really add up.
- its not really learning from scratch, is it? Some of those skills still apply, its just a different layout and shortcuts. Maybe some things are labeled differently but basically they do the same thing as in maya. You're not re-learning what a polygon is.

PS: i am the unproud owner of a student licence for max, although its been 20 years since last time i was a student, so... yea. If AD wants to remove that in the near future i would not even dream of making any form of complaint about that. I am a hobbyist in 3d so i will find other ways to get my hobby fix.

prosaicgod

teodar23 said:

Just my 2 cents:
- complaining about something that was given for free and now it isnt, is not cool.

TBF, if he wasn't a student then and isn't one now then it wasn't actually free for him anyway. I'm not going to judge. I just wouldn't do it. Everybody's different.

That said, I don't think that he's complaining so much as he's sighing out loud. It's more of a, "Well, it was fun while it lasted. On to the next party."

mentioning you have a learning disability but you learned maya (probably the hardest dcc to learn, apart from the old blender), probably in a time where there weren't as many tutorials aka you had to do all the learning by yourself... doesnt really add up.

I'm not really going to question your logic, but I personally don't find Maya THAT hard to learn. As you said, much of Maya's functionality and basic workflow is familiar territory and borders on industry standard, which makes the transition from Maya to Blender or any other top tier app not that huge of a deal.

Having said that, learning disabilities and other such disorders rarely make sense. Quite often, they're self-contradictory. ADHD, in particular, is like that. You can have terrible focus as a whole, but also able to be intently focused on very specific things - especially true if it's coupled with a compulsive disorder.  The whole of it is complex.

its not really learning from scratch, is it? Some of those skills still apply, its just a different layout and shortcuts. Maybe some things are labeled differently but basically they do the same thing as in maya. You're not re-learning what a polygon is.

Yeah. Exactly. It's the difference between your old apartment and the new one. Yeah. The layout is different and maybe you have an extra bedroom or bathroom, but a bed is a bed and a toilet is a toilet. It's more about getting re-adjusted than anything else. Learning a brand new app, one which requires you to learn entirely new skills is much harder. Transferring old skills and techniques is a totally different story. You can get up to speed in days or hours if you've got enough prior experience elsewhere.

I am a hobbyist in 3d so i will find other ways to get my hobby fix.

And that is a totally mature and reasonable viewpoint.

Like you, I haven't been a student in many years, 25  in my case.  More than anybody else, you know how good of a time it is to be a OSS user. If you had told me, 20 years ago, that I'd have dumped C4D/Maya and Photoshop for Blender and Gimp, I would have laughed... hard. It's a different situation nowadays.

So many of these established apps have matured to the point of being viable alternatives. Gimp might still lag behind Photoshop CC, but it's really no less competent than v7 or CS2 - which is a fine compliment. Blender is no longer that awkward and impenetrably hard to learn monstrosity. It's robust, well supported, actively developed, and has an inviting UI/UX that is perfectly in line with modern standards.

For a great many of those years after college, I was mostly a C4D and Maya user. I moved over to Blender about 9 years ago and the rest of my pipeline to OSS about 18 months ago. The decision, for me, wasn't purely financial; I was making money doing CG anyway so the apps paid for themselves. It was more about increasingly bad behavior trending among the commercial app developers. Forced subscriptions and abandoned perpetual license. Paying more and getting less. Decreased motivation to innovate. Abusive or neglectful support. Half developed new features and abandoned old ones. Some of these old guard apps feel as if they're held together with bubblegum and twine; Barely at that.

As a hobbyist, I think that you've got nothing to fear from commercial developers who pretty much want nothing to do with you. You've got real options and alternatives. Some are more feature rich than others, but free is free and there's no shame in workarounds.

Maya -> Blender

ZBrush -> Blender

Photoshop -> Gimp & Krita

MS Office -> OpenOffice & Thunderbird

Audition -> Audacity

Premiere -> OpenShot

Substance Painter -> Armor Paint

Substance Designer -> Material Maker

Illustrator -> Inkscape

MS Visual Studio - Code::Blocks w/GCC

Final Draft -> Trelby

Acrobat Reader -> SumatraPDF

MS Project -> Project Libre

There are still a few apps like Marmoset Toolbag and Dreamweaver that don't have decent free or OSS equivalents, but you can do pretty much all of the fun stuff for just the price of a PC alone. That's excellent news as we look ahead to a post-COVID world where so many artists, programmers, and so on are being forced to make hard decisions. You can already see it happening, this move away from commercial, in countries not named USA.

My 2-cents? Good. Anything to motivate the commercial developers. Autodesk might not tremble at the mention of the Blender Foundation, but a friendly reminder that they're no the only game in town is always nice. If nothing else, it helps to keep individual artists and mid-sized studios from feeling trapped by "industry standards."

Daustin_3D

teodar23 said:

Just my 2 cents:
- complaining about something that was given for free and now it isnt, is not cool.
- mentioning you have a learning disability but you learned maya (probably the hardest dcc to learn, apart from the old blender), probably in a time where there weren't as many tutorials aka you had to do all the learning by yourself... doesnt really add up.

Thanks for your input but I didn't "do all the learning" myself for Maya. I went to and graduated from University where I had courses and professors that gave me the base understanding of the software. I don't feel that I was able to learn as much/ learn at a similar pace as my classmates while in school. I don't necessarily feel a need to explain my ADHD to you or anyone for that matter, but if you don't believe me or something? I don't feel that you needed to leave this comment, you could have just left this post 

I also am not complaining about the licencing changing. I understand the importance of Maya cracking down financially, me stating the reason why I'm making the switch isn't inherently complaining, rather it's just the reason why, nothing more nothing less.I was using my University email and account and without doing much research on why I was not paying for it, I simply just kept using Maya and didn't think twice about it. 

That being said, I'm not sure what you were trying to gain from this but I didn't mean any ill intention with my post. I'm just trying to document my learning as I teach myself something new. I hope you find peace.

teodar23

So, youre saying that the whole purpose for your post is to tell us that you dont want to spend money on tutorials and you will watch some youtube tuts? Come on...

Eric Chadwick

Moderation reminder:

Be courteous, polite and show respect to others. Use of the forums is a privilege, not a right.

https://polycount.com/discussion/63361/information-about-polycount-new-member-introductions/p1#respect

tl;dr don't be a dick, let's be nice to each other.

Daustin_3D

prosaicgod said:

Since Maya will be changing it’s licensing so that it is no longer free for non-students, I’ll be making the switch to Blender!

First off, welcome to the world of Blender. If you haven't already, you'll soon find that it's as capable as the pricey commercial apps and is, in some respects, functionally superior. Open Source has come a very long way over the past decade and it is now possible, with some adjustment, to create an entire $0 pipeline. Best of luck on your Blender journey.

Unless I'm mistaken, with regards to Maya licensing, it's still status quo. Nothing has changed. There's this fundamental misunderstanding that Maya is free for all just because it's free to download. That's wrong. The EDU license is and has always been reserved for student, teacher, and school use alone. No exceptions.

In the past, Autodesk used to verify student/teacher credentials by way of school e-mails and/or identification. I suspect that the validation process became more time consuming on their part over time. Consequently, they switched to the honor system and trusted that the downloader was indeed a student or teacher.

However, let's be real. This is the internet. It's a magical place where a 50yo dude from Bangladesh can pretend to be a 16yo cheerleader from Texas and the rule of law only applies to people on the outside world. So, if there's even a slim chance to get something for nothing, many somebodies will try.

Just because Autodesk stopped verifying EDU status doesn't mean that those EDU licenses were up for grabs for non-EDU users. You still had to be a student or teacher. Autodesk knew very well that a huge number of people were "scamming" free licenses off them and probably even ended up using them for commercial use, especially since they haven't had watermarks in years.

However, Autodesk turned a blind eye time and again? Why? Who knows. IMO, they probably let it go on for as long as they did because it enabled them to further widen their user base in the key industries, which is where the big money is.

Why crack down now, if that's what they're doing? There could be any number of reasons. For starters, COVID-19 has put a lot of people out of work worldwide. That has to be making a dent in Autodesk's coffers. You have to think that many people have had to abandon their subscriptions and have, instead, turned to EDU licenses as a "viable alternative" to paying. You also have to wonder if Autodesk is trying to push the Maya Indie product. Perhaps the "numbers are in" and Autodesk no longer feels that the benefit outweighs the risk. It could be as simple as the long game didn't play out as anticipated and not enough "party crashers" translated into paying customers down the line.

Whatever the case, if you weren't a student or teacher enrolled at or working for a legit school, you never actually qualified for the EDU license in the first place. You got lucky that Autodesk didn't audit you and cancel your license. Worse than that, they could've asked you to pay up. It's well within their rights and has happened.

However Autodesk chooses to control those EDU licenses going forward, it's not going to affect students. They're still covered. It won't affect pros. They or their bosses still pay. It won't affect the homebrew game artists since the low cost Indie version still exists, for the time being. Any shift in EDU status validation will only affect the hobbyists who have been getting something for nothing lo these past 8 years or so. They'll likely just shift back to warez.

IMO, you're better off switching to Blender anyway. Maya may have deep industry penetration, which matters if you're job hunting. However, like 3dsmax, its development has felt scattered and half-hearted for a few versions now. Both are long overdue for some big fixes, bigger new features, and maybe even core rewrites. That's just my view on that. Blender, otoh, is on the upswing and going at it full throttle. It still lags behind Maya in some key areas, but the app itself continues to evolve and grow every other month. If you eventually need to go pro, learning or re-learning Maya isn't that big of a deal. It's only hard if you need to dig into the more nitty gritty technical aspects.

So teaching myself something new has always felt impossible. But now that I can put a name to my struggles, I’ve been doing my best to research learning techniques that would best help me absorb information as well as apply it to my everyday artwork

Personally, if focus is your problem then I'd address it head on through small, tangible goals. As you get more advanced and the project sizes increase, just break them down and treat every section as a mini project. It's hard enough for any artist to stay focused on larger projects and concepts when they try to digest them whole. I'd imagine that, for you, it's even harder. If maintaining prolonged focus is the issue, lean into the curve. Size the individual goals so that they turn your weaknesses into strengths. At least that's what I'd do.

Thank you for the encouragement! I'm happy about getting int o Blender and I'm excited about the features it has. So far , the community has been very friendly and welcoming so I'm excited to get deeper into it!
I'm trying out different ways to combat my learning and focus problems now that I'm aware of them lol
I'm taking things very slowly with small projects. I feel like I know Maya well enough to get back into it if need be at a studio position, but I plan on using Blender in my personal and freelance work. 

I was a student but I graduated about 2 years ago. I honestly never took the time to look into the licencing, my intro to 3D class just showed us how to get Maya wit ha student account and I didn't think any deeper into it after that honestly. When I heard about the licensing change, I totally understood why. there are probably thousands who did the same as me lol

At the end of the Day, I love Maya and I am also loving Blender and I'm happy to have both tools under my belt in the near future. Again, than you for your encouragement :]

Daustin_3D

teodar23 said:

So, youre saying that the whole purpose for your post is to tell us that you dont want to spend money on tutorials and you will watch some youtube tuts? Come on...

Again, I'm not sure what you're trying to gain. But I hope you find peace. 

Daustin_3D

Week 1 in Blender:

Day 1 (7/11/20): 

Learning the interface and creating my first Blender Model 

Diving in quick with my first day in Belder. So far, it’s not too difficult. I decided to keep the default Blender controls instead of changing them to Maya. I know there are plug ins for this, but I want to go in with a fresh mind and modify what works best for me.

A lot of the controls are familiar, the interface tools are pretty standard when it comes to modeling. The tools are a lot easier to find and are less information heavy than Maya. Though the manipulation of these tools are not as precision friendly. In Maya, when using these tools, you can enter specific unit measurements for the manipulation tools you’re using (i.e. if you want to extrude by 1.5 units, you can type 1.5 into the extrude tools pop up. Also extruding multiple faces, in Maya you can toggle “keep faces together on or off, in Blender, extruding separate faces is another extrude type in the extrude menu.) This is only day 1 for me, so maybe I just haven’t learned this yet.

I will say that everything is easy to understand, I’m not used to selecting with the right mouse button on my mouse. This is something that I just might change, all other software I use in my workflow uses the left mouse button and I like to be consistent for the most part. Camera movement is all MM Button which is fine for now.

I was able to create a little sword and had a fun time doing it!

Day 7 (7/18/20):

Got pretty busy with Freelance so I didn’t spend as much time in Blender as I would have liked. However, after being able to spend some time in Blender I was able to complete the 1st set of videos of this tutorial series! I had a great time doing these assets and the low poly approach to the beginner stuff made learning the interface very simple. So I had a great time. 

Here are the results of that learning 

I'm getting a hang of the interface, so I'm feeling more comfortable in the program. Speaking with a friend, they suggested that I follow more Blender courses for advanced 3D artist due to my background In Maya. I haven't thought of myself as an advanced 3D artist, but it won't hurt to try!

I'm checking out this video from Flipped Normals  next  [LINK] Thank you all again for checking this out! IF you have any resources (Paid or free) that you think I should heck out, let me know! 

Daustin_3D

Day 20 (8/3/20):

Had a relaxing camping weekend with some loved ones and I’m back to learning Blender. To better familiarize myself with the software, I’m doing a small monthly challenge in the program. The prompt for this challenge is “Travel”. I came up with a concept of a novice druid on a wild goose chase on the hunt for a master to teach them the ways of the magical arts. Our Protagonist, take a moment to look at the map again, to make sure they’re on the right path.

I’ve sketched out the concept and decided to go with a Diorama for this. 

As of right now, I’m thinking the scene will consist of a backpack with a potions pack on the side and a sleeping bag on top, a busted old shield, a busted old magical staff, a map, a barrel, candle, a couple of mushrooms, a lantern pole, and a old brick wall. The ground will be a cobblestone texture I plan to make in Substance Designer.

I made a quick block out to get a better idea of how the composition would look and to see if anything would need to change. 

I’m open for critique so if you have any to offer, it is very welcome.