Max vs Maya
So I'm new to this site, and although I searched, I didn't find a post directly answering this question.
I'm about to purchase Max or Maya, I've had the same experience with both (which isn't much), but I thought it was time I got serious and purchased my own programs. I want to know what everyone would recommend from their experience for someone who will use these programs mostly for modeling, rigging, and animating video game characters, levels, and possibly cinematics (for the games)?
I'm sorry if this question has been asked and discussed at length already, but if so, if someone could link me to that post that would be great. Thanks.
I'm about to purchase Max or Maya, I've had the same experience with both (which isn't much), but I thought it was time I got serious and purchased my own programs. I want to know what everyone would recommend from their experience for someone who will use these programs mostly for modeling, rigging, and animating video game characters, levels, and possibly cinematics (for the games)?
I'm sorry if this question has been asked and discussed at length already, but if so, if someone could link me to that post that would be great. Thanks.
Replies
Also if you are going for cinematics, use Maya, it is much more common in major studios.
Also there are a number of threads that turn into max vs. maya threads if you spend enough time looking.
Which reminds me, do you (or anyone else) have any experience with Blender 3D? I've just gotten started on it. It's great for a starting point because it's free.
(from someone who uses both on a daily basis)
The best explanation I can give I've given. Sorry if it doesn't help much.
I will say this, you can model in both maya and max, but I find its much easier to do in max because of the UI. You can animate and rig just fine in max, but there are a lot of reasons that makes it better to use in Maya. If you want to make short films, maya is your better option. If you want to only make game assets, I'd reccomend Max.
In the end, if you get one instead of the other, you'll still be able to do anything you want.
If you're remotely serious about rigging, animation or TD'ing, and or have thoughts of a career beyond games, Max is a bit of a joke in that department, so absolutely Maya. If you're more likely to end up as a modeler in the games industry, Max is the more commonly used tool.
I'd recommend trying your utmost to not commit too strongly to one nor another where at all possible, but it's all just software at the end of the day.
for rigging and animation use maya.
for modeling, maya can do the same job as max, but max is just easier to get into it. for maya you have to set up your workspace and customize with different plugins and mel stuff to get the same workflow. so i'd stick to max.
don't forget maya is much chepear, so if you don't plan to be a hardcore modeler i'd start with maya.
...rig and animate in Maya.
Maya is used more extensively in the film industry, Max caters better to game art, since it's more modelling-oriented.
I have yet to see any useful script that someone's done in Maya's MEL script which can't be done in Max script.
I model, unwrap, and render in max....
...rig and animate in Maya.
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That's the best mix, for sure. Maya's animation tools are superior to Max, but Max can't be beat in terms of modeling/unwrap tools, imo.
I prefer maxs modeling, unwrapping, rendering over mayas any day.
I just learned recently how to do the unwrapping in maya. It just seems like more of a pain in the ass than anything.
Way to many options in maya that seem like they are all exactly the same and there is no modifier stack.
If i add smooth to something how do i get rid of it later?
If i add smooth to something how do i get rid of it later?
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You toggle the Smooth Proxy.
You toggle the Smooth Proxy.
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Well there we go
In terms of learning it quickly i think you will find Max far easier to learn and again as per128 said the information base for Max is huge in comparison to maya.
I started on XSI which beats most modeling programs hands down and spent the last 3 years on Maya. It may not have some of the tools and quick solutions but the work flow between XSI and Maya are extremly similiar, but Max is like this blacksheep of archaic design that is completly ass backwards from everything else.
This isn't a rant, Max is fine, but modeling is a pain in the ass, it takes 3-4 steps to do one thing when it only takes 1-2 steps in XSI/Maya.
The unwrapping in Max is a bit better, slightly...
edit: im talking about modelling not materials to clarify..
I find comments like "Maya is used more extensively in the film industry, Max caters better to game art, since it's more modelling-oriented." almost comical. How is a program focused on modeling better for games? I expect this from a washed up college professor, not from MoP. Workflows now are so often cross-application and extremely varied. Modeling is the simplest part of the cross-app workflow and one of the few areas that actually works (as opposed to rigging or animation which have problems, still). An app being better in modeling than another doesn't make it better for 'games' in general. What is best for 'games' now is what is best to write tools in, and for that, Maya wins hands down between Maya or Max, more on this below. (I don't know about XSI scripting enough to judge but I hear it is as robust as Maya's) If you are just making game art, it doesn't matter... Max, Maya, XSI, hell I think lots of people here would suggest using Silo for your modeling. Key is to experiment and use whichever one you like, this is such a heated topic because so many people here are power-users of one program over another. I don't think anyone would dispute that two people of equal skill with equal expertise and workflow experience in their program of choice will make things on the average faster or better in one application over another. (Exception would be nurbs in max, which are not well supported and unbelievably slow, but you will probably never use nurbs intensively anyway for modeling in games).
"As far as I'm aware, Blizzard do their cinematics entirely in Max."
I would guess 3dsmax is used somewhere in their cinematics pipeline, but judging from their http://www.blizzard.com/us/jobopp/#cin cinematics hirings, they are using Maya and Renderman in their cinematics department.
"I have yet to see any useful script that someone's done in Maya's MEL script which can't be done in Max script"
To that, two things. As far as modeling is concerned, which I know you have the most experience with, that is probably true. But for rigging, dynamics, UI, animation, etc., there are a large number of things maxscript does not give you access to (or give you access to in only an absurd way). Try to do anything with splines or curves for rigging- good luck. Max's UI is very unfriendly to scripting compared to Maya's, which is entirely MEL-able. Second, and somewhat related, is development in Maxscript is without a doubt slower than MEL for experienced people. Don't get me wrong, I think Maxscript as a language is quite good, it has similarities to python which I like, the cost-of-entry of learning some maxscript is not too high and maybe even lower than MEL. But maxscript fails when it relies on Max. So many things are not exposed at all, or exposed poorly. There are things like skinOps that have this logic of exposure completely different than the rest of max. Lately, I must admit, things have gotten better, in lots of ways you can see the developers have gotten some clues from languages like Python and others. But there are loads of things that were done in Max 3 and earlier that will never be exposed because the developers are no longer there, and there are serious problems with older designs that are outdated. I asked a question just yesterday at CGTalk: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=98&t=612768
Especially important is the phrase: Since day one (which means Max 2.0)
Maxscript wasn't originally part of 3dsmax. It was layered on top of it, and not too well. Just go through the help files and cgtalk forums and you can find plenty of examples where this has negatively impacted development nowadays. Using maxscript every day as a technical artist, the WTF ratio in maxscript is higher than you'd believe.
Of course, given the SDK and time and skill, you can probably do whatever tools and scripting in Max as in Maya. Look at Kees Rijnen and all the insane stuff he's done, but much of the core of all that is in the SDK, not maxscript. And the development time in a compiled language is always more than that of a scripting language, as well as the cost-of-entry being higher. You can't learn C++ from looking at the maxscript or mel listener window.
This is why Maya is much more popular than Max in major film studios and increasingly in major game studios (I'm not considering the preferences of individual modelers, but for pipelines). When you have people to do the tools and pipeline programming, Maya is better, this is beyond dispute. And with any major game or big studio, you have the people to do the programming and scripting, because hiring a couple people to do that pays dividends in the time it saves rather than using a half-assed and hardly-supported built-in application solution. Which is also Maya's shortcoming for the individual user, hobbyist, freelance, etc. Maya is designed around and for MEL and to get the most out of it, MEL needs to be involved. And if you don't have someone to spoonfeed you scripts and tools like you do at a studio, it involves the tedious tasks of searching out scripts for yourself (which often have problems and are infrequently updated), or programming them yourself, which takes time.
Everyone told me Max is so much better at modeling then Maya, but let me tell you, it isn't, sorry folks, Maya made some pretty good strides last year and it's nearly on par with XSI's work flow.
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As someone who recently switched over to Maya at work, I really don't know what you mean - Maya is lacking several fairly important functions that you need to either get scripts for, or buy the NEX plugin. Good soft selection, target weld, editing of triangulation, selection preservation, "connect" tool, togglable "actual" mesh smoothing which doesn't involve doubling the object count in your scene, local transformation tools, preserve UVs, i can go on and on. These are features that Maya just doesn't have. The funny thing is, all the modelling tools that Maya does have, Max has and then some.
Which leads me to:
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This isn't a rant, Max is fine, but modeling is a pain in the ass, it takes 3-4 steps to do one thing when it only takes 1-2 steps in XSI/Maya.
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Please feel free to make a thread about the things you think are slow or take more steps in Max than in XSI or Maya. I'm sure you'll get plenty of Max veterans who can point you in the right direction - if you're doing modelling and it's taking more steps in Max than in Maya, then chances are you aren't using the most optimal workflow (which is understandable if you've just switched over from Maya, I'm probably doing the same but in reverse at the moment
Those are all things for a different thread though. Seriously, post your questions, you will get answers and learn a ton of stuff from the pros who have been using that software for years. I did the same with my Maya questions thread and I have learned a lot of stuff about things I didn't even know existed in Maya (which is good) but I also learned that for a lot of things I came to think of as "standard" modelling tools, they just don't exist in Maya and you have to script them (which is fine since as Professor420 says, MEL script is powerful!). However I feel like I shouldn't have to script a custom tool for something which other packages have had for literally years.
Professor420: For the Warcraft 3 cutscenes I'm pretty sure they used 100% 3dsmax with just some custom plugins for cloth and rigs (which might be integrated by now), I remember watching a video about it, I'll see if I can dig it up. They may have altered their pipeline a bit since then, judging by those job ads, but they definitely used only Max for War3 cinematics - modelling, rigging, texturing and rendering (unless their own promo video lied).
So it's not like you can't get awesome high-end film quality results with it
Honestly guys, i shouldnt have to write my own scripts for functions that are very common sense.
You may argue that it's because we (Max users) are accustomed to a specific workflow that is natural to Max. But it's not it at all, equivalent functions in Maya are not as inuitive/fast/contextual as they are in Max. Quite simply , i find myself working a lot slower since i have to make extra clicks or keypresses or doing performing multiple procedures that are usually a mouseclik in Max.
It not a horrible modelling app by any means, but I do feel like i am working with one hand behind my back sometimes.
I know the Maya modeling workflow gets poo'ed on, and some things are missing, but I will say a couple things about it. For me, the tradeoff for lack of tools was a more customizable UI and workflow (shelves and gestural hotboxes are quicker and more organized than quad menus), a more straightfoward and robust way to add more tools (it wasn't until after I started maxscripting that I actually understood how max's macros and scripts work), a greater selection of high quality tools and scripts (though the great selection can be a negative as well, since there is a large amount of lesser quality scripts as well), better PSD support, hypershade, and other odds and ends. Not having a decent soft-selection sucked, but I adjusted my workflow so I wouldn't depend on it. But throwing mud the other way, why haven't Max's snaps been updated since 1998 (factoid you may not have known) and why did the selection break in R4 (I think that is the release they broke it) and why hasn't it been fixed? There are a number of problems like that I went through in another thread (I think the Max 2009 thread?). I felt the time I saved in the above tasks outweighed any lack of tools or saved clicks I'd get in Max. Which is why, it comes down to personal preference and the type of work you find yourself doing most (and how you like to accomplish that type of work).
But going forward, the reason I speak so strongly against Max in everything except modeling (where Max is strongest and also where it is easiest to switch from max to any other program), is this: you have in front of you a software which is old and bloated and held together by gum and toothpicks, which chugs away though and lots of people are familiar with, but parts of which haven't been updated since it was created, which whenever it makes upgrades needs to do them consistent with how things were done when it was created, many parts of which are broken but no one wants to risk changing because of the jenga-like architecture it follows- why would you choose this software? Or rather, why would you make an investment of time in this software? 3dsmax cannot go on infinitely, and given the things that made it dominant for games (modeling) have eroded, and it now lags seriously in significant areas (pipeline, rigging), what do you think its future will be, especially given its owner has no serious reason to fix the problems as opposed to focus on migrating users over to another similar software that doesn't have these problems? The other software you have to choose from has its main problem as it doesn't have enough modeling features- what shows the greater prospect for the future? The one with the stellar architecture and robust framework but is light (but rapidly growing) in features, or the one with decrepit design that is a black box of troublesome code? The only reason I let Max get off with its modeling tools is because I know how easy it is to switch. But for anything that involves a greater investment in technology-dependent time that isn't as easy to switch from, you want to choose a tech that is not on wobbly legs.
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I model, unwrap, and render in max....
...rig and animate in Maya.
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That's the best mix, for sure. Maya's animation tools are superior to Max, but Max can't be beat in terms of modeling/unwrap tools, imo.
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I'm not exactly sure what Maya has under the hood for animation but I would need a long laundry list of things if I was to ever switch over Does have anything remotely close to Biped/Character Studio? If not are there rigging tools available like PuppetShop, CAT or CrypticAR? Or does it require a custom rig each time? I guess you could load your (or someone else's) custom rig each time but then what tools does it offer in the way of copy/paste poses? Saving, loading, mixing and looping animation tracks? What about automated footsteps, flocks and crowds? What about in place mode or planted keys? LookAt and follow constraints. How about loading and unloading of audio? How robust is the particle editor? Cloth? Hair Fur? These are all things standard to max
Those are all things I would need if I was to switch, I've never bothered to find out or ask until now. I'm not trying to bag on Maya but as a Max Animator (who's only played around with Maya6), those are tools I relay heavily on and are built into 3dsMax. In my limited poking I haven't found those inside of Maya (yet). The only reasons I would switch would be to expand on features or usability, not reduce. If its going to require a patch work of plug-in and a much more manual workflow then I say forget it.
I think Maya gets a leg up in the film industry for being able to run on a mac, not really for its expanded feature set or ease of modeling. It's just my personal guess that the CG side of the film industry grew up out of the sound labs which adapted early to digital technology. Since they are ruled by Mac Gurus, its only natural that they pick something that works on the systems they already know and love? I could be way off...
Prof, 3dsMax snaps and selection work fine. I'm not sure how you're using them (or think they should be used) but when I use them as they are explained in the help docs (which is as designed), they work. Maybe you where working on a really small scale? I remember Pior having a beef with selection in Maya and having to code up a work around?
I also don't understand the wobbly leg argument. By the same logic Maya is close to reaching the same bloated code base its been evolving, changing and bloating almost as much as 3dsMax, how does it handle it any better? Chances are if features haven't changed since 1998 its because it works as designed or a newer feature took over its functionality but out of respect to existing pipelines they leave older features in, but they aren't broken. I would really like to see a list of these wobbly legged jenga features that are broken. Just because one group of users no longer has a need for a feature doesn't mean everyone that uses that software won't need it.
Why strip things out if someone might use it? Just so someone doesn't have to wonder what that button does or why its there? So they should remove rector and the particle editor just because a few people don't use it? At what point do you stop purging features? What kind of backwards logic do people use to think its a good idea to strip features out? Maya doesn't have these things so Max shouldn't have them either? I don't get it...
People who haven't looked at max's code base talk about how it needs to be re-coded from the ground up and maybe it does, but who really is the better judge of that, a few artists who barely understand maxscript or the people who actually create it? It's all fun to assume people are dumb asses and can't code their way out of a wet paper bag, I get it, it makes us feel smarter then smart guy. But at what point do we stop complaining about a bloated code base and realize its our ego that is bloated?
I think you need to think long and hard about what area of expertise you want to specialize in.
If you're remotely serious about rigging, animation or TD'ing, and or have thoughts of a career beyond games, Max is a bit of a joke in that department, so absolutely Maya. If you're more likely to end up as a modeler in the games industry, Max is the more commonly used tool.
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As a complete Maya whore I totally agree with Daz. It depends on what area you want to focus in. For beginning I'd go cheap myself. I think Softimage is pretty cheap for the basic package and it can somewhat mimic Maya or Max from what I hear. It really doesn't matter at the end of the day though. Just use whatever your work tells you to or whatever makes you not want to punch the computers face in.
you have in front of you a software which is old and bloated and held together by gum and toothpicks, which chugs away though and lots of people are familiar with, but parts of which haven't been updated since it was created, which whenever it makes upgrades needs to do them consistent with how things were done when it was created, many parts of which are broken but no one wants to risk changing because of the jenga-like architecture it follows- why would you choose this software?
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Wait, are you talking about Maya? Cos it really sounds like everything you said there applies to both Maya and Max...
Several of our programmers at work have commented on how absolutely stupid, redundant and "legacy" a huge amount of Maya's backend stuff is (4 different ways of retreiving vertex normals, 3 of which are almost identical and one of which doesn't work properly), how everything is cobbled together from MEL, this interpreted language which means whenever you open a menu or window you can actually SEE it building up the menu because it takes so long to actually parse the MEL that's used to construct it... seriously, both programs have HUGE flaws and instabilities due to the colossal amount of legacy bloat and stuff that's been broken/fixed/tacked on over the years, so please don't try to sound like Max is some sort of creaking bloated thing held together with glue and bits of string while Maya is all sleek, polished and streamlined - they're both as bad as each other, just in different areas.
As usual, I'd recommend using whatever you feel comfortable in, whatever works fastest for the task at hand. For me, that is Max all the way. I'm a highpoly/lowpoly modeller and game artist primarily, and Max out of the box is WAY more streamlined for that workflow than Maya out of the box. I'm sure if I was a technical director or rigger/animator, or some sort of movie NURBS fiend, I might be singing Maya's praises, but for me, anything it might be good at is just stuff I hardly touch in my day-to-day work routine.
Oh, and Maya's HTML Help and documentation is just some of the slowest, god-awful stuff I've ever had to trawl through. It might have all the required info in it, but what a horrible, horrible way to present and browse it...
Oh and also if you have a standard consumer GeForce 7/8000 series card, be prepared to do some faffing around with obscure app-specific settings to get the viewports working properly... something you don't have to worry about in Max.
Plus the fact that if you don't have a C:\ drive, you can't install the bloody license file, so Maya will refuse to load at all... nice!
Anyway this whole thing is just silly, since clearly Max and Maya have both worked perfectly well in the games and film industries for years...
Something like The Setup Machine blows away Biped or Cryptic. There are a number of excellent and proven low-cost or free rigs for Maya that blow away almost anything Max has to offer (Puppetshop perhaps excluded).
As an anecdote, I was interviewing at Bioware last month where they use Puppetshop, and I was telling them how I was trying it out the week prior and was really blown away by how expansive and thorough it is. Then I realized, it was because Max's default tools lacked some really basic functionality, that Kees had to rewrite them for Puppetshop to improve them. I am a major Biped user and will soon be using Puppetshop at work, and while Biped is great for hobby stuff, and Puppetshop is great for its expansiveness, you really get all those things by default in Maya. You don't need all the features of Puppetshop because lots of the Maya things work correctly with any plugins or utilities (another great feature of its very robust and open architecture).
"what tools does it offer in the way of copy/paste poses"
It has its own pose manager which is as good as Biped's functionally, and better because it integrates into a varieyt of things.
"Saving, loading, mixing and looping animation tracks?"
This is largely rig-dependent, but Maya has been doing layered animation since I was on the teat, and Maya's curve editor is a Max animator's wet dream.
"What about automated footsteps, flocks and crowds?"
You are asking for Biped-specific stuff as if it isn't specific to a rig... yes, you can do all these things in Maya and MEL, and better, because MEL is more powerful. One of my old professors has been working with Ken Perlin on this for over a year now: http://www.actormachine.com/products.html
I haven't had a need so I wouldn't know, but I'm sure there are very good crowd solutions for Maya.
"What about in place mode or planted keys? LookAt and follow constraints."
Are those supposed to be jokes? How am I supposed to believe you have looked around Maya and haven't found Aim or Path constraints? As for planted keys, again, that is a rig thing, and any rig is going to have good IK/FK blend (which is what you are talking about), with, yes, pivots as well.
"How about loading and unloading of audio?"
Yep, that too.
"How robust is the particle editor?"
Again, another area that benefits heavily from scripting. However I am no expert on particles in Max or Maya so I cannot say with authority, but I'm quite confident any particles you do out of the box with Max, Maya would have no problem keeping up with.
"Cloth? Hair Fur?"
Check out Maya's nCloth, I will even bring you a tissue to clean up all the jism after you are done watching a video of it.
If you want to argue to a toss-up between Maya and Max poly modeling, fine, but you are not going to find a contest between Max and Maya in animation.
"I think Maya gets a leg up in the film industry for being able to run on a mac, not really for its expanded feature set or ease of modeling."
Ummm, no, that isn't true. The best thing you can do to get a clearer idea of why Maya is so popular in films is, speak to some character TD's or technical artists/riggers at Bluesky, or Disney, or Pixar, or any major film house. I can't remember which studio (ILM maybe?) but they say they use Maya but it is really a custom built program originally in Maya but now as good as custom. It is Maya's flexibility and open-nature which makes it so popular today. One reason it may have become popular back in the day is that Maya was a strong NURBS modeler back in the day, and NURBS in Max still are slow as crap. However, Nurbs are out of style now and Maya's continued popularity doesn't have to do with Nurbs, or Macs... you don't have a large disgruntled scripter base as you do with Maxscript, nor do you (or I) really hear of people migrating away from Maya, while I know of more than a couple big studios and game studios who have switched away from Max.
The functionality stinks, and they haven't been upgraded since **1998**. Take a look at CG art 10 YEARS AGO and tell me that the requirements and workflows are the same?
"By the same logic Maya is close to reaching the same bloated code base its been evolving, changing and bloating almost as much as 3dsMax, how does it handle it any better?"
As I said before, Maya was developed with scripting in mind. Maxscript was added in R2. That is a huge difference.
"Chances are if features haven't changed since 1998 its because it works as designed or a newer feature took over its functionality but out of respect to existing pipelines they leave older features in, but they aren't broken. I would really like to see a list of these wobbly legged jenga features that are broken. Just because one group of users no longer has a need for a feature doesn't mean everyone that uses that software won't need it. "
I would like to know what your workflow is that avoids, or what tool has replaced, the very broken face selection?
"Why strip things out if someone might use it?"
That isn't what it is about. It is about keeping things clean which (yes, MoP) Maya has a problem with two though I'd argue to a lesser degree. You have clothes, they go out of style, but you keep them in your draw, and buy clothes that are in style. You rationalize this with 'well maybe some day they will go back into style' or 'maybe some day I will need to wear them', but you spend an extra few seconds or minutes each day going through those extra clothes when you are trying to find what to wear. Well the features are the same thing. You should throw out things that don't work or adjust the old stuff so it doesn't negatively impact the new stuff.
As for who knows whether max needs to be recoded better: I'd say the users know better than the creators. Max is the kitchen of a crazy old man for them- you can't find or make sense of anything, but for him, it is home (how a lecturer I listened to described the Roman constitution). And if you spend enough time around the maxscript forums, you'll see I'm not the only one with this opinion, far from it. And the fact that you see studios migrate away from Max, something that costs potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in training and time and huge questionmarks, there are some strong forces at work.
MoP: Have any of them done substantial work in maxscript? Yes both programs have flaws, but I don't think you can compare Maya's to max's as far as coding goes. Maya certainly has stability woes (in my experience Max's are much worse but I hear both sides), which is definitely indicative of problems underneath the surface, and I am sure MEL is not a perfect language and Maya not a perfect program. Here is a really easy example: If I want to get a list of the verts selected in a skin modifier, I need to iterate through every single vert and do skinOps.IsVertSelected. On the other hand, there IS a function to select a list of verts. This is an example that has a solution, but the solution takes time, and it is merely a single slight example in a whole sea of very central troubles. Amazingly enough, editable poly still is missing lots of the functionality an editable mesh has, and the fact that they are treated entirely differently is another issue entirely. I think the problems in max are much more fundamental... yes legacy can be bad and bloating can be bad; in maya it may result in 3 ways to do the same thing, but in Max, it may result in 0 ways to do it.
Per, yes, Maya kiiiiiind of has iso-mode sub-d editing, but in a really silly manner - you have to toggle "high quality rendering" mode per object, which just means it applies a 2-iteration meshsmooth to it, but the dumb thing is, it doesn't REALLY apply it, it only shows in the viewport, so if you render that object or try to bake maps or export it, it will only show your control cage. You have to do another action on the mesh if you want to "keep" the subdivision. Max's Turbosmooth modifier (plus the fact that you can instance a single turbosmooth over several completely different objects, thereby controlling all of their sub-d amounts and settings from a single location, including having different iteration settings for renderer and viewport) is just streets ahead of that functionality. It's ok if you're working with only one or two objects, but in a complex Maya highpoly scene you're going to start running into a lot of slowdown as you work (either from doubling up the objects to use Smooth Proxy, or from having to turn the smooth poly preview into an actual useable smoothed mesh). Not to mention the fact that the viewport is 8-10 times slower than Max's when dealing with high polygon counts.
Oh yeah, so now I just discovered I can't install Maya if I don't have a C:\ drive. My computer's primary HDD letter is F:\ with a second drive on G:\.
Every other program I've ever used has no problem with this. Maya absolutely refuses to run because it demands for the license file to be in the C:\flexLM folder. Nice... anyone know a workaround for this? Or can you just never use Maya if you don't have a C:\ drive? Seems like a bloody stupid requirement. Why can't the license file be anywhere?
I think it's funny that there are things in Max that you shouldn't use: use the mirror modifier not the mirror icon on the toolbar that can mess up your normals or why edit mesh is still in max when edit poly is better.
Edit Mesh is still in there for legacy reasons, and as Professor420 mentioned, there's some Maxscript operations which are still tied to EMesh that you can't do on EPoly. I guess as soon as they move all that stuff over, it can go.
With regard to crashes, when using Max and Maya all day, every day at work, I had maybe one crash a week in Max, while I've been running into roughly one per day in Maya (admittedly this is Max 8 SP1 versus Maya 2008 so there's probably some stability patching yet to come). Max's backing up techniques are HUGELY superior to Maya's out of the box though. Maya's backups are often horribly broken and hard to find, while Max's tend to work fine and not lose any info (and it helpfully adds the most recent crash recover file to the top of the Recent Files list). And if those don't work then you have about half an hour (or more depending on your settings) of Autoback files to go through, while Maya leaves you with nothing other than your last manual save.
Again, before some Maya evangelist wades in, i am well aware you can probably download a script to add autobackup features (or hell, it'd probably be fairly easy to write your own), but once again it's something that isn't "out of the box" functionality. I don't want to write the bloody tools, I want to model in it, straight away!
Both apps should take a leaf out of Photoshop CS2's book, I don't think it's ever crashed on me, ever.
Prof, thanks for the animation info, I checked out the ncloth movie and loved it, awesome stuff, I have a few questions about the usability of the cloth, but I bet I could answer those on my own if I sat down with it. I only have access to Maya6 and I think ncloth was included in 2008?
Hopefully they'll get something standard in Maya and it will be as robust as CS/puppetshop, which we started using at work 2mo ago and I'm loving puppetshop. The only reason we're still using CS is because it has things that puppetshop doesn't and because puppetshop has some annoying plug-in-ish quirks. I haven't found anything in puppetshop I can't do in CS, the only difference is ease of set up in puppetshop. For non-bipedal character we choose puppetshop, for bipeds we choose to use our heavily modified biped.
I'm a little disappointed at the lack of features in TSM and that its a $99 plug-in. Maybe it does more then what they outline on their site, but it seems like a pretty standard rig. It definitely puts CrypticAR to shame but it looks like it almost falls short on features when compared to biped. But thats just based on what they show, I'm sure I would find more functionality in TSM if I was able to load it up and test it out.
Whenever possible I prefer core functionality be included in the program. I hate building my pipeline on a plug-in for a few reasons:
- Updates:
It takes awhile to get updates when a new app versions come out can take a while and may not even happen. Revenue streams dry up or a new, better, more expensive plug-in comes out and now we have to switch to that. It also sucks getting used to a plug-in, moving to a new job and finding out they don't use it.
- Maintaining the plug-in:
Bioware is rare because they can easily maintain and add to the plug-in after all it was written specifically for them by a staff member. They also have plenty of talented people who can pick up and expand where Kees leaves off.
- Very little or no exposure to customization:
The pipeline the author envisioned is normally the only way the plug-in will work. Bending my pipeline to the methods of a plug-in is not always conducive. And due to the locked down nature of some plug-ins changing them sometimes isn't possible.
It would be great if Maya/Max had something standard that would be portable to Motion Builder and to each other, no mapping of tracks, no loss of features or hack work-a-rounds, that would be great and would make switching animation pipelines a breeze. I'd use Maya just as a cloth sim heh.
I still need to investigate Maya's audio capabilities and the lack of modeling tools sounds like a bit of a drag =/ but at least its rosier then I thought for animation, I need to get my hands on 2008. I have some pretty high demands for handling audio files if I was to switch over to Maya at work. I haven't found a 3d package yet that does what I need natively. 3dsmax at least has boomerlabs and I would need something equivalent to Soundtracks or Foley Studio.
It always takes some time to realize the benefits of any app, and you might not even notice until you switch to something else and miss them.
Personally I couldn't live without the middle mouse button functionality in Maya. Not having to aim for the manipulator/gizmo every time I do a transform really speeds up my workflow.
Per, yes, Maya kiiiiiind of has iso-mode sub-d editing, but in a really silly manner - you have to toggle "high quality rendering" mode per object, which just means it applies a 2-iteration meshsmooth to it, but the dumb thing is, it doesn't REALLY apply it, it only shows in the viewport, so if you render that object or try to bake maps or export it, it will only show your control cage. You have to do another action on the mesh if you want to "keep" the subdivision. Max's Turbosmooth modifier (plus the fact that you can instance a single turbosmooth over several completely different objects, thereby controlling all of their sub-d amounts and settings from a single location, including having different iteration settings for renderer and viewport) is just streets ahead of that functionality. It's ok if you're working with only one or two objects, but in a complex Maya highpoly scene you're going to start running into a lot of slowdown as you work (either from doubling up the objects to use Smooth Proxy, or from having to turn the smooth poly preview into an actual useable smoothed mesh). Not to mention the fact that the viewport is 8-10 times slower than Max's when dealing with high polygon counts.
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There actually is a way to work with unsmoothed meshes in the viewport and have em rendered at the subd level you want . This is handled by the Mental Ray Approximation Editor, you basically select the level of subdivision you want and assign it to the corresponding meshes. If u render with mental ray, it will render the smoothed version. Same goes for baking. Exporting those meshes doenst work though.
And yeah, working with high polygon counts in maya is a pain.
My experience of switching between programs (either way Maya-Max, Max-Maya) is that it's always a let down. Because you're stuck in your current workflow that works for your previous app, and you will only notice what can't be done. Because you're not trying to do things in a new way, you're just trying to do the same thing you're used to.
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Quoted for agreement, well said, ivars.
nCloth: Yah, nCloth was included in 2008. It was demoed in the launch tour and everyone in the room was blown away. It is the first component of their rebuilt dynamics system, rebuilt from the ground up (3dsmax apologists take note of that- it is a new dynamics system, not merely an 'improvement').
CS in Maya: I myself would doubt it, as rigging in Maya is just so easy, and the way it handles the rigs so much easier to work with, that in my view at least you don't have the same need for a standard rig in maya as you do with max. On top of that, few big studios use Biped and one of Maya's appeal is that you can augment or replace whatever you want... then again, a standardized rig, or at least something to make Biped users feel safer switching over to Maya, would probably be a benefit, I'm just scared that it will turn into what Max has done as of late, that is improving Biped and not focusing as much on rigging and animating tools themselves.
As for Biped and Puppetshop: I was happy with Biped in 2008 because you now have 'extra' bones. That aside, one of the main benefits of Puppetshop is that the rig is open to you and you are able to do what you want with it. Biped is a giant black box and I would never use it without a dummy skinning rig on top. There are lots of advantages to Puppetshop that aren't apparent right away, but Biped is a solid rig and if it suits your purposes, keep using it.
Setup Machine: Just remember what I said earlier: don't do a side-by-side feature comparison of something like Puppetshop with TSM. Maya rigs are just that- rigs. They work with the rest of Maya and don't really need their own curve editors, track mixers, pose utilities, copy/pasting/loading animations, etc. To a large degree, much of this is built into Maya already and the Maya default is as good or better than any 3dsmax plugin version.
Plugin updates: I don't think this is only true of plugins, and personally, someone that does lots of middleware I'd trust to listen to me more and update more frequently than someone like Autodesk, which I don't think anyone would argue does not listen to their customers anymore
Plugin maintenance: perhaps this is more a function of the studio than the tool. Kees doesn't work at Bioware and hasn't for a while, but they still use it because it is awesome and people there knew how to use it... if someone takes the time to learn it well I don't think maintenance is really an issue, especially on a well-designed plugin that allows customization as Puppetshop does (some of the things Ben showed me simply are impossible in Biped, unless of course you put a dummy rig on top).
Customization: Here you have your choices inverted... Biped is a giant black box below the surface and is a pain to script for. Puppetshop even has a very nice TD Mode and is very easy to script for because it uses existing maxscript and doesn't require its own classes and 'logic' like Biped does. You can just go yourself and customize the puppetshop maxscripts. Biped, especially before the addition of Xtra bones in 2008, was a pain in regards to customization. I think puppetshop blows Biped away in this, hands down.
As for a cross-platform format with Motionbuilder, I think it will come eventually, maybe in 2009 (the year, not programs) or 2010. There are lots of differences with the rigging mantra of each- my guess is that the cross-platform will come by max or maya having to auto-build a rig to fit whatever is coming in, or something like that, there is not a 1 to 1 mapping between the two when it comes to rigging. Perhaps it will be handled through a dummy or motion transfer rig.
The main issue I think you're coming across is projecting your max-centric rigging and animation workflow into Maya. Lack of a standardized rig in Maya is a legitimate concern for you, but many of your other concerns are not really concerns concerning Maya. It is the same syndrome that ivars just mentions above and several others have as well, each program has their own logic to how it does things. In the case of Maya, I would almost guarantee that if you were to take the time to seriously learn it, you'd see how much superior it was to Max in regards to pipeline and animation and rigging (such as 'figure' files- in Maya, you reference your files, and referencing is gooood). That is not to say that you'd want to use it for your projects- for a smaller project and smaller studio, Biped and/or puppetshop give you some things that really speed up development and you won't have to do yourself.
Is there anything in Maya that lets you copy and paste postures/poses, similar to that which you can do in max....( not 100% relevant to the thread but thought I'd post here anyway )...
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pose2shelf.mel look at highend.com
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This isn't a rant, Max is fine, but modeling is a pain in the ass, it takes 3-4 steps to do one thing when it only takes 1-2 steps in XSI/Maya.
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I am trying to go back to 3Ds max again after 4 years of using Maya. I started in Max in school and I do believe it is a good way to start learning 3D. Once I started using Maya I never turned back though. Although Max has made a quite of few of substantial changes over the last 4 years when I have not been using it. For example a right click quad menu and thank god new rotation move and scale tool tools to name a few. Although I still have to say that Maya by far will let you go crazy and do your own thing while modeling while max kind of hinders this process (slightly bias opinion).
Here is my little COMPARISON BETWEEN THE TWO PROGRAMS with little prejudice as possible.
Maya:
Overwhelming for a beginner.
Tutorials and info are hard or impossible to find.
Plug-ins are harder to find.
Rigging and animation is better (Although I do like the envelope/skinning method better in Max tho).
Organic modeling is better.
Custom buttons and minus are easy to create and edit fully.
The spacebar control is god.
Rendering pretty things turns ugly fast.
A tone of more options even some you may not use especially in the modeling area.
Tear-off menus are sweet and custom buttons are a breeze.
Slow as crap with allot of ploys in the scene.
No modifier stack/ hard to go back and edit a state in history.
Using three hot keys to do one thing at certain times.
UV editing is still superior to Max except for Maxs pelt tool.
3Ds Max:
Not as overwhelming for a beginner.
Tutorials and info are easy to find.
Plug-ins are abundant and easy to find on the web.
Rigging and animation are not as good.
Mechanical modeling is better.
Rendering pretty things is easier.
Fewer options, but it does make it easier.
Tear-off menus are limited and custom buttons are somewhat limited.
Faster than Maya when dealing with larger poly counts.
Has a modifier stack/ easy to go back and edit a state in history.
UV editing is not as good as May, if not for the pelt unwrap ability it would be inferior.
To wrap this little comparison up I am going to say the following:
Max is a good starter for the beginner 3D artist.
Maya is a good advanced modeling program and better for rigging and animation.
Each program has its strengths and weaknesses. Which leads to the question on what you want to do or what type of 3D career you want go for and are you just starting 3D.
Like I said I have not used 3Ds Max in a long time thus my comparison of the two programs might be skewed due to a lack of knowledge in Max.
Good luck with your choosing process hoped this helped!
DOW3 Entry
Yeah, you know, I lost steam on the XSI thing. I dunno, things have changed, I used to be so into the technical side of modeling, comparing apps and so on.. but really, across the board most of the tools we use are pretty bad, and I'm tired of the effort. I've been trying to give feedback on all that stuff for so many years, but it really makes little difference. So now, I just wait.
Things will improve. Slowly.
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Amen sister!
Although i truly believe you would of liked it's flow for your style of modeling.
Maya hasn't improved that much. Again, i will say what i think mayas punch-line should be: "MAYA, there's a plug-in for that"!
All through Uni I stuck to XSI for my animation project, granted theres so little info out there and fewer still useable good rigs its a brilliant program for animation. Just too bad at the minute, but im sure now that xsi mod tool 6 will help it move into new ground.
Max, coming to this from XSI was probaly a stupid decision, took me so long to get atuned to anything. Finally got my head around the basics of it and already ive had enough.
Maya, literally 5 mins in and this program is just brilliant, Ive had to remove everything off my screen so ive got the basic viewport, dled a rig, and im off. Im a few hours into it and im getting used to the dopesheet and curve editor and im about half way blocked on my 11 second club entry
Say what you will but there all tools some alot more technical than others. The only pain in the ass I've found so far is waiting to see which of the big 3 animation programs get the best working exporters each time an awesome game comes out
I have been looking into quite a few different modelling programs recently - trying to find a possible simple alternative to the big names, or maybe a companion app to speed things up. What I was looking for was :
1 - Non linear modelling,
2 - Simplicity and ease of access of the modelling tools (since I just model, don't ring much except for personal stuff and animate even less). Think, Mudbox-like minimum learning curve and absence of screen clutter.
3 - The app must feature raycast selection and automatic camera tumble.
So I gave the latest Modo, Silo and XSI a try. Silo obviously wins '2' and '3' since it is built around these very principles. I quite liked Modo at first (it also has raycast selection!) but it's too heavy for what I am looking for, and I felt like neither of the three apps can do '1'...
What I call non-linear modeling is the ability to pile up edits performed on a model, and being able to switch them on or off / move them / copy paste them at ease - just like Max's modifier stack. Now the funny thing is, the first time I mentionned that workflow to a Maya guru he replied 'this stack thing is a mess, I hate it'. But how can one model highpolygon hardsurfaces without? I understand that Maya builds up a 'history' of nodes, and that everything is string-connected in tree structures in the node editor. But I couldn't find a way to easily toggle these connections on or off in a visual manner, and when I asked *another* Maya guru he replied 'Oh, the history? Modellers just collapse it anyways, you don't need that'
What?
So my question is, how do you guys build up your mechanical highpoly meshes without keeping the thickness/profile spline as a dynamic, toggle-able modifier, or without the ability to switch merged symmetry on and off? (amongst litterally tons of other Max modifiers...) I don't see how could possibly model a funky futuristic weapon or armor without at least five or six modifiers piled up.
Typically:
Editable Poly > Edit Poly (yeah that's different) > welded Symmetry > Shell > FFD > Turbosmooth. Plus some objects crawling on the surface thanks to Pathdeform aplied to a spline extraced from the mesh!
A few years ago I naively thought that every 3D program could do that ... but it turns out that Maya doesn't have the interface for such a workflow and as far as other programs go this requires custom coding, right?
Don't you think there is a niche for a simple program like Silo, but featuring tons of handy modifiers to work with in a non destructive manner?
Any input on this is appreciated. I'm all for new experiences but I always find myself going back to Max just because of this really.
as I've said before Silo should replace Edit Poly. I love it for modeling but it would be amazingly powerful if it had a max style history stack.
/unpause thread
I'm also a history stack whore. I'd also like to know how ex-max guys (who where also history stack whores) are getting along.
About the selection thing, if you keep clicking in the same spot it will cycle though the layers of objects/faces. I've only notice it picking poorly when working on a really small scale. Ever since I saved a 72 unit measuring stick to my maxstart.max file I don't have an issue of building on a small scale.
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Not entirely helpfull when adding things to your selection, though. And I actually get this a lot from people who haven't experienced another way of selecting, but I'm telling you that there's better out there. Paint-selection's another thing. Or being able to set select and select-through to different keys, rather than having to tick a box for 'don't select backfacing'. Don't get all defensive, though, as in my previous post I mention that max certainly has its advantages. Selection just isn't one of them.