Maya or Max

Ged

Hey there

My studio is thinking of getting a copy of maya or max, Ive already given my boss a list of pro's and con's but Im still not sure what is best. Ultimately this software is mostly going to be used for game character creation and animation under tight deadlines(talking 2 months per game).

We work on apple macs at my work so my question comes down to this...
I know 3dsmax is good at getting fast results with the biped rig but what can maya offer me?
I need to make a decent character rig as fast as possible, no fancy stuff just a simple core rig cause we make mobile games.

If we get 3dsmax then we will need a new pc or have to use bootcamp and it makes all the processes we currently have working become a little confusing not to mention the annoyance of going between osx and windows constantly.
Personally im in favour of maya just because it would mean less hassle but not if it means longer project times.
cheers

keres

Maya for sure, especially if it's just character stuff. I have used both for years, and my personal opinion is that Maya is far superior when it comes to animation. Max's modeling tools, on the other hand, are way better (in my opinion, again.)

Example: Maya's lack of a "connect edges" tool means you have to keep good edge flow, which is downright impossible at times. This of course can be remedied by using the split polygon tool with certain settings, but you have to manually click on every edge you wish to select to complete it. Max does a better job at modifying edges regardless of edge flow. It's all a little quirky...

I have used both for years and can almost everything I can with the other. Good luck!

Warheart

It might be worth looking into some of the rig building tools on creativecrash (or try zooToolbox ) if you're looking to get characters rigged quickly in Maya. Obviously you'd need to investigate the licences of these tools to make sure they were compatible with your commercial release.

I'd suggest getting the 30 day trial version of Maya first and try out some rigging scripts and test your pipeline end to end to make sure it works for you that way.

Bruno Afonseca

Max's biped is quite good for what you described. Easy to set up, good to work on and easy to reuse animations. Take a look into CAT as well, never used it but seems quite robust.

gsokol

They both do the same stuff. You can get Maya on a Mac...so go with that.

wizzy886

personally I use Maya. Im not great with it, but for me the workflow of Maya makes more sense. Max has some good features how it sets your work but lacks what Maya has. I find it easier to create good models in no time.

keres

gsokol wrote: »

They both do the same stuff. You can get Maya on a Mac...so go with that.

People should quit saying this, because it's only part true.

8-bit kid

...if only Autodesk would combine them both to make one software package.

I prefer Maya because it was what I was taught in College, but 3DS Max has really efficient modeling tools, and it seems modifiers are just a click away, whereas Maya you need to dig a little if you don't already have a shortcuts or a shelf created

Are you using any in-house proprietary tools? That's usually the reason studios become so particular to which package they use.

DEElekgolo

OH BOY HERE WE GO

kio

i dont know about maya so cant really say anything there.

and i dont know how much you know about biped, but is such a powerful tool - no tech headaches, easily reuse animation, mix animations etc etc etc. (its really made for those kind of tasks youre describing - small team, small budget, not much prodction time).

without proper tech support i suppose max is much less of a hastle than maya.

Noors

Flamewar !
btw Max is shipped with CAT now, which is far better than biped imo and in our animators opinion too.
Having working with Maya during my studies, i agree that for small real-time projects, there won't be much difference between both softwares.
Where i rather like max, is for directX display, and cool shaders like xoliul/3point. Maya in the other hand, will offer more flexibility in coding which is more interesting for FX or complex stuff more related to precalculated (like complex rigs), where you have a R&D team.
But for real-time basic stuff, it's 50/50 (imo)
Some lacks in both software could be filled with some scripts/plug-ins too. I could't work with the "default max" actually

Ged

Thanks for the info guys, we have a copy of c4d at work at it seems to export models with animation into unity3d perfectly fine so unfortunately we might end up using that as its cheaper for a small studio like us and works on our apple macs. I think I would still prefer maya but maxs biped is very tempting!

Mark Dygert

If there wasn't the mac/max conflict issue I would say go with max, it just doesn't get any easier when rigging up characters than to use CAT or Biped. But if you're doing mobile games, you're rigging doesn't need to be that complex and dumbing down CAT and biped can be a bit of a technical challenge with some exporters. So that ease of use could turn into a nightmare or it might be fine.

IF you did go that route I would fully explore the 30 day trial and make sure everything would be fine but really, some simple rigging should be easier to pull off and easier to work with. It might not sport all the bells and whistles of the fancy rigs but it doesn't need to, which is rule #1 when rigging something up, don't make it any more complex than it needs to be.