Max vs Maya for animation

MainManiac

So I need to learn some animatiOn because I think it would help me when it comes to posing etc.

But while messing with the biped in max it felt really frustrating and clunky, I'm just curious if Maya is easier to keyframe with or is it just me

Thanks!

Andreas

Maya is far and above a more superior animation tool than Max. However, you found biped clunky because biped is clunky, not because of any shortcomings Max might have. Max isn't that bad for animation, Maya just has a ton more little tools you can use that really speed up workflow.

System

Whilst Maya does, in my opinion, offer much greater tools for character animation, if you're only looking to do quick poses (and you don't want to just pose in ZBrush) then Max may well be a better choice.

The reason I say this is that CAT in Max is a super quick and simple way of getting a model quickly rigged and posed. Rigging in itself is a complex skill and to get it right, it's gonna take a bit of dedication on your part to learn it. CAT makes the whole process a lot quicker, but to get a really tidy skin out of CAT you're still gonna have to know about weighting.

As I said though, if it's just simple poses for character shots you want, Transpose in ZBrush usually works wonders. And if it's deeper rigging/animation tools you want then Maya is the way to go. Note that Maya doesn't have any CAT/Biped like tools out of the box though, there are some plugins though if I remember correctly, but I haven't used them.

As for your question on keyframing, assuming you literally mean setting a key, then I guess neither program outdoes the other. In Maya it's just a case of Shift-W/E/R to key values, or 'S' to key all values. I'm not sure about Max but I'm assuming it's just one button or shortcut too.

thatanimator

if you want to "learn animation because it will help you when it comes to posing", then software is the least of your worries. "easier to keyframe", pressing a key on the keyboard in one software or the other, shouldn't differ too much to be a burden.
I can't warrant learning animation to help you posing, rather just get more creative with your poses..

I am however gonna go ahead and throw Motionbuilder into the pot. very overlooked on the forum but commonly used for making dem gaems.. you didn't like the biped, is that because it was a pre-made rig that didn't work the way you'd want it to? motionbuilder also has a premade rig, so you might encounter the same problem there.