platypotamus
Member
nofi said:
The console wars pale in comparison to the epic battles between 3D artists over their program of choice.
Not that it's going to matter a few years from now, since both are owned by autodesk.
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Maya vs. 3D Studio Max in games.
- Thread starter Visualante
- Start date
The console wars pale in comparison to the epic battles between 3D artists over their program of choice.
Not that it's going to matter a few years from now, since both are owned by autodesk.
Visualante said:
These programs are just "TOOLS", they dont have anything to do with art, thats the artist's skills. no matter what you use, its the same principle, its the just the workflow. The companies I've worked so far are all 3DMax while I mostly used Maya when i was in school. the interface might be different, but its the same.
Artist themselves have to learn and adapt what ever the studio chooses to use (might be a budget thing or technical thing for the engine).
But if u gonna ask me which one i prefer to use, it can be both. For what i know, CG stuff mostly like use Maya and XSI or other program. Games mostly use Max and Maya because they have more available "plugins" to export stuff out to the most engines. but i cant really say about much xsi or lightwave or w/e since i rarely use them or never at work.
Yep.Symytry said:
The truth is, that it doesn't matter, you learn one, then shift over to something else if the company you work for uses something else. So yeh, no standard.
That is the only correct answer.
When companies use Maya, it's usually heavily modified to suit their needs for the project and to fit into their in-house tools.
element
Member
ummm. I think you need to shutup now.
It really depends on what you are making. Character and animation based stuff typically gears towards Maya, while world and environment art typical leans to Max.
Both are great packages, while Max is a little easier to learn though. Many studios use both packages, as you have artists preferences, their history, support of import/exporting tools, and a slew of other things to take into consideration.
element
Member
QFMFTmrpogi23 said:
My old art director would hire someone who has good quality art skills with no experience with any package over some guy who is a wizard but has no art skills. You can teach someone how to use any package over time, but you don't find many studios willing to teach basic composition, lighting, and other artistic qualities.
The whole debate over '<insert studio name> uses this' needs to stop. Studios use anything and everything. Now the degree of use could be huge, but sometimes Maya is the best product for the job, or Max, or Modo, or Zbrush, or MudBox. It is about being flexible with the tools.
Nuclear Muffin
Banned
They used to be made by different groups, but the owners of Max, Autodesk, now own both.
SketchTheArtist
Member
I'm studying at the Ubisoft Campus and we use 3D Studio Max which is what is used for in-game assets. For rendered cinematics it's Softimage.
funkmasterb
Member
Nuclear Muffin said:
LOL...wrong.
Wildstar75
Member
Back when I worked in games, we used 3dsMax. Oh the pain of writing max plugins. (though its less pain then writing lightwave plugins) I believe that company now uses Max for ingame stuff and maya for animation.
Lemming_JRS
Member
funkmasterb said:
Actually, right.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=331041&siteID=123112
Autodesk acquired Maya a while back. Max and Maya are still two distinct product lines made by two different companies, but I imagine Autodesk will try to merge them somehow at some point. God help us all.
i hate bees
Member
Lemming_JRS said:
I doubt it, it makes more sense to diversify the packages and try and sell them both seperately. Improved workflow between the two is the best I'm hoping for.
Blizzard uses Maya.speedpop said:
At least that's what they told me at SIGGRAPH.
Lucasfilm/Lucasarts/ILM all use Maya too, if I remember right (actually I'm not SO sure on Lucasarts, but Lucas Animation and ILM definitely do).
Anyway, I think the point is that it's not that big a deal to learn just one of them intensively. You can make the adjustment on the job very easily from one 3D package to another, provided you understand all the fundamentals and concepts behind what you're doing. 3D packages are simply tools, and most of the really big "standard" ones do most of the same things, just with their own little quirks and tweaks.
Even on a lot of job listings, you'll see a company say they prefer is someone is proficient in whatever software they use (say, Maya) but that training in an "equivalent" package (Max, XSI, Lightwave, etc.) is also acceptable.
I personally find Maya to be more robust all around, and it seems from my recent/current job hunting experience that being a Maya expert is a bit more desirable in more fields (i.e. industries outside of gaming), but it seems to be pretty evenly distributed in gaming.
Besides, almost everybody uses some kind of custom plug-ins or add-ons or custom created scripts anyway, so the fact is that in most companies you're almost going to HAVE to learn new software and applications in some way to adjust for how that company works and what their pipeline is like.
MikeOfTheLivingDead
Grapetastic!
MetatronM said:
Actually, and I know this for a fact, 3DS Max outsells Maya by a factor of 15-25 on a yearly basis. When you get into Arch/Vis, Max pretty much owns the industry, and there are a lot more people do that sort of work than making games.
My personal opinion is Maya and Max both suck. Neither of them are good game development tools. If you have to learn one and you want to work in entertainment (games, film, television) Maya is the obvious choice. Max still has a slight edge in games, Maya owns the film indstry for all intents and purposes, as well as holding a competitive lead in broadcast.
This is correct. While Autodesk does own both products, the Max and Maya teams have surprisingly little contact with eachother and so far there really hasn't been any talk of merging the products. While Maya and Max may split the gaming market the movie industry is still heavily skewed towards Maya and they have a few big clients who get a lot of tools made specifically for them (Disney, Dreamworks, etc).Lemming_JRS said:
This is probably because a Max license is approximately half the cost of a Maya license.MikeOfTheLivingDead said:
A Black Falcon
Member
Gattsu25 said:
So do I...so do I
Wordperfect is still better than Word.
funkmasterb
Member
Lemming_JRS said:
element said:
I was saying he was wrong about people who own licenses to max now basically owning maya, and of course vice versa.
Further to that, there are no plans to integate maya into max or vice versa. In fact a max GUI update isn't planned for at least the next 3-4 versions. Max is concentrating on it's bread and butter architectural base and the only changes that have happened since they purchased alias was to get a slightly more stable max with Max 9.
The two dev groups have next to nothing in common with each other and they remain extremely different programs with different clients to cater too. Jesus.
MikeOfTheLivingDead
Grapetastic!
MetatronM said:
ILM does not use XSI in a significant capacity. They set up a character pipeline for XSI at one point, used it on Van Helsing, but from what I heard it was a total clusterfuck. I'm sure they still have licenses and it gets used here and there, but they use a lot of Maya and have their own software they've been working in an effort to transition away from off the shelf software entirely. That's the goal of most of the major film studios. ILM is currently trying to unify their entire piepline across ILM, Lucasfilm Animation and LucasArts, so XSI won't be used there much longer if it's still being used at all.
element
Member
not what you quoted.
Most companies have a mixture of floating vs fixed licenses, and those prices can be negotiated between the buyer and the reseller.
Off the shelf, Maya Complete is cheaper then buying Max 9 right now.
Lots of studios are moving away from XSI (Valve ditched XSI for Maya on TF2 from what I have heard) as Autodesk can provided a better package being able to provide a flat license fee for access to Maya, Max, and now Mudbox.
Only vaguely on topic but this reminds me of an amusing story. A few years ago an Alias rep (prior to the Autodesk purchase) went to a well known game developer to do some onsite training. When he got to the lab they had setup he found at that all the workstations had cracked versions of Maya Unlimited installed instead of the licensed versions of Complete that they had paid for. :lolelement said:
Yep, and they recently released a free non-commercial version that can be used to create content for XNA and Source I think.Fireye said:
http://www.softimage.com/products/modtool/