Autodesk Maya VS Blender

[Haflurgaflur]

Hello!

I've used Blender for over 4 years now. I've been using Maya, for a few months (I think 5 months)

I've almost mastered the Game Art side of Blender and have a few statements about Maya I need to get out of the way.

1:Why is a absolutely free program's (i:e Blender) UI so much better then a (oddly priced) 3,495$ program.
2:How can the community be filled with, basically "Professionals" that give very vague and odd advice, and seem to give up on you if you ask to many questions (I asked 4 questions and got abandoned)
3:Why is it so much money for a unstable program.
4:Sure the Xray is a great rendering system, but its clumsy and slow.
5: Maya is not noob friendly

Yes, this sounds a little whiny. But these points haven't been fully answered, or justified. My art instructor hailed Maya as the next coming of Christ, and then it turns out Christ is a fat, ******* with only 3 fingers who spelt Chris wrong online.

(all bad jokes aside)

I could talk specifics on the UI for Hours. But seriously here are some questions I need answers to ,
1: Why is Maya, a overpriced, out of date UI, and slow program the "Industry Standard"? I'm not saying Blender should, its just the standard seems low ATM.
2:Is Maya bad (or just not what its hailed as) or have I just gotten used to blender?
3:Or is there a problem with the "UI language" being to different between the two.

I went to the Unity forums, and got the usual high pitched whine.
I went to the Autodesk forums, but got a basic "HA HA your a noob and lost HA HA" response. But I've been modeling for a few years, so its not that i don't know what I'm doing.
I didn't watch any video tutorials for blender (except the ones on navigation) So I haven't watched any on Maya either.

Thank you

[darthviper107]

While I do think the Autodesk software is expensive, and Blender is amazing for what you get for free. The majority of people consider the UI of Blender to be very poor, and I agree with that, when you compare how it does things to some of the more popular programs you wonder why Blender does them in such a way. Another thing, is that Maya includes many features that Blender doesn't. Program performance is probably faster too. Vray is also a really excellent renderer, easier to use than some others like Mental Ray, and it's been improving speed and features over the years and continues to be improved regularly.
It's likely you are just used to Blender since that's the first program you've used, people in general don't like change. I wouldn't consider the Maya to be something like "this is amazing! I need to spend thousands of dollars on this right now!" but you'd be much better off using Maya or 3ds Max if you want to work in the industry, at the very least you'd have difficulty working into a pipeline if you only know Blender. Or if you want to go with something cheaper try Modo which is becoming a good game development tool.

The reason you might be getting such negative reactions is because of the way you come off--many professionals that are very good at 3D would not say they've mastered something
If you're having some trouble with getting answers to questions, some reasons could be that it might be an obscure problem that not many people know, or it could require a long response and people don't want to have to take the time to write it all out. I know I see some really general questions like "how do I make a game?" and there's just too much to be said.

[Haflurgaflur]

Alright, I'll keep trying, I will admit, Blender's UI is odd. (I did come off as snobbish, didn't I. Oops)
By "mastered" I meant I'd learned everything that was "necessary" to Game Art, my mistake.

The one system I find that Blender surpasses many programs in, is the whole sculpting process. But it is lacking in the "skinning, and posing" process.

Thanks for the reply. I think, i just used to creating my usual stuff in Blender, and then when I use Maya, all i can really do in a satisfactory amount of time is a low poly blob of "I don't know what this is".

[darthviper107]

For sculpting, Maya isn't designed for that at all and doesn't try to be that type of program. If you want a good sculpting program use Zbrush--though I have to say while it's the industry standard, the UI is very bad, since it was built off something that wasn't designed for what it does now.

[Dannington]

I've been a max user since v1 - while I'm not that good at it I can get it to do most of the things I need. The problem for me is I used it for TV graphics and if I wanted to make bits look better I could just add more geometry. I'm having the hardest time adapting to high to low poly workflows and unwrapping and stuff. I've often seen Maya as the software I really should be using. I love doing things procedurally though so I'm quite interested in Houdini, although at the other end of the spectrum I really like modeling in modo - although I really don't get the rigging using that. Whenever I've tried Maya I just hit a wall.

[darthviper107]

If you're using Max/Maya/Houdini then there's probably no reason to switch to something else. Modo may be a choice if you want to save money since Autodesk is subscription now.

[BrUnO XaVIeR]

Maya is standard because the CGI industry was built around Maya and XSI.
It used to cost way more than those $3.000, hardware to run it used to cost above $100.000...
Autodesk than bought Alias at first to kill Maya and make 3DS Max the king, but it failed somthen they got XSI and killed it, companies dependent on Maya forced Autodesk to keep the program and rebuild the core engine used by it, but still the updates from release to release are minimal.

I can't stand Blender because my brain is too much used to the workflow in Maya already. And I don't even work with it professionally, I don't use it everyday... If you ask than ppl using it everyday I guess none would like to move to Blender.

[UnrealEnterprise]

Sure Go-Blender! Why pay extortionate fees for Max / Maya along with subscription lock-in.

So why not more Blender on here? Devs often stick with the 3D app that gets taught at college.
Max / Maya are industry standard and free for students, a trap that catches many out later on.
Plus, there are more tutorials for those two put together than probably anything else on option.
There is Maya LT which thankfully can be used for game work versus Max which is a rip-off now.
But a lot of criticisms are in the eye of the beholder. For me the Max UI seems out of date etc.

[darthviper107]

Maya/3ds Max are entrenched but legitimately I think they offer things that make them essential to big productions over Blender. For many people though you could get by on Blender but most would not consider it.

I'm not sure what the plan is for the future, after they bought Maya it seems like they stopped doing any serious development into 3ds Max in favor of putting more into Maya and getting more licenses sold. With them switching to subscription they get the same amount either way so not sure what they'll do. They really needed to go through with the Excalibur project (XBR) for 3ds Max which would have done some significant changes to fix issues and bring important features.

[heartlessphil]

When you look at all the scripts/plugins/renderer there are for max, you realise it WILL be very counter-productive to switch to something else. It's unfortunate but it's the reality.

[WalkingDead]

What ever happened to the millions that EPIC donated to Blender?

Anyways I am not pro by any means but I have used a lot of these software for hobyist purposes. Cinema 4D comes out as easiest for beginner and its strange as to why its not more popular?

I used Blender, at first you flat out don't like it. BUT the more you use it the more you realize how much superior it is to everything out there. Blender forces you to use shortcuts this is why Blender is the fastest UI to work with now. I didn't understand at first, but now I know why Blender's UI sucks it is designed to force you to use shortcuts which ultimately makes it superior to everything else.

Furthermore Blender has a great CUDA rendering built in. I have used MAYA and Cinema 4D and their rendering suck so bad. You need to purchase additional render like Vray and even then Blender was still faster with its built in CUDA render.

So this beggers the question why would anyone who isn't working in the industry use anything but Blender? we know now most people who are wired to use MAYA is better off using it just as I am wired to type fast with 2 fingers one on each hand. Re learning all fingers would be a waste of my time at this stage in life.

Every one of these software can be had free these days. Yeah yeah yeah we know student versions aren't exactly free for commercial use but there are millions of games on android store using student copies and selling for commercial use. And yet still I would recommend Blender over literally everything else.

Best point and click UI has to be Cinema 4D its such a beauty

[darthviper107]

That's an opinion though, a lot of studios rely on the advanced features that Blender doesn't have, not to mention support from Autodesk which Blender can't offer.

Also, Epic never donated millions to Blender, it was like $13,000 which is not much at all.

[WalkingDead]

Yeah but for indie use I think Blender is superior. The cost difference and considering all the stuff it can do for free. One thing you can't match Maya is the youtube tutorials. Blender has far less

[vblanco]

if you, as an indie, are forward to spending 6000 dollars for those extra features Maya has ahead on blender, then go. Meanwhile ill hire an artist for a few months or pay some freelancer to do the music for my game with that money.
I truly dont think the extra stuff maya has( for game development) is worth that kind of money.

[Ghiest]

6k? how about £30/month, you still get 90% of what maya is for gaming related stuff. I can sub then get all my mesh work done then hold the sub whilst I work on other stuff and if I need to redo some meshes then i can just resub. I don't need rendering (although they still have render to texture and transfer maps) for game related 3d work, so as an indie it's cost effective and less hassle than learning something from scratch (blender). if it was something other than game related I can understand not wanting to spend out on a full version because lets face it the full software prices are just insane these days.