I was wondering what the better choice was in you guys opinions? It seems that support for Blender is getting a lot better and I know it is being worked on. As of now I am getting use to Blender I am able to get static meshes with textures into UE4 and I am going to animate something and getting that to work in UE4 from Blender. If I had the money I would buy Maya 2015 and that would be that I due have ability to get the teacher/student version but you can’t us that commercially. They have made some changes to Maya LT 2015 and the price is reduced. But they seem to play better with Unity than UE4 if you use Unity there is no polygon limitation. Again as of now I am using Blender I just had a thought in the back of my mind about switching to Maya LT but I don’t know if free(Blender 2.71 candidate 2) is better the 30/month which is still kind of steep for a program like Maya LT IMO anyway.
It depends, of course there’s the trial version you can test, and if you’re a student you can spend some time with the free educational license. You should do that and see if you like Maya. My opinion it is a better program than Blender, and if you’re wanting to get into game development and want a job someday then you wouldn’t be using Blender. But–mostly it matters in how you like how the program works. There are tools that Maya has over Blender, but a lot of techniques are applicable to any 3D program.
What do you mean by, no ‘polygon limitation’ un unity ? 
FAIK, current gen engines are capable of supporting such things given LOD systems in place, which has been enhanced in UE4 ( from what I see in features ).
I imagine the key Is memory use, so depending on target audience that could be risky ?
No expert here on such matters, just curious, but I’ve seen unity forum posts ( research only because I was curious, NOT because of engine wars!) where people pushed ‘limits’ and things went sllllow. I think saying no polygon limitation is a bit unrealistic ( depending on hardware, hence my comment)
thx
nl
noob question, but if you ever got to the point where you were actually going to release commericaly couldn’t you then just purchase the full Maya version?
You cannot export anything over 65k polygons from Maya LT 2015 into UE4 or any other game engine, but if you use Unity there is no limitations on how may polygons you can export. I am sorry I was not clear on that.
How is this a noob question? Really my question was is it worth getting Maya LT 2015 or stick with Blender being that they are trying to make Blender work better with UE4. If I had the money to purchase the full version of Maya I would. I am off for the summer and I have a lot of time to mess with UE4. I have made a few little stupid games so I am not a complete newbie. I have some experience with Object C, C#, and C++. I am trying to relearn C++ but I am also spending a lot of time in Blueprints.
just curious, what do you mean you cant export over 65k polys from maya into UE4?
I know Maya is great but I was really trying to compare Maya Lt 2015 with Blender 2.71? If I had the money Maya would be a no brainer. Even though I could get the teacher version of Maya because I work at a school I don’t think it would be worth the effort because I could not buy the commercial version. I do want to make some games that I might be able to sell one day. Well be good and be blessed and thank for the response.
I think that the 65k polygon limit is a limit on MAYA LT 2015 not Unreal Engine 4. For what it’s worth, I’ve been using Blender in both UDK and UE4 for the last 3 years and while it has some quirks for the most part it works just fine.
I am sorry I am not explaining this correctly. I copied this from Autodesk website.
Send to Unity FBX Export
Use Autodesk® FBX® to simplify moving 3D content from Maya LT into Unity. An improved workflow between Maya LT and Unity lets you export 3D assets with unlimited polygonal resolution from Maya LT directly into a target Unity project folder. For other game engines, you can now export models and environments with up to 65,000 polygons in the FBX format.
You are right I did a horrible job of explaining it.
Have you tried Blender 2.71 Candidate 2 yet?
oh it was just a misunderstanding:), I thought you were saying UE4 couldn’t import meshes with more then 65k poly’s, I was just about to say I had exported a model from blender that has 250k polys and UE4 imported it fine, guess I don’t need to say that now;)
Maya LT is almost the same as the full version of Maya, the tools that don’t apply to gaming are removed, like some rendering and simulation stuff, but the stuff like modeling and texturing are still there.
As for file formats, I’m not sure if there’s any difference between the Maya LT files and the full version of Maya, Educational licenses have the exact same version.
Also as far as the 65k limit goes, Unity doesn’t use any restricted file format, I’m guessing you could “export to Unity” and then just find the file it exported and import that to UE4, it should just be like an FBX file, there’s nothing in the file that makes it only work in Unity.
I believe I am just going to stick with Blender I really like it. I was just being lazy in wanting things to work without a hitch.
Hi,
I tried the RC1 release and decided to wait until the final release hits the streets. I am personally excited to see that blender will now support the 2014 version of FBX and texture baking from the cycles rendering engine with this new release. It’s a big step forward for blender.
BTW, the only reason I remembered that limit on MAYA LT was because I was going to purchase it on Steam until I saw that limitation. For 90% of my work that limit will probably never be reached. It’s when I get into character creation that the limitation becomes an issue for me. So I decided to stick with blender for now and like I said, it works fine for most stuff.
Can you tell me what model need 65k polys?
You misunderstood me, I was saying my question is a noob question. If you are actually releasing a game for commercial purposes, then by that point a commercial license probably makes sense.
Well, not necessarily single models, but you could export all of the meshes for a level in a single FBX file, for both Unity and UE4 it will separate it out into the individual meshes when you import.
To clarify, meshes in Unreal on mobile are also limited to under 65k…
“All mesh types can have up to 65k vertices due to the lack of 32 bit index support on mobile hardware.”
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/Mobile/Content/index.html