^ thanks a lot
I have one important question, how important is CUDA rendering to you guys? because I can actually get an older version of Cinema 4D from my uncle. He is retired now and has no use for it again, I think its R12 which is still very good to this day and its not THAT old. And if I upgrade it, should cost me way less than buying a new one aswell.
Do you guys do fine without CUDA rendering? I have a core i3 which is 4 threads. But I know for a fact CUDA renders insanely fast.
Tried Blender… Couldn’t stand the interface, went to Maya… HIGHLY subjective… of course.
teak
There is always Maya LT… 220 per year…
teak
I just realized something, MAYA actually comes with Mental Ray built in which apparently supports CUDA / GPU acceleration. Unless I missed something.
Insanely fast renders ? Your facts are wrong
Usually CUDA will give a speed boost of 2-10X compared to the CPU , not a small boost by any means but nowhere near to insanely fast. The speed boost of course will depend on your GPU specs.
Generally speaking if you do heavy renders a render farm is mandatory. You can rent one online and they tend to support all major 3d apps, including Blender. Blender also has some free render farms online. A big enough render farm can give you insanely fast speed depending on its size but since they tend to cost tens of thousands of dollars or euros its much better to rent them.
^ I got it now, understood.
I’m not sure about Maya, but in the latest version of 3ds Max it has GPU acceleration for GI in Mental Ray
OK, after some serious tutorializing. I’ve come up with a simple checklist.
—Basic Overview—
Maya is a slow, clumsy, yet amazingly detailed and huge program.
VS
Blender is a much faster, yet “smaller” program.
—How Blender beets Maya—
Much “Faster” UI
A sculpting mode (that is actually very good)
ITS FREE
Better at modelling softbody (I:E Characters, plants, etc)
Open source (-ish)
It has a better “Mirroring System” (it has the modifier)
—How Maya Beets Blender—
Much more complex UI and system
Doesn’t have the cluttered “Modifiers”
Better animation tools
Does “Hard Surface” modeling better (I:E everything architecture)
Better (Overall) Rendering system
—Bad things about Blender—
The Render-er is a tad “dirty” looking, and takes a lot of tweeking to look nice.
The UI gets cluttered and takes some serious getting used to
Blender hasn’t added a “great new tool” for a long time
Your “first time” (teehee) with blender will confuse anybody.
The animation pipeline needs work, and it just needs more
—Bad things about Maya—
The UI, is good, but tires to handle too much and be too basic and just ends up being confusing
No “space to search”
Some of the tools make no logical sense (or are just named wrong)
The fact that we pay 4000$ or so dollars and get no sculpting. (or something that tries to be sculpting)
4000$ dollars
I’ve experienced more crashes in Maya then Blender
—Overview—
This is a simple comparison. (I’ve only used Maya for a few months)
It does come down to your opinion.
You can use both (Use Blender for sculpting then use Maya for Rhetopology and animation)
Overall, both of these programs have issues, and both beet others in aspects
Honestly, unless you’re going to write a book about it, there’s no point trying to get into comparison details. You can get used to a 3D software and it’ll be perfect for what you want to do until it doesn’t have a feature you want.
Seeing that I don’t have to create yet another “Blender vs…” thread, I figured I’d post my inquiry within this one. First, I’d like to mention I am learning Maya (student version) at home and at my university. I’ve learned a lot about modeling, weight mapping, rigging, and UV mapping. Also, a bit of animation as well, but still a bit wonky in that area. I’d like to get started on a Unreal Engine 4 project, but don’t want to use the student version of Maya in case I want to go commercial. So I figured I might settle on Maya LT for $30/ a month. This won’t be a terrible transition considering I’ve learned with Maya 2015. The only thing is price…$30 is pretty low, but it will add up on a month to month basis. I guess I’m cheap (or just broke). My other alternative is to learn Blender on the side and use that for my Unreal project. Is Blender compatible/ or work well with Unreal Engine 4?
I’m asking now because I’d like to get started soon on my project. I want to hear some suggestions before I take the plunge and do the $30 a month route or just stick with the free route aka Blender.
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Honestly, unless you’re going to write a book about it, there’s no point trying to get into comparison details. You can get used to a 3D software and it’ll be perfect for what you want to do until it doesn’t have a feature you want.
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Could not agree more. The only ones that care about such comparison are begineer because they desperately search for an app with that magic button “press me to produce amazing art” . All 3d apps have weaknesses and strenghts. You will choose one app that many people would tell you its awesome and super powerful, and then become embarrassed when you see artists making better 3d art using photoshop or microsoft paint.
If you think I exaggerate here is a sample
Every tool has unlimited potential, but takes great skill to expose it.
Tools are all about productivity in a commercial environment; all the rest doesn’t really matter.
Wow this went down a whole nother path then I bought it would. I love the answers, in fact I completely agree. But I was just wondering why a art instructor (cough Digipen) hailed Maya as incredible, and I was frustrated that. Yes, it was because my art wasn’t as good as others, but I’m not blaming Maya for that! I never did! The comparison I did was a quick one I pulled to put everything together in my head. I did it outside the forums and then copied it on here because I thought it related well to the topic.
I am not trying to bring one above the other anymore (program wise). One does other things great, while the other does something else.
Who knew a simple group of questions brought in by frustration could end up with super deep talk about human nature?
This is why I love these forums
AHHAHAHAHA if you are amazed at the responses in this thread you should see the responses in this one
The reason people get so heated about it is the same reason people are dedicated to game consoles–you pay money for it, and spend time learning it, you don’t want your decision to be bad and your time wasted.
It is just sad that a free software like Blender has CUDA rendering built in but super expensive ones like Maya still requires people to purchase a CUDA render separate. I mean I have tested the BMW render car benchmark on Blender.
I have a 3.7 GHZ core i3 haswell which is about the exact speed of a 3GHZ Core i5.
And switching between CPU Render and GPU CUDA render is a difference of 50 seconds vs 6 minutes.
And the CUDA render is stable in Blender unlike Iray that crashes in Cinema 4D a lot. And Iray which you have to pay for aswell. It simply boggles the mind as to how this can be. Some people here say you should not judge a 3D program by its lack of CUDA render but when you look at the time difference using a CUDA render is like having a 24 Core Intel Xeon CPU if you were to use CPU rendering.
Biggest question I have about blender ( thanks in advance to anyone who has experience with this ):
Does the fbx export of an animated skeletal mesh import reliably and consistently into ue?
I have experience exporting from both maya and maya lt into ue and it works reliably. Jeremy’s animation and rigging toolkit export also works great.
But blender is free, so the biggest question i have before investing time in it is - does the animated fbx export work well enough for production work?
I don’t think it matters to most people, if you know how to use Mental Ray/Vray then you can get better render speeds than a GPU renderer.
Hmm interesting. I have VRAY installed on my Cinema 4D. But its the old version 1.9 its not the new RT version that supports GPU rendering.
How do u handle the tiny font and tiny icons on MAYA though? how does anyone? well I use a 24 inch Dell monitor 1080p