Honestly, I feel like will be phased out in the coming years. Maya is constantly receiving big updates while is getting scraps. This makes me sad as a user.
If I had to start over knowing what I know now, I’d choose Blender. It is pretty much on-par with the Autodesk giants as far as core features, though it is missing some bells and whistles. But it IS free. and Maya are unreasonably priced and Maya LT has FEWER core features than Blender.
: Excellent for modeling, has a modifier stack, intuitive, clean interface
Maya: Great for rigging and animation, has excellent dynamics simulations that are leagues ahead of in both accuracy and calculation speed
Blender: Fantastic for indies and people who like to build their own tools, excellent renderer
It’s very difficult to switch between 3D packages, or at least it is for me, so you’ll probably end up sticking with whichever you choose. That’s why I heartily recommend Blender. It can do everything you need it to and it won’t bankrupt you or force you into piracy.
If you’re really just looking to pump out some of your own 3D models that are nothing complex, and not looking to become a professional 3D artist, then I’d say go with Blender. Simply because it’s free and you won’t have the headache of trying to adjust to it from previous 3D program experience.
As many others have pointed out: for an independent user /Maya are pretty unreasonably priced.
It feels like that, but still has more users than any other 3D program, so they’ll probably avoid trying to lose them all. It’s so weird in general, because it feels like Autodesk does so little to improve their software, game developers and companies like Epic do way more work in a year, yet Autodesk is the #3 software company in the world.
That depends on what you need. The price of software does not dictate what production demands you are faced with. An independent user can have the same hurdles as a user on a team. It just has to do with what you need to accomplish. And that alone drives what software to use. There are thousands of freelance artists who use the best software they can buy. It is not because this helps them compete. It is because it just gets them to the playing field. In many areas Blender leaves you in the parking lot at best. In other areas it can be on a par. But in some cases if you do not have the right tools you can not even be on the job. It is that simple. And the reality with Blender in the areas of dynamics, rigging and animation it is on a sub par with other solutions. Rendering is coming along but not there yet. These are the areas that will change significantly in the next 2 years. But as this is happening so are the other tools getting improvements. So there will always be the need for a high end tool for individuals and teams. It will always be this way and Blender with not change that. What it will do however is sort of pick up the rear. Meaning that large software companies will gradually loose more business to people who don’t need the best of the best. And this is a growing pool of people. And as Blender improves the more people this will attract and the further down it will drive the software that is now out of reach for some people.
They killed Softimage which had an enormous userbase. Not as big as , granted, but still. Autodesk doesn’t really seem to care at all. This is the last year of Mudbox as well, which was absorbed into Maya. I can see the modeling tools from going to Maya over the years before phasing it out completely. It really doesn’t make sense for them to have multiple tools that do the same thing, so it’s to be expected that one will have to eventually die and be absorbed. If they could just give Maya a skin I’d be happy. I can’t stand the clutter :X
This is dead bandwagon reminds me of Flash. And still, today I develop apps and games for mobile using Air (Starling), for Android and iOS, and in my experience, at least today, is the only painless way of doing it.
isn’t in the case that it’s dying due to lack of interest or use, it just seems like they’re trying to manipulate people into buying new licenses of Maya by not putting much development into . They don’t get as much money by maintaining licenses/subscriptions as they do from people buying new software.
Ultimately it would be best if Autodesk got a bigger competitor, like if Modo become a big deal, then they’d be forced to improve to compete more.
No, starting in February 2016 they will no longer offer license purchases of any of their products, they will be subscription only. So that would be shortly before the 2017 versions release. Or whatever they start doing. They could stop doing completely new versions and just release new features as they get done.
Not true. It only applies to certain products and those that it does apply to it is only for stand alone individual versions. Network and Suite versions will still be sold as perpetual.
It couldn’t be that they tried and failed at something? I truly believe that is what happened. Softimage was trying to be fit into a market place and it did not work. Even though it was a truly all around package they really were developing ICE more than anything in XSI. As an XSI user for the last 3 years that it my take. But Houdini just could not be bested. And after listening to people who left ICE to work on Houdni I get the idea it was a much better platform. At any rate no one can prove that that did this intentionally. It is all just concejure.
And all of Mudbox has not been moved into Maya as yet. At least I have not heard of it. That would be a huge undertaking. So as far as I know Mudbox will still be around for a while. But I would not argue if both Mudbox and MotionBuilder were incorporated into Maya. That would make my day.
Honestly with the new low polygon modeling tools in the latest release of Zbrush, I wouldn’t count that one out as an option. Plus, it just got added FBX support and can do retopology, polygon decimation and will generate all your texture/normal maps… And it’s not yet owned by Autodesk so all good things.
Most Autodesk products will no longer offer perpetual licenses, that’s probably going to include the main ones, like 3ds , Maya, AutoCad, stuff like that.
Can modeling be done and look amazing in maya though?I just don’t have the time to learn AND maya so I need to have one that can model, animate, rig, and etc and be used for unreal. I do not want blender. So is it a lot harder to model in maya?