So I bought a 2yr subscription for Maya LT because I learned Maya at University. Also, I picked up Lightwave (sold my license recently though) and Blender on my own. I just realized I am still eligible for a Graduate license of Modo as well. Did I make a good choice picking Maya LT? I know there is the student version, but I am working on a game project so if I wanted to go commercial w/ it in the future I guess there could be problems in using Maya Student Edition.
Thanks guys. Just wondering if anyone else uses any of these programs and what your take is. I’m not asking for what is best because I know they are all capable (I’ve made things in maya, lightwave, and blender), but some insight would be nice.
If you are doing skeletal animation for Unreal Epic Skeleton, then Maya LT is probably the best choice. In particular , I would look at using AdvancedSkeleton. It is free, and supports creating an Unreal Skeleton. http://www.animationstudios.com.au/advanced-skeleton
Unfortunately, the Epic AnimationRiggingToolkit (ART) only works with Maya, not Maya LT.
If you are just doing modeling then Blender and Modo are great. (They work great for animation too - but tasks like rigging to the epic skeleton with its bone orientations are more difficult and annoying.)
If you dont care about the Epic Skelly, then exporting skeletal meshes from Modo and Blender is much easier.
Till know, i have never rigged by myself. I am not understanding the video, in the demonstration video the guy uses Maya. So is “advanced-skeleton” a “plugin” or “addon” to maya to make riggig to UE4 mannequin easier?
Honestly, the best of the 3 is Maya LT and Maya is the tool of Epic. However, I like iClone for character creator and iClone. The whole pipeline package is around $600 one time price, which is great.
Maya HumanIK and Epic rigs are compatible with it, so you can work with it in conjunction with Maya LT
Take a look.
Well asking the same question to our content creators on the team if they had to start over again,knowing what they know, which 3d application would they choose the answer is always the same.
Blender.
The reasoning is simple in that Blenders terms and conditions of what you can do as far as import and export fair use is non-intrusive where with most applications you have to spend extra fees just to move the working asset from one environment to another.
As SOP the first thing we do as to adding tools to the pipeline is to check out the terms and conditions and if it restricts our ability to create fair use content it’s use is rejected as a preferred application.
The one you can use the fastest yourself. Since you have Maya experience, Maya LT is the obvious choice since you can handle it probably the fastest and know the switches.
I feel extremely annoyed about some Maya LT limitations compared to the real Maya, but just have to live with them. Lack of Animation Layers is just painful beyond words for a person with long animation background like me, but hey, Maya+Motionbuilder are over 10 000 dollars total compared to the 30 a month I pay for the LT, so I dont have much of a choice. Lack of physical simulation is also bad, if you are having prebaked animations of stuff breaking up etc.