Hey All,
Never used Maya or anything like it before. So I’m starting from absolute zero. But I have been creating projects in UE for 3 years or so. I want to start looking at creating my own characters for my projects.
So - I see there’s uber expensive Maya… and then Maya LT at a much cheaper price. I don’t want to start learning something and get caught down the line because LT can’t do… something.
Can anyone give me advice on whether Maya LT is totally fine for creating and animating 3rd person characters in UE? Or… should I hold off until I can afford full Maya?
Also… any good tutorials / learning resources people can point me to?
My background is in prop and asset creation including rigging and animation, and Maya is my main package for development. I can’t really help you with your second question because I had formal training at a school, so my advice is to find a good teacher that can mentor you in real-time.
As for Maya vs Maya LT, Maya LT was a deal-breaker for me because its missing ‘Transfer Maps’ which is Maya’s texture baker. Without this feature, you cant bake normal maps from high to low poly models, generate AO with Maya, or any other texture baking.
So thats the only reason I dont use Maya LT; other than this, everything you need for character creation is included in Maya LT so my recommendation is to get it. The good news is that, as a beginner who isnt familiar with it either way, Maya LT + any texture baking software is still going to be cheaper than a full Maya subscription.
Thanks a heap for your advice. Very much appreciate your insights. Any texture baking software you can recommend? Just so I can get an idea on cost for now - and try finding out how any workflows might go.
Full Maya is just too expensive for me right now. But LT I can swing.
Is LT basically the same interface etc as Full Maya? Like would I have to basically learn new software upon any future switch to Full Maya?
Most people use Substance Painter or Marmoset Toolbag, which are both good options. I actually use xNormal quite extensively for high-to-low poly normal map baking and AO maps, which is totally free.
Maya is still abusively expensive, which is probably the main reason Blender is on a constant upward gain in the industry, but its a catch-22. Blender isnt used by big studios because its not industry standard, and its not industry standard because big studios dont use it. In my experience, though, small and mid-size studios dont care what you use as long as the software is used legally and you produce assets they can use. If you want to save even more money, youre in a position to take on Blender and reduce your software cost to zero.
Not to sway your decision, however, because I love Maya But im set in my ways lol
Maya LT is identical to Maya in every way, it just doesnt have certain features - most notably the transfer maps function and, if im reading the comparison right, in-app rendering. If you’re using Unreal in your pipeline (or Painter or Toolbag) this wont be a factor in the slightest.
Maya LT is made specifically for game devs. Audodesk removed a lot of features from Maya like soft-body deformation, which is not used in games (for now).
Personally, I prefer Blender. Even though it’s not industry standard, since being awarded grants from Epic, I surmise that Epic is probably using in house, so there’s a chance it can become the new standard.
Zbrush for manual detailed sculpt.
Mind you - zbrush is one of the worse ever UI in existence. It makes sculpting high detail quick once you figure it out though.
SideFX Houdini can potentially be subbed to zbrush.
The point is that blender is absolutely 100% incapable of handling 16B vertex or more with the kind of performance you need to sculpt details fluidly on most systems (ryzen 5950 aside).
Until they seriously improve on that part just about anything else will work better.
From zbrush bake down to 8k textures.
Put the 8k textures in blender, make adjustments and bake down to game ready resolutions - 2k? Maybe 4k if you loose too much detail?
For texturing, substance painter for coloring works better than most.
Zbrush could be used to paint the high poly too - though their poli paint system is face base like vertex coloring - this can come to mean that paint isn’t good enough even at 16b vert counts…
Marmoset to bake out roughness/curves etc.
You can use marmoset with the 8k textures instead of blender for much better results…
Quixel mixer:
Which isn’t really suited to painting and what not - is actually Really good to make your own material layers too.
Say to change colors on a uniform or try out different materials.
The main benefit is it bakes everything down to a unique texture because it only supports a single material (as of the last time I used it).
For performance in games, that’s really the best situation. Too many textures will cutter the ram needlessly and require more drawcalls.
Hair cards:
blender all the way.
Bake the hair from blender onto cards.
Use the card objects in the hair procedural system.
Sculpt away the hair do. Export out the cards.
Huge Thanks for the detailed reply’s! Just Awesome of all of you taking the time to help me out. Appreciated. I’m taking notes from what you’ve all said.
Yes. The perennial Blender vs Maya debate. I’ve used Blender for basic stuff so far. But I didn’t know you could do animations etc with Blender.
For me - right at zero - it’s going to be about getting a course centered around UE4 that I can follow to get started. In Udemy - there’s a great course I’ve been directed to…buuuuut it’s using full Maya. Not sure if I could use LT to do that course. More digging needed on that score.
If I could find a tutorial series centered around Blender for character creation for UE4 - then… perfect.
Otherwise I’m just flying blind with this no matter what software I choose. So it’s about matching a good course / learning material with the software the course uses right now. At least though - you guys have told me the drawbacks & plusses of those options. Massive. So again… thanks.
Full Maya does - I believe - have a 1 month free trial. But… getting this downpat in a month? Nope…
In my opinion Maya is horrible for modelling but great for Rigging/Animating. If I were you I would just go with Blender and Zbrush for Modelling and Substance for Texturing and although Maya LT can be used for Rigging and Animation it is lacking some key features forcing you to get Maya and for an Indie Developer the cost is too high so stick with Blender even though it is not the greatest for Rigging/Animation yet.
If you haven’t ever used anything for content creation, then avoid falling into the Autodesk trap and try Blender. Even today, Blender is already in quite a few cases better choice then Maya, but what’s more important are the trajectories of the two pieces of software. Their development direction, their development pace, and their communities. One is on the incline, and one is on the decline. So if you are just staring now, Blender is much better investment of your effort into the future.
There’s character creation, and then there’s doing it right.
Thing is, the only way you’ll ever do it right is if you do it wrong about 20 times before.
Forget “tutorials”.
I mean, unless you are at a level where you have no idea what a normal map is. If that’s the case, you do need tutorials, but about 3d rendering in general.
Good content to get ideas and see some models plus modeling process used by AAAs is generally from GDC or naughty dog talks (when it comes to humans at least).
Forget all the Unreal bullsh*t. There’s tons of it because ue4 can’t even - still to date - render the hair shader correctly in point light.
Look for generalized mesh creation and deformation tutorials.
Also, have a quick Google at double quaternion so you know what the difference is.
Why?
It goes hand in hand with being able to call sub par weight paint “good enough”.
It’s not “good enough” and you 100% suck as character artist if you rely on double quaternions to make your weight paint look “good enough”.
Maya Indie… ok just read about it and I had no Idea it existed. So - I read it has all the functionality of full Maya? Is that right?
Thanks to everyone and the advice given. Many differing opinions out there - and many good points of view. I may very well take another look at Blender - seeing it’s free & well regarded.
UE4 is my main focus - as I have a UE4 project in development. So all I plan to learn is with UE4 / 5 use in mind.
As stated above, this probably means simpler mesh modelling & creation in the beginning.
The most powerful modelling tool ever existed. Absolutely free.
As for character creation for you that have no experience and have no wish to become an artist - I recommend MakeHuman, a free character creation software, that will give you the characters for your projects in no time.
Also, you need to learn manage your finances. Goverment websites have articles on that. You do not buy an expensive subscription service if you have no skills to use it.
Thanks for the advice on Blender and Make Human. I Appreciate it. I’m not wanting to create characters overnight - but start down the path of learning the tools I’ll need to do that well. That said, I will definitely investigate MakeHuman.
Thanks, but I don’t need financial counselling :-).
Many people do not know about Blender or its capabilities and are throwing their money on paid expensive software just out of being unfamiliar with range of available programs. Choosing between Maya and Maya LT is a sign of being a novice with no knowledge. I have 2 years of experience with 3d art, and I do all of my freelance orders with Blender. You don’t need Maya to be a professional artist, to make characters, etc. I would say half of 3d artists on fiverr work only with Blender, and earn money this way. (and the rest of them are using pirated 3dmax/cinema4d/student license maya)
When someone is considering anything over Blender - they make a mistake.
Gotta disagree with your conclusion; choosing Maya over Blender is making the decision to use a well-established, industry-standard software package over a community-made, indie-focused piece of software. Its not a mistake at all, nor is making the decision necessarily evidence of a lack of knowledge. To reinforce this point, Unreal Engine shares the same viewport controls as Maya, and it does so for a reason.
I say this as someone that uses both programs regularly, not as someone simply carrying a bias towards Maya.
Yea sure.
But this is essentially the same decision to use a windows desktop over Linux.
Which one works better?
It’s 100% not going to be windows. For a billion reasons.
While the reason we all use windows even though Linux is a billion times better is software compatibility…
This reason doesn’t exist between Maya and Blender
Both software can perform the same tasks - some better, some worse. Depending.
Anything sub 10b tris works just fine in blender.
But it does need to be taken elsewhere to work if you intend to exceed the amount of tris.
For instance.
There’s no point in waiting an hour to sculpt in blender when Zbrush can do the same thing instantly and with out destruction of pre-existing layer.
Blender will eventually get there too. Especially after the infusion of $ from the mega grant - or whatever it was. Directed donation?
So you are correct that it isn’t wrong to choose one or the other, but there’s also no real reason aside from personal preference or known skills to make that choice.
