I have been told that 3ds is better for game modeling and etc…but I see here that Epic uses Maya
so is maya reccomended for the modeling and the animation? or do you use both?
You can use either, generally Maya is preferred for animation and is preferred for modeling. Both programs do modeling and animation very well though.
Epic uses maya and 3ds 
-> just use the one that you are most comfortable with
I was curious because it says there is a rigging toolkit, and if you model in do you import it to maya to rig it? or do you have to model it in maya to use the rigging tool kit. What do you all use?
I think that you can also import it into maya to rigg it there with the rigging tool -> but then it would make more sense to directly create it in maya
I personally use blender and 3ds
you know of any rigging plug ins for 3ds ? Our character modeling is nice its the rigging that is so frigging hard lol
This here is not a plugin for , but I heard many good stuff about it: https://www.mixamo/auto-rigger
3ds doesn’t need the rigging toolkit plugin, it already has two rigging tools–Biped and CAT (Character Animation Toolset). Meshes are easily transferable between programs, so you can do things however you want, model in one and rig and animate in the other, it doesn’t matter.
Ah, the age old " or Maya" question. I’ve worked at that have used both. Most Env Artists I know prefer the one they learned first, really, they have extremely similar sets of features but different workflows.
This! I learned 3dsmax first, I’ve used it the longest, so I’m just more comfortable with it. I did once work with an environment artist who liked to model in Maya and animate in , sort of flipping what you normally hear said around. The newest version of Maya does have a new auto-weighting tool called geodesic voxel binding which looks very intriguing, though.
Actually once you animate in Motion Builder you never go back 