Maya, Max or XSI ???

I know you can do that with XSI... at least the free one, anyway.

Learn to model with max --> then XSI

You can import a .dxf of your brushwork in 3ds, but i don't think you can do the contrary, it will be totally crappy anyway

I'm in exactly the same boat as cdxx, though I don't want to import any brushes, I want to pick up whatever skills I have from basic modelling at work and expand that knowledge.

After talking to some of my colleagues, it would seem that Maya and of course 3dsMax still are the most used software in the industry, and therefore should be my primary concern. Supposedly Maya should be my first pick, as it has more options/is more user friendly.

I have no idea what you guys started with or if that'd be your assessment of the situation too. Thoughts?

I'd say just flip a coin and choose between Max or Maya, then just read or watch some basic tutorials... I found generalvivis video tutorials on http://www.iwannamap.com to be extremely useful

maya or max. which ever one you get your hands on first. Me like maya, but that be me.

MAYA or MAX, it's a bit like the war PC or MAC, PS2 or XBOX, pastes or potatoes ..

Maya it is then Thx

Quote from cdxx

what is a dxf file? I'm not familiar with it.

a CAD program file format I believe? Hammer outputs to it as well.

If you check out job listings these days you'll see that Maya is taking over

I've tried max, maya, XSI and wings.

I find max to be very powerful but it has a lot of flaws and inconsistencies (many a time I've accidentially hit a hotkey and then had to spend hours going through menus trying to find the feature I had just enabled/disabled. Usually it won't be where you think it should). I think this is because it has been constantly evolving since day one and has just kinda grown at will. If they take it apart and rebuild everything it'd probably be a lot better / more intuitive, but it'd also piss off a lot of people that are used to it. Max costs ten million quid. It's just as well everyone in the modding scene is so rich.

Maya is a bit clunky for poly modeling at times, but its interface and stuff flows a lot better. I'm used to max now, otherwise I'd use Maya. Snapping, pivot stuff, alligning and lots of other stuff is so much simpler in Maya compared to max. I don't much care for their hotbox menu, though. Maya has a Personal Learning Edition you can download for free

XSI .. I just found to be clunky. I didn't spend enough time on it to form a decent opinion. XSI has the advantage of being able to import .vmf files directly, as it is valve's tool of choice these days. There's a HL2 mod tool version available if you want to give it a go.

The workflow of wings3d is awesome (everything is context sensitive.. no more 10,000 icons) but the app itself is limited in some respects (the viewport renderer is inherently slow, so it chokes a bit at times when you do something complicated).

You can't really go wrong with what you choose I guess. Each package has its charms and excels at something.

My vote goes for 3d studio max, didn't take long to learn the basics.

I've been using it now for ~month and it's been great. The internet is packed with 3dsmax tutorials (I guess the same applies to Maya).

i mostly agree to defrag:

max is powerfull, but it has some strange and complex stuff in it, you can use much easier in maya. for example uv mapping. max needs a modifier to store uv information. maya doesnt need such a thing. it saves uv information directly on each (face-)vertex. you can modify your mesh after uv mapping without fucking up your uv map (what i remeber of my MAX times years before. maybe that has changed)

XSI is pretty cool too. i spent a look on it and it has a feature that allows maya users to run it under a "maya preset" which means: same shortcuts, same camera movement, all like maya.

my personal fav hierarchy:

Maya > XSI > Max

you can surely get great results with all packages, but if you want to work on source games: take maya! pralls exporter allows you an export withing 1 click. everything gets exported. textures, qc file, lod, folder structure. thats something the max exporter doesnt have! i wrote a tutorial on that:

http://www.thomashess.net/exchange/tuto ... rkflow.pdf

Max has a "Preserve UVs" checkbox now

I got extensive experience with Maya and max, both pro as amateur. Havent tried XSI yet, no interest in it either cause I can do anything I want already with the current programs I have

Max is far better than Maya for game modelling imo. Maya looks a lot simpler than Max on first sight but is in fact a lot more complex and unlogical. If you want to bend a mesh in Max you take the bend modifier, thats simple eh. In maya its in some obscure menu with an obscure name with obscure gizmos around it. Maya likes to put less tools on weirder places than Max. Max has more poly modelling tools too.

And Max doesnt need an unwrap modifier to store uv info, it is also saved directly on the face. The modifier system itself is great actualy. It allows you to mass copy certain effects from one mesh to another + make changes to for example the mesh without loosing the effect like Meshsmooth thats above it.

i allways think its hialrious when peopl say yeah you like maya better than max because you tryed maya first ! (i also hear it the other way around alot)

i went from hammer to milkshape to max back to milkshape and finaly to maya

i probbly would use max and not maya

if it wasnt for the god awful camera movement and the completly inconsitand uv editor

because most game engines have better max plugins even tough that starts to shift by now

Well, its up to you what you choose. Every program has its demo so try everyone of them.

For myself, i prefer more simple, easy-learning and lowcost Modelers like DeleD, Milkshape3D or Silo. For a modeling-newbie is better to start with a simpler modeler.

Wfr, Sindwiller

*lurker chimes in*

I learned modeling on Max, and have used Maya a bit, but my personal favorite right now is Blender for lowpoly and ZBrush for highpoly. At first I moved to Blender because of cost (it is free and open source), but now that I have mastered the interface I actually prefer Blender in its own right. Even though Blender lacks several of the advanced features of Max and Maya, the interface and workflow for modeling and UV is so good that I can modify everything by hand at a low level much faster in Blender than I can click through the menus, choose the feature, set all the parameters, and apply modifiers and tinker with settings in Max/Maya.

There are a lot of little hacks/tricks that you pick up about movement of the viewport, how to select things, setting up efficient groupings of verticies, faces, edges, etc that make modeling in Blender really really fast. If you ever watch the professional Korean Starcraft players with their fast micro and the screen jumping all over the place and hotkeying to switch between all their units, thats what it feels like modeling in Blender once you have learned the UI. With one hand on the keyboard controlling all the settings, that leaves your mouse hand free to only do necessary spatial tasks like moving verticies, rotating the viewport, etc instead of clicking through menus.

Of course ZBrush just plain kicks ass, so theres really no need to explain that choice. Best highpoly organic modeling program ive ever used, it's like sculpting clay.

EDIT: beware though, with Blender the learning curve is steep. I had to read and work through many tutorials before I could even do basic tasks in it (even though I already knew how to model in other programs). Also memorizing the hotkeys is a must if you want to get anything done.

I guess this is pretty off-topic, but I'm trying to learn how to model with Maya, but I don't understand the UV-map thingy. I saw one of iwannamap.com tutorials on how to UVmap with XSI, but it did not help me much. Can anyone link me a tutorial on how to make an UVmap to maya?