3d Studio vs Maya (for game development)

Maya 8.0 is buggy but Maya 7 is fine. It's more simpe and easier than Max but when I tryed to make something in Maya it was too hard for me (without tutorials - just by watching what options do) so I'm using Max 9 for now and fight with UV mapping

You can allways just try to make something small in Maya and if you will like it maybe you will leave Max

Max through and through here, I tried maya for a while and just could not get in to it. For game stuff I cant think of anything that maya has that max doesn't.

/vote XSI

For Source anyway.

Same here, I vote XSI.

It's the most user-friendly 3D application, ever!

I use silo2

Never used Maya.

I know a lot of people who do tho. It seems nice but I think if you compare Maya and Max you will find a lot of different pro/cons with both and in the end I believe it's up to what you're most used to.

Then if you're not used to any already I couldn't say. Guess if either one you choose you will end up liking in the end

There's really no "I can only do this thing in Maya" there's usually just very different approaches on things.

If you have allready started with max i would suggest stick to it. The thing is i dont think it really matter which app you start with, its more like you have to learn one really really well, and then you have much aesier to try out another one. I think jumping from app to app whithout really geting into it is bad business.

What Philip said. I find Maya to be a lot more clunky, but it is more logical & consistent. Max has everything I could possibly want (almost) and I can work faster with it, but it has some stability and usability issues (namely the famed "what the fuck key did I just press?" issue when you turn on/off some random option then spend eight days trying to find out how to re-enable it...). Overall I prefer Max, but I've not really used Maya enough to get proficient with it, plus I just ... dislike the hotbox.

If they rebuilt max from the ground up and sorted out the stability and consistency issues it'd be 100% bliss.

I used Silo 2 before... it is a very nice modeller with a fast workflow. But it is unstable like hell. Blender is also not bad

I have to agree with seir, Max to Maya has been very frustrating for me, I much prefer max, maybe because Im used to it, but I find max so much quicker to work with (Mayas star menu drives me nuts, and theres no target weld! ) But its still a 3D package.

I think its personal preference, but theres no question that I choose max over maya

Max, more powerful and more logical.

Ive used Maya for over a year on a daily professional base and its good, but it just lacks a lot of features that Max does has poly modelling wise.

And beware, Max nor Maya are not level editors, they may be good at modelling things but they can never ever replace a real level editor for things like lighting or entity/actor placements, sounds and so on.

Isn't maya merely aimed at the high-end spectrum, for movies and films and such? I know a couple of folks that use both and they are pretty different applications - each just has their own way of doing something. As long as you know what you want the end result to be then you'll pick either up pretty easily.

At the end of the day if you can make something faster and better in one of the programs, then there's no real reason to switch.

I was considering getting maya just to see if I should be using that instead, but I figured why bother, it's just another piece of software that I don't need to learn, I can get by just as well with max and do everything I need to do. When the day comes that I realise I need to use maya for so-and-so then I'll pick it up and get started, but for now all I'd be doing would be stretching myself thin and not spending enough time learning all I can about max.

Also to address the 'hitting some random key' - that can be frustrating when you first start, but I'd really suggest going into the key configs options and just scrolling through everything, take an hour or two and just set everything up to suit you; unbind all those keys that your chubby fingers hit often or at least bind them to something non destructive.

Quote from Hourences

And beware, Max nor Maya are not level editors, they may be good at modelling things but they can never ever replace a real level editor for things like lighting or entity/actor placements, sounds and so on.

true.

only static part of the map can be done in Max/Maya.

No he's saying you can make the assets in max or maya but you have to use the editor to make them not static.

Quote from Minotauro

That's not completely true. All the Resident Evil 4 level design was done in Maya as seen in the making of.

I think I noticed that in the God of War making of as well...

Quote from seir

true.

only static part of the map can be done in Max/Maya.

We do all of our lighting work in Max for our levels. And ofc. also mockup and props.

Anyways on topic: I have only tried Max which I consider to be one big pile of clutter. It's one of the most patched and hacked together programs I have seen. But it works and has almost all the features I need.

There was a topic about this some months ago. Ive made entire levels with Maya too and it really is not the way to go at all. Everything you do takes two to three times as long as it would take with a real editor and thats logical. Max and Maya were never ever ever made to make levels, they were made to make stand alone models and animations and so on. Both use orbiting cameras while levels need fps camera controls. Orbiting cameras are focussed on viewing single objects and not on moving through large spaces.

There are a milion things that are very inefficient and very slow to do in 3D programs compared to 3D engines. For example advanced material creation, advanced lighting, previewing the lighting, terrain, special effects, inability to preview perfomance, inability to preview post fx and other settings, inability to quickly playtest your level without going through 30 unnatural export settings, and so on.

Clear example: Ive made large outdoor terrains in Maya for a video game. I had to model every piece of the terrain, which takes days, and then I had to alpha paint the alpha layers for the texture blending on the terrain by hand without the possibility of previewing exactly what you paint, this took a week and more. Furthermore we also had to paint the grass decolayer on the terrain by hand in photoshop, again without a preview possibility, that also took days.

I lost 2 weeks per terrain for something I can do in less than 1 day in UnrealEd! And I have a milion other examples like that.

I rarely playtest my level at all simply because I can see everything in my editors viewport already, I can see how many miliseconds rendertime of the engine this or that light uses, I can see how well it runs, I can see all materials, all lighting and all (post) effects in place and so on. Go try to do that in Max or Maya!

Max comes across as having a billion options and buttons while Maya looks more clean but is much more of a mess beneath its skin to my experience. I preffer the more in my face mess of Max.