3d Studio vs Maya (for game development)

I always thought that Max was the standard games dev 3D package. However in my 6 years in the industry across Climax, Kuju and Sony, all have predominantly used Maya.

Edit: Dunno if its true or not but one of the artists here just told me that Max was traditionally used because it was more easily warez'd.

this discussion has been there for like 10000 times. so i will just give a small advice:

try max and maya. make a single prop in bother 3d packages and then export them. check out which one was the easiest or less complex tool. though a little knowledge of the things beyond Max or Maya or XSI doesnt hurt.

i always thought of making a video tutorial instruction to maya for people who already know basics of 3d modelling. so i wouldnt concentrate on what an uv map is. i would more show things you might miss/search in maya like "how can i quickly extrude a polygon". By that everybody who would be watching the tutorial should already know what extrude means. would there be interest in such a tutorial? i could maybe start tonight and finish it tomorrow.

greetings

hessi

Well if you have some magic plugins to convert Max's lightmaps, geometry etc. to specific format or directly to game you can do everything in Max...

I was talking about "our" maps. I mean using Quake, Source and Unreal engines. Maybe there is a plugin for Max/Maya to put weapons, enemies etc. on map but it is easier to do that in game egitor.

Like Hourences said: standard Max/Maya without plugins is good for making little parts like barrels or buildings and vehicles... There are engines that "like" whole maps (static part of map = geometry) made as model (in Painkiller you can make wole map as model and export it to PainED, put some gadgets/effects and compie it to game).

Hourences, it is not as bad as you make it sound like when you get used to it and when you got a properly customized version of Max. It's not like that we are running on vanilla Max. Your "30 unnatural export settings" equals to zero with our setup. Yep, that's right there are absolutely zero things you need to set or adjust in max when you want to export it which is done in a matter of seconds after having pushed 1 button.

I have also done large outdoor terrains and it was for sure 10 times easier to do in Max compared to Source. We got preview of everything from lighting to alpha layers to scatter in max. The terrain creation process itself is easier in max and regarding exporting and previewing it goes a million times faster than in Source.

Source isnt exactly user friendly either:)

One thing you will never ever be able to check is the framerate, how well it holds up once in the engine.

Can you really paint textures and decos on your terrain? With vertexcolor or similar technique.

Does it preview materials well? Including their animations, normal maps, spec, translucency, distortion, whatever else you might have?

Post fx like bloom?

Does it preview particles?

Max at least have an fps camera build in so thats something already. I believe Maya still doesnt has that but I might be wrong as I havent worked with the latest versions yet.

Haha no, it could just be that when coming from the horrible Source workflow then this seems relatively easy.

If I want to check framerate then it only takes about 5secs to export my max file, 2secs to import it and then 10secs to run the game.

Yes we can paint textures, decos and scatter on our terrain using both vertexcolors and other techniques. It does also have support for animations, spec, reflection, etc. directly in max. What we see in max is not 100% as it is ingame but more of a general indication. If we want to see those things more accurately then I just do a 5sec export and then check it in our editor.

Bloom and other postfilters can only be viewed ingame. They can however be both applied and edited in realtime when running the game. So there are totally no exporting/previewing needed here.

Quote from JamesL

Dunno if its true or not but one of the artists here just told me that Max was traditionally used because it was more easily warez'd.

Could be true if you are a noob i guess. But if you know how to get hold of warez in general theres no difference in maya or max, they are both equally easy to get hold of. But also i think more ppl heard of Max so when they look for a 3dmodeller app the most ppl tend to search for Max.

But after reading all these post's i still stand what i said in my post. WHich btw isn't something i found out for my self but read from another great 3d artist. Learn one app first, so you know everything in it, so you are really good at it. Then make the switch and try other apps. Different people will allways have a second opinion about this depending on which app they use. Probably some 3d apps are better for some stuff and some not so good for just that particulare task. But for learning, i say stick with one. The thing is, you hear all this talk about this is better and that is better so will end up finding out for yourself in the end anyway, and if you get problems in one app you might think i should have listen to the other guys and jump over to the next app. If you do i think the risk is bigger that you never learn.

how about 4D Studio Maya? It would combine Cinema4D (is easily warezd, because 4D sounds cooler than 3D), 3D Studio Max (because a lot of people know Studio Max) and Maya (because it has a cool UI and is a high quality software. We only need to put XSI somewhere in this name construct don't take this post too serious. just wanted to resume some "facts"

I heard a rumor that max and maya were going to be merged after a few more versions . . . confirm/deny?

Quote from zaphod

I heard a rumor that max and maya were going to be merged after a few more versions . . . confirm/deny?

Might be... Both are from Autodesk now... It will cost a lot of work to do that...

I heard that as well, but a guy at work recons that max will be tailered for games, where as maya will go further into things such as CG animations

I don't know, maya has a lot of pro's for games too. A lot of studios utilize melscript to integrate maya into their pipeline. I would say out of all the studios I have seen / interviewed / seen job postings for, it's been about a 50/50 split between max and maya.

Quote from zaphod

I don't know, maya has a lot of pro's for games too. A lot of studios utilize melscript to integrate maya into their pipeline. I would say out of all the studios I have seen / interviewed / seen job postings for, it's been about a 50/50 split between max and maya.

i can agree with that. tough it wont cost that much time to switch from one application to another because the users already know what they want and often it is only hidden in some other context menu

Well, Discreet was bought up by AutoDesk a few years back, and they are going to be merging some elements from both into a new package from what I hear, which is probably a good thing. But Autodesk did buy alias recently too... Kinda lame that Autodesk now pretty much has a monopoly on the 3d market.

Personally, I started out with rhino3d along time ago, then to 3ds, then to XSI, and now I'm trying Maya. Since I've been in college, I've used autocad and now I'm using rhino for a class.

Rhino, to me is the easiest to use. It would be an excellent app for just modelling props. I wish it was more prevalent in the gaming industry.

Quote from zaphod

I don't know, maya has a lot of pro's for games too. A lot of studios utilize melscript to integrate maya into their pipeline. I would say out of all the studios I have seen / interviewed / seen job postings for, it's been about a 50/50 split between max and maya.

Yeah, this seems to be the case - it's all down to studio preference. I think it makes things easier if everybody is working in the same package at times, too.

I never could get used to Maya, I've stopped learning after I runned it...

oh well.

Also, for example in FEAR engine you can do everything (place props, light etc) in max, also X-Ray engine maps are almost completly made in max/maya, but still normal 3d game engine editor is better than any 3d app, well that's what Hourences said.

when i started off doing some modelling, maya was alot easier to learn and understand than 3dsm. as a result, i am still using it and have quite some difficulties in 3dsm :\