Yes! Another Maya vs… thread, but the questions I wanted to ask didn’t seem to be answered in the threads so here we are!
Currently, I am using Maya, as I am a student I am able to get a free license. However, it seems to be kind of hard to find good tutorials with proper explanations that aren’t outdated, Mike Hermes being the only Youtuber I’ve found that go at a reasonable pace and tell you what they’re doing. But as I am new to modeling I have no idea if he is teaching me the right thing and methods.
So I wanted to ask these questions:
Which modeling program has the best up-to-date learning resources available (Youtube videos, guides etc.)
Which has the best tools for the job (I get that Maya has a lot of tools, but I don’t really seem to be using that many, is it really worth it?)
Which is the best suited for game development (Making character models, objects, rigging etc.)
I get that I could use a combination of the programs (Maya for animating, Blender for easier modeling) but I don’t want to focus on the wrong thing when I could easily achieve the same effect using only one of the programs.
Any advice would be appreciated! also sorry for yet another best 3d modeling program thread :I
I’m not sure there’s a general consensus what is “best”. It’s up to you. Blender can definitely get the job done though, and it has a ton of tutorials and a thriving community.
We use Zbrush for sculpting characters, blender for creating environment assets and setting everything up for the game engine (rigging etc). It has all the required tools for that.
Probably Blender, being that the full-feature version is more readily available.
That’s really up to opinion. Having started with Maya, I’d say Maya, but… I think it’s more about what you’re familiar with at this point.
Again, it’s up to one’s own opinion.
I will make one suggestion, for when it comes to characters. If you want to quickly create humans, there’s an open source tool, MakeHuman, which make the mesh, and optionally create bones and weight-paint it.
I personally believe Maya is much easier to get into and it’s very quick to get stuff done, especially with HumanIK / transfers of morphs / skins… Simple and effective deformers etc. UV mapping tools are ok too.
I originally used 3DSMax but went over to MayaLT because it was cheaper and near enough does most of what I need, if I’m rendering any promo stuff there’s a ton of other free options anyway.
If you are going to use Blender, then you might want to look at ManuelbastioniLAB too. It’s comparable to MakeHuman with arguably better models and morphs, and it’s also integrated into Blender.
I like MayaLT actually. It has most of the features of the full Maya (at least those that are relevant for game dev) and the price is reasonable. I’ve tried Blender a couple times but even doing basic things made no sense. I’m sure with enough practice you can make it work, but it was too counter-intuitive for me to bother with. In terms of ease of use, I think 3ds Max is still the best, but the cost is prohibitive and Maya is overall just as good once you learn it.
One other thing to note, most big game studios use Maya or Max. If you are looking to build skills and maybe get a job in the industry, you are better off with something like MayaLT over Blender since the skills you learn will directly apply to potential jobs you might want to apply for in the future.
I’ve mostly been using Maya 2017 for all my work, as I have a 3 year educational license. Considering the comments I think I’ll stick to working with it cause like you said about Blender, nothing seems to make sense. I’ve tried it a few times and Maya somehow seems easier.
I’m thinking I should just stick to Maya, people seem to be saying you should stick with whatever you’re used to. I also like the Maya UI over the Blender one which I guess influences my opinion. I’ll take a look at MayaLT pricing for when my educational license runs out though.
I’ll suspect that blender has probably got more beginner level materials on youtube… but then there are probably a dozen textbooks for Maya to a single blender book. Advanced topics are definitely in Maya’s favor, though. I see them all the time without even looking.
I would suggest to stick with blender simply because it is free. If/when you start working in a professional studio, then you could switch to maya. Your skills should transfer.
Maya, as far as I know, has superior animation tools compared to blender (secondary pole targets in blender are odd), while blender works mostly as swiss army knife and has a bit of everything. For example, blender also has some functionality similar to zbrush, and I haven’t heard the same thing about maya.
While 3d modeling is not my primary skill set, I’ve been using blender for a LONG time, and at the moment have no reason to switch to Maya, especially now that perpetual licenses are no longer available.
Regarding the questions in a list:
I’d expect to have a problem with learning materials for both packages, although maya should have more books published, while blender should have larger number of videos. (I think there was also a decent blender course for blender on steam, which was also quite cheap). As far as I can tell, with all kinds of artistic programs and software packages, you usually end up with pile of disjointed unorganized information, and will have to spend a lot of time getting better at it.
2 & 3. They’re both suitable for game development and both can be used for making assets and characters. it is matter of your familiarity with the package.
I’ve been using 3D Max since 1999. My opinion is to pick a software and stick with it to become not just proficient in it, but to become intimately knowledgeable about all it can do and all its tricks, rather than knowing the common tools of any/every package.
Modeling is a wash - all packages have similar tools and none of them have an advantage over the other.
With that said - I think the best package available for most 3D work is Maya. It’s rigging and skinning tools are better than all others, and it has an excellent material editor that will make you feel very comfortable using any other material editor, like substance or shader forge. Also - Maya has some awesome cross referencing tools for animating a complex rig (though not supported in any game engines) and paint fx are always useful (not game engine supported either).
Mayas built in renderer sucks! but thankfully since they were purchased by Autodesk Mentalray is built in.
Maya LT is built specifically for game development. It has all the tools needed to build game ready art, minus the renderer, and a couple other things not supported by game engines.
With all that said about Maya - I think Max is the simplest 3D software to use (I’m biased). Maya has a tendency to kind of hide needed info and make the artist dig a little for needed menus - where as Max has all the needed information ready available in the tabs to the right, and tools at the top. The only thing I would say Max buries - like Maya does - is the complex rendering + lighting settings that are needed if you are rendering with a deferred renderer like Mentalray - high quality detailed, realistic renderings.
This decision is best made by each individual artist - what feels best in your hands.
It’s $30.00 a month and that includes stingray (game engine) if you’re at all interested… @neginfinity , Maya LT and Maya have had sculpting tools in there for a long while… Can’t say any of them (Blender / Modo / Mudbox / Maya) beat Z-brush, even though I can’t say I’m a fan of the UI…
ZBrush does not have an equivalent of dyntopo which is present in blender. That was a big letdown when I last looked into zbrush.
Maya LT has limitations compared to full version, and it looks like some of them could hurt a lot.
LT is restricted to 2 animation layers, missing muscle tools, some of the deformers, and everything in dynamics/effects and pipeline integration looks very troublesome.
Overall, it looks like Maya LT may be actually inferior to blender, because at a glance it looks like blender offers features that are not present in LT and offers them for free.
Can’t say it does TBH, not sure what you mean by dynamics / effects pipeline? Although Blender is on my list to try again (as I have some arch tools for it and it would come in handy for things like cryblend (or whatever LY’s equiv is (LumbBlend??) if the .fbx pipeline decides to be a pain), issue is I find it counter intuitive and you’ll have to forgive me if I’m incorrect here but non-destructive workflows make like a million times easier and I didn’t find anything in Blender that matched… Maya has tabbed history and 3DSmax has stacks.
If it’s not a complete PITA to work with, I would seriously consider dumping Modo / Maya…
The comparison page I mentioned says that Maya LT is missing nCloth, nFur, nParticles, rigid bodies and bullet physics integration. I’m not sure if nSomething is the only way to implement those in maya, but blender comes with hair/cloth/particle effects, rigidbodies and physics included and enabled. It is pretty much possible to use it even for cloth design, although cloth sim is much slower than Marvelous Designer’s.
The one really troubling part of the comparison is “Pipeline and integration” part, where it basically says that Maya LT does not have Python support, you can’t load 3rd party plugins and tools, or design your own plugins.
If this information is correct, then it is really, really, really, bad. In blender, obviosuly, all this is can be done by default.
Blender has modifier stacks, but those are not quite at the same level as what I saw in 3dsmax. Blender, indeed, excels in destructive workflow, like traditional box modeling where you slice/extrude faces.
However, there are few exceptions here. For example, once you’ve decided your topology, you could modify mesh easily and save results as shapekeys. Mirror, Subdivision surfaces are modifiers, there are array and solidify modifiers, meaning that while at the bottom level you may be working on a mesh geometry destructively, half of the job is done by modifier stack.
Blender also includes node based material editor, so on material level you can be as non-destructive as you want. It also supports volumetrics (if your machine can handle it). If you start working with particles, making grass and clouds, your workflow will be less destrcutive.
There was one dude who tried to make node editor work with scene geometry in his addon called “Sverchok”. I’m not sure if this one is still being maintained, though.
Things you might find awkward:
Pole targets on ik chains.
The way UV unwrapping is handled. UV maps are part of mesh data, meaning you don’t really ahve “UW unwrap” modifier, like it worked in 3dsmax.
There aren’t really any parametric primitives.
“No parametric” primitives means that you can spawn procedural shapes, tune their parameters (number of segments, etc), but once you’re done adjusting them, and move them even a little, they’re “frozen” and are turned into mesh. Meaning blender is not the kind of tool you’ d want to use for CSG based workflow.
On other hand, there are addons like archimesh, which allows you to build houses pretty much sims style:
Regarding sculpting, you can do stuff like this:
^^ That demonstrates dyntopo in action. Dyntopo workflow is quite close to using a voxel tool, although it still operates on polygons.
So, basically, as a tool blender is incredibly versatile, and even though it has few oddities here and there, it is hard to beat the price.
As for “complete PITA” to work with, you need to adapt hotkey based workflow. If you try looking for UI buttons for everything, you’ll have a bad time.