Difference between Max and Maya

[whale]

I am a very good user of Max,, .. and i have had various arguements with people who dont even know anything about 3d that maya is better and stronger than max and that max is very easy and has limits...

 

i want to start this thread so i can hear the opinions of others. doing this will make me be able to face any opposition..... Thanks

[Exellite]

if max is easy i must be a retard

[Ghan]

Same here...i could be retarted 2 then

 

Sketchup is easy...not Max!

[Exellite]

this question prompted me to jump on google and the consensus seems to be "it's not what you have, it's how you use it that counts"

 

hmm where have i heard that before...

 

something most professionals seem to agree on though is Maya is best for character animation

[TheAllusionisst]

I think it is relative, compared to SketchUp it is complex, but compared to XSI it seems easier to use. I like XSI and think it does more but I am using Max the majority of the time because it is easier to use (for me) and there is so much out there for Max that is specific to arhvis as far as content and third party plugins, not to mention Max's core features for working with CAD files.

 

I don't have or know Maya, but I had been seriously researching it prior to buying XSI and somewhat follow along what is going on with it. Long term 3D officionados use to comment on how Max continually adopted features and workflows from Maya and were copying it in a sense, I am not denying or defending it, but Maya is the 'King of the Hill' as far as general CG goes, maybe not in seats sold, but in strength of what it will actually do. A lot of these features are over kill for the average user and it's built in render engine for a long time was it's achiles heel in the eyes of the general public, but large studio's had pipe lines in place to use render engines of choice that the average joe didn't have access to. If you look at places like HighEnd 3D and Autodesk's Area you will see that there is a kind of golden era going on for Maya as far as scripts and third party addons, some cool archvis related stuff as well.

 

My opinion is that Maya and XSI are stronger programs, but Max, in large part due to Autodesk's backing, is a stronger platform outside of Hollywood or large studios due to the 3rd party addons and render engine options, not to mention EASE of USE That is of course an opinion and everyone has one, but I think if you talked to people in big production houses outside of archvis it might be the concensus.

 

I think your argument should be that Max is the best at what you do, I don't think a generalized statement open to all fields of CG can be won by anybody, They all have their strengths and weeknesses and as far as relying on number of seats sold, that has a lot to do with being at the right place at the right time, MicroStation backed Unix in the early days and AutoCad chose to back DOS, the rest is history.

[pailhead]

Max is much easier than houdini.

 

Anway, this is the whole point

 

"people who dont even know anything about 3d"

 

 

Maya is good, but t's not "stronger" or anything than max, it has is pros and cons. As far as us arch-viz guys are concerned, it was mostly the lack of quality 3rd party renderers like vray that made max a far better choice than maya or anything else for that matter.

[afterglow]

Have used Maya, XSI and Max over the years and personally i much prefer XSI, followed by Maya, and only ever used Max due to the fact that (as u guys have mentioned) all of the 3rd party stuff tailored for arch viz is made for Max. Max definitely has the least intuitive interface.

[anvaraziz]

http://www.aecmag.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=123&Itemid=35

[Koper]

Max definitely has the least intuitive interface.

 

imo if you wanna look at it that way then its like comparing a pop band(maya) to a heavy metal punk rock band (max), i agree, max's UI doens't look as good but d@m, it works fine. hardCORE

[whale]

i think the whole point is that, in the Archviz world Max is the king of the hill,,, but when it comes to character projects and visual effects, Maya has more egde and stance...

[Spooner04]

I think it's a matter of preference, I've seen equally great work come out of many different types of software. Even some pretty cool sketchup stuff with some post in Photoshop or illustrator. I think that software shouldn't be the ceiling of your imagination/creativity, and in general you should always try and push the edge/limits.

 

 

 

My opinion is that Maya and XSI are stronger programs, but Max, in large part due to Autodesk's backing, is a stronger platform outside of Hollywood or large studios due to the 3rd party addons and render engine options, not to mention EASE of USE

 

Now that autodesk owns Maya as well, I would expect to see this become less of an issue and expect to see more melding and integration between all autodesk software.

[Guest nazcaLine]

i recently downloaded the maya 7 personal learning edition, so i could learn this software (which i always wanted to do) and it's not that difficult. with time, you can master it as you do with max, it has many features that max does and the workflow makes sense to me. BUT, here comes the big difference: maya is node-based, its software architecture is completely different. every object, material, light, camera, etc. in maya has several nodes, and you can relate those nodes between them: that way you could, for example, control a door with the color of any other object. you imagine?? that means a huge power, its flexibility has no limits. that's why is very popular in film production, character animation and visual effects, because those effects you see in movies NEED that power.

in arch viz all that stuff would be an overkill, you get enough with max and vray.

every software is the king in its field, each has its pros and cons.

 

Eduardo

[3DEXTRUDE]

Good Post...and i had to get into this one...you know it, i just had to.

 

Well, i use Maya a lot more than i am using 3ds max. I just recently returned to 3ds max, and not because i wanted to, but because at my new job i am the only guy doing 3D architecture, and they only use 3ds max 9.

 

I never really hated 3ds max, but i can say that i never really loved it that much as well. 3ds max, to me has been a lot easier than Maya. You can take both programs apart and start analizing its workflow. Maya is node based, kinda like Shake. 3ds max is not.

 

I have been using Maya and 3ds max since the year of 2000. Matter of fact, at my college we learned 3ds max first. So, knowing only 1 program for the first 2 years, i thought there is nothing better out there. I came to figure that they were teaching 3ds max first because it was a lot easier than lets say jumping into Maya. When we took more advanced classes in animation and modeling, we had to switch to Maya. At first i kept saying..3DS MAX RULES...after my first week, i started thinking that 3ds max not even close to what maya can do.

 

I really don't mind how you take this crit. Take it with a grain of salt. Everyone who has ever used 3ds and Maya, they always tell me 3ds is easier. 3ds max, can produce great work and i don't believe one of them is lacking in that area.

 

I just belive that 3ds max could do better in the UI area, while Maya could do better on their sub-D area. If they had a Maya and 3ds max in my office, i would definately use Maya. I am faster, and quicker in every way. For me it just works. Most of my modeling i do these days in Silo anyways...So i save tons of time from scrolling on the side panels in 3ds max to find the " RING tools, Loop tools" etc..

 

The person who noted that outside hollywood 3ds max is a better choice, i would say that person was RIGHT! The problem these days are that people who use 1 program for so long and they hardly checked out another program, they are die-hard fans of that product and they will dispise any negativity towards their product. Like this site, is mainly based on 3ds max and cad. I wouldn't be surprised if someone would dispise those who said anything negative towards 3ds max.

 

3Ds max is already overbloated, and i think that is a major problem in future versions of 3ds max. Maya, is not nearly as bad in the UI area than 3ds max in mho. At the end it all comes down to preference as i have said that over and over in the past. If you love 3ds max, and you can do great work, more power to you. If you love maya and you can't live without it, more power to you as well. For me, maya has to be a part of my life, and now 3ds max is also a part of my life. In my opinion its " sad " to see people who argue over software and wanting 1 program to come out on top over the other. Why not learn both or as many programs out there as you can, and save that argument to those who only know one program. That will show how much that person knows about software and no need to waste time to try to prove that person wrong....

 

If you know Maya and 3ds max " more power to you" If not, i would recommend to pick up maya some day and learn it. Its not as bad as everyone think. For me it can be a lot faster in a lot of areas than 3ds max.

 

cheerz..

[selvaimages]

hi!

i like max as wel as maya...

two things are pretty good.. doing their job well!!!

easy is according to the person. and i didnt feel the difference between softwares. "both are kings and queens"

[rnx]

hi,

I started with 3d studio (dos) R3. I had a mental block when i tried to learn Maya (then version 4 probably). But then i did jump in and started to love it as well. Like many on this forum will point out- its a matter of personal comfort/ease/knowledge. I use both softwares, but i have to admit that for architectural work i am much more comfortable in max. Dynamics- i'd prefer Maya. Not because its better but because i know it better in Maya in that area. i love both these softwares. I hate it when i get stuck. And that happens often.

rnx

[Nils Norgren]

I think all the points about the comparison are valid, there is one that I think people often overlook and it has to do with the origins of the software. Maya is the genesis of Alias, Wavefront and some other software. Back in the days of Jurassic park and other ground breaking movies, the studios all used Alias to model, softimage to animate and renderman to render. Each studio built it own pipeline between software, specific project exporters, etc. Max comes from the more humble roots of 3d studio, which ran on PCs (the others all ran on SGIs) in DOS. Max (and the dos version of 3ds) have always out of necessity had to include ALL parts of a pipeline, there were importers, for getting geometry into the software, all the modeling tools they could make at the time, animation tools (Softimage had working "Function curves" long before anyone else), and most importantly Rendering tools.

 

For the most part Maya still has roots in the Studio model, of being one piece of a larger pipeline. Maya now has many parts of the pipeline built in, but almost no one rendered in the built-in renderer, it was always assumed that studios rendered in a Production - level renderer. Only recently (last 3-5 years) have Max users started relying on 3rd party renderers.

 

Bottom line is that Maya is more easily dropped into a production environment where there are people to integrate new tools into the pipeline and augment the environment to suit the project or studio's workflow. As far as I know there is still no "Network rendering" built into Maya, Max has always attempted to build everything you would need in a production pipeline into one app. Both sofware have converged to the point where they seem to have the same list of abilities but they come from very different places, and work in very different ways.

 

There are now very few things you can do with maya that you cant do with max (although there are some) many of the similarities live in features that Arch vis professionals rarely touch like Parameter wiring, On screen UI elements, Reactor, various controller types, Maxscript, expressions, Ease and Multiplier curves (the list could go on).

 

It is useful to get context from this historical perspective, the two software came from very different roots, and have both evolved so far that they resemble each other. People need to first, be a capable 3d artist, learn as many tools as they can. If you end up working at a studio then you need to use whatever they use, if you are freelance then you pick your tools. In the end it beats digging ditches (most of the time).

 

-Nils

[rnx]

Sums it up. Q.E.D.