MAX vs MAYA

[Carlos L]

Hi

I am currently a VIZ user and here in the studio we are planning to extend our service offering visual effects and post-production for TV and video.

 

I have been doing some research on the best tools (affordable and useful) in the industry.

 

Maya has quite a long time in the industry of VFX, games and film, but i haven't seen impressive/realistic rendering results like those made in MAX.

 

Please share any thoughs about this.

 

Thanks

[mbr]

It's all the artist. That can't be stressed enough.

 

Have you seen John Chismar's work in Max? It's the NBC logo stuff you see on every station now. Really great and incredible knowledge of the program.

 

Maya has a long history (relative, of course) of being used in the high end tv/movies. Mostly because it begin there, as Alias before Maya, and slowly worked down to an affordable model that is there today. But the full version, is still outrageous ($7 or $8,000, I believe).

If you look through the archive here, you'll see arch viz guys using Maya that look equally impressive.

 

It doesn't matter, really. The creative part is by far the most important. If you know Max, then go with it. Maya used to be better with character animation, but I believe the newer Character Studio brings Max up to par (although I do 0 character animation, so I don't know).

 

I believe they are really close, in terms of flexibility and effects. Particle Flow (is that correct??) is out now for Max and is supposed to be great, where Maya's particles were previously better.

It's all nit picking, though. You have to figure out what exactly you need.

 

Both are great and both have made incredible work at the hands of talent.

 

Oh, one mroe thing, what will you be editing with? Discreet seems to be doing a good job of tying Max into Combustion.

[Carlos L]

Thanks for the comments

 

I agree with you with the artist part.

The talent i guess is the most important aspect besides the tool.

 

I have downloaded the Combustion Trial and i am very happy with the results i am getting.

 

Max 6 particle flow seems also very promissing as our goal is not focused on character animation. We want to focus on Visual effects and post-production.

We would like to stay in a compatible workflow. This means we don't want to buy software that it's not compatible with our current produiction environment.

 

MAX seems to be the answer by now.

And yes, it's getting more powerful everyday.

 

thanks

[ch83575]

I learned Max in (architecture) school, but was never happy working in it. The modeling seemed awkward to me, and it always seemed hard to do things even when I knew exactly what I wanted.

 

Then I met MAYA! Its hard to describe the main differences between the two progams, but they are dramatic. The way I see it Max only lets you see and interact with the top level, or final product, of your model or scene. Maya on the other hand gives the artist access to the basic node based framework that builds that model or scene at all levels of the process.

 

I agree that which program to use is totaly personal preference and which program you feel most comfortable with. Both programs can basicaly do anything you can dream! I can make things much more photo-realistic with Maya, but that is because it what I am most familiar with at this point (hell, all my final renderings are mental-ray which now ships with max too).

 

Just had to put in my 2 cents. I know that my peference on this is becoming rare, so I feel I have to stick up for MAYA whenever i get the chance :angewink: .