Probably old topic: Why 3DS over Maya?

[jaydenstorace]

Hi all, just wondering why the industry tends to lean towards 3DS Max so much more than Maya for arch vis? I know that at the end of the day its your ability and not the software which achieves the results, but are there some more specific features that 3DS Max has which gives it a competitive edge?

[Francisco Penaloza]

in a nutshell, 3d Max it been closer to Autodesk for a longer time than Maya, I am not sure how old you are, but 3D Max used to be the direct competitor for Maya long time ago, they actually still compete in many scenarios, but since Max was being developed by Autodesk then it received many AEC tools and compatibility scripting compared to Maya that really by then it was not much interested in Arch Viz, Maya always been more focused to Movie productions FX and such. As a matter of fact, Lightwave used to be very big on Arch Viz and Visualization in general by then.

 

Nowadays the difference seems minimal, even tho there are very clear differences, but for Arch Viz, Max got that little advantage than made is the default 3D software for this profession.

Having said that, other 3D software been catching up very quickly, so 3D Max vs Maya is not everything anymore, now you have Sketchup, Cinema 4D, Modo, Blender, Rhino, Unreal, Unity, Lumion, and others that could perfectly fit your Arch Viz pipeline.

 

Now if you don't look any details, and say, what software I should invest time to learn, first look your market, see what Architect and Engineers software they use, then you can decide what's more compatible with them, then you can see how large is the community and how many extra resources, such scripts, plugins, and already made asset are compatible with your 3D software.