Maya is insane....

[hand me a nine]

Hey all,

This seems really pointless, but i have just completed a course with Maya 7.

The size of it just amazes me.

In terms of Development, sometimes i have problems with coming up with the proper coding for the most basic of dynamic menus, to think someone has programmed software to trace each ray of light to me is insane.

When you think of the almost infinite size of Maya as a newbie, is there software that is more complex in the world than that of 3d applications?

Consider for example, i have been using maya on and off, learning, books etc for around 2 years and still i dont know probably 50% of the tools available at least. To think that each specific task maya does has been split into thousands of tools that all work together in perfect harmony... the scale of it to me is almost unbelieveable.

Does anyone remember Maya 1? What is the difference between 6-7 and 1.

I just wondered coz like i say, its pretty facinating to think of the technical abilitys of the people who develop Maya.

[Natsia]

phsss. V-ray & 3dmax

[kortex]

There are tons of 3d programs, each has its own special uses:
3dmax is a big one and an industry standard (also very expensive)

others include
blender (free, but hard to use)
bryce
poser
ligthwave
swift3d
vue

I am sure I missed some, but those are the one you here about alot.

[PAlexC]

Totally off-topic kortex, but there's severe irony going on in your footer. Your ColdFusion course is being sold off of an ASP .NET page.

[WannaBe_80z]

if you think the program is amazing look around this site at the 3d finished work forum...

www.cgtalk.com that site made me give up 3d

[admedia]

Maya is insane....

[kortex]

PAlexC
yeah aint it though. Unfortunately, I have no control over that as I developed as a thrid party as a content developer.

[jAQUAN]

Maya is just as much of a wonder to me. Forget raytracing, have you seen the trax editor? The way you can overlap settings from the graph with preanimated cycles all while making further tweaks on the actual timeline without destroying any of the history frickin blows me away.
I haven't touched 3dsmax since an old boss gave me his copy of maya which he never even installed or registered.
To think that Maya is actually 5 or 6 different apps really amazes me when you see how massively powerful it is.

[gerbick]

Kortex... you're limited to only 5 lines of text... you have seven. That's two too many.

[Sybersnake]

to think someone has programmed software to trace each ray of light to me is insane.

its not tracing its volumetric hue and saturation/brightness adjustment depending on the light. its just incredibly time consuming and takes a lot of very complex algorithmic math.

[gerbick]

blender (free, but hard to use)
bryce
poser
ligthwave
swift3d
vue

I seriously would never consider Bryce, Poser, and Vue in the same league as Maya and 3ds max.

But that's just the surface of 3D. Alias Maya while it's uptake from version 1.0 to now has been pretty swift, before it there was Alias|Wavefront PowerAnimator, the "grand-daddy" to Maya basically. And there's Softimage, Lightwave - from the Amiga days, and 3ds max - from the DOS days... those are still around and command respect due to their followings.

Newer programs like Cinema4D, Pixels3D (mac only though), and some lower end stuff like Strata3D, Hexagon, Shade3D (japanese program I ran into years ago whilst in Japan), among a ton of others... you could study most any 3D program, get the basics and then use it within any other 3D program for the most part.

And yeah... I remember Maya 1.0... can't say I was that impressed. But I knew it would grow due to Alias' understanding of the 3D world.

[kortex]

Oh I was not saying they were all in the same league. Just putting them out there for people to take a llok at and decide for themselves. Bryce, Poser, and Vue are definately not as powerful as 3dsmax or maya but I have found them useful from time to time.

[Sybersnake]

Pixels3D is fairly old.

[mrkvavle]

Maya is used mostly when realism is needed such as in the lord of the rings movies. 3ds max is used by gaming companies most of the time. But whichever package you use is dependant on the bias of the person buying the software licenses.

[gerbick]

Oh I was not saying they were all in the same league. Just putting them out there for people to take a llok at and decide for themselves. Bryce, Poser, and Vue are definately not as powerful as 3dsmax or maya but I have found them useful from time to time.

Want pretty mountains within 3ds max? I'd suggest using displacement maps. I'm definitely not the Bryce fan. Poser has it's uses, but it's output is easily recognizable from a mile away.

There's still tons of options... 3D is a huge arena. There's even esoteric apps out there... like Z-Brush, Carrara, luxology's modo... I could keep on going.

Pixels3D is fairly old.

lol. and this comes from the person that once told me you used this on a PC. It's never been a PC app... ever.

[jAQUAN]

Maya is used mostly when realism is needed such as in the lord of the rings movies. 3ds max is used by gaming companies most of the time. But whichever package you use is dependant on the bias of the person buying the software licenses.

That is so inaccurate, both apps have a great deal of both game related and cinema related features. Some of the great features may have been obscured by the growth in techniques.

"NURBS are faster."
"No, polys are faster."
"You want to start in nurbs, convert to polys, then refine as a sub-d."
"No, polys are faster."

That transition made it extremely difficult to learn the best practices.

[xup878]

3ds max is used by gaming companies most of the time.

We use Maya at work, i think a lot of games companies do now.
It is so much better than 3dMax... 3dmax is just clunky...
Maya, better poly editing tools, better animation tools, easy to write plugins for... perfect choice!

[mrkvavle]

nurbs are to polys as vector is to raster. Pick whichever you think suits your project. IMO maya is more powerful but its also much more difficult to use. 3DS max is faster to pick up but less powerful. Maybe more game companies are starting to go for more realistic approaches to 3D but when I was considering it as a career I found Film companies prefered maya for its realism and game companies favored 3DS max. I myself prefer maya.

As for programs like poser et all., all i have to say is its comprable to ms paint, whereas something like maya or 3ds max is comprable to Photoshop. If you can deal with ridicule and crappy 3d then go for it.

[jAQUAN]

nurbs are to polys as vector is to raster. Pick whichever you think suits your project.

The first part is true but doesn't have the same limitations in conversion. Almost no model is built all the way up with one method. Somethings can be blocked out quickly with nurbs, such as your basic face which is usually just a tube sock that starts with the inside of the mouth and ends with a neck, but when it comes time to create a blend shape node, you're going to want to convert to polys. Sometimes you want to go half way with a polygon proxy. It used to be that a decent poly count would kill most machines, especially if you were fine tuning with sub divisions but maya is much faster now and not everything you can do with polygons can be achieved 'as quickly' with nurbs when it comes to things like deformation or physical simulations.

And MEL is the perfect extension to the maya, I've written a few tool palletes for myself fairly easily. Mostly like writing javascript with a few C++ commands.

[gerbick]

nurbs are to polys as vector is to raster.

erm... I think you need to look at that analogy once more. Nurbs are to polys much more like like beziers are to polylines and arcs.

You're also clueless about where 3ds max has been used... 3ds max has been used in countless movies such as Last Samurai, Sin City, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and a lot of others dude. Just because it's poly based doesn't mean that it's "old technology" nor obselete. Hell, if that's the case, you're forgetting Patch Modelling as well.

Nurbs honestly act in ways I'm personally not used to doing while modelling, but I'm a very old-school sub-divide, move vertex, sub-divide, move vertex... repeat. Nurbs... meh. It's nothing really all that new nor revolutionary. Just another way of modelling the same thing.

It's the render methods that can make your output shine though. Well that and an ability to model correctly. The tools are just that... a tool.