Blender vs Maya

Support Basics & Interface
61

Look, all I’m doing is to try and establish how this community can make Blender the best. You might be happy to keep Blender as a hobby tool or whatever but I (and I’m sure I’m not alone) want to see Blender recognised as the best and it currently isn’t.

The best WHAT???

Rolls-Royce, Ferrari or Lambourghini might be the BEST car but they all suck bigtime when you need to tow a horsebox into the hills for a camping trip, or move your mother-in-law’s stuff.

What’s the best motorcycle, the best plane, the best dog? It all depends what you want to use it for. In your case the only benchmark is Hollywood.

%<

62

What’s wrong with using Hollywood as a benchmark? Do you think that’s an unreachable target too? I’ve seen some pretty darn good quality stuff done in Blender - photoreal stuff. I don’t have a link to the guy’s site but it is superb.

And what do you mean “the best WHAT???”. The best 3D modelling, rendering, animating solution, that’s what. There’s not really that much difference between what various 3d software packages strive to achieve, unlike vehicles.

63

There’s not really that much difference between what various 3d software packages strive to achieve, unlike vehicles.

Suit yourself.

%<

64

Personally I think Blender has a better workflow than
eg. 3dstudio max, I ended up ditching my commercial
3dstudioMax (4.2) package simply because I enjoyed
modelling characters in Blender faster and more
efficient.

What Blender lacked however (at the time) where the
render quality, and Yafray was just too slow for any
serious work. But The internal renderer in Blender
is still very fast and they’re really improving on it.

What I want to say is this…

I’ve just been hired on a 3 month project to make
a professional character with Blender, and the
client ditched 7 other ad-companies because he
simply liked the stuff I did in Blender.

Blender isn’t a second-citizen anymore, it’s
becoming VERY big.

And the coders behind Blender are GENIOUSES in
my book.

3Dstudio max is BLOATED and crash frequently
(Anyone in the business KNOWS this) and belive
me…I’ve had one or two major headaches over that
one.

But Blender (knock-on-wood) hasn’t crashed at all for me!
And I’ve been working on speed-modelling compos for
hours…never seen a crash. It’s a DREAM to work with…

So don’t EVER anyone call Blender’s coders lowly
or incompetent. These coders ROCK!!

Im a happy guy today - I just landed the contract
with BLENDER 3D! I never landed such a contract
with my fully lawfully paid for 3dstudio max package. :smiley:

Of course…I probably could have landed it with
3dstudio max…but I used Blender because I liked
it better…

…and so did the client. Weee…life is good.

And for the Hair plugin - I use fiber, but probably
won’t because of lack of “custom control…curls, thinhair etc”
but maybe ripsting or someone working on Blender will
code it natively for Blender one day If we’re really
lucky.

Personally I’m hoping for an UV-painter that makes it
a breeze to just “dab on” details. A dream…and a
nightmare to code I’m sure. But hey…The coders
took Blender this far…!! Amazing work.

Just wanted to say this.

/JoOngle

65

Amen. :slight_smile:

66

I don’t know what I can add to this very interesting discussion other than my own views.

I was once big on the illegal software thing. I downloaded Softimage XSI, Maya, Lightwave, 3D studio, Houdini. You name it I’ve downloaded it. It was almost like a collection.

I dabbled around in these programs but never did much. I got a bit into Lightwave and made an animation here and there. Thats it.

I was 14/15 years old at the time so I can just say I was young and foolish. Two years ago I was sick of the whole business: the cracks, the viruses, the faulty downloads etc. Thats when I found Blender. The second I discovered Blender I knew I was onto something. There were so many buttons and features right there. Once I saw the quality of the work people were producing with Blender I realised that as a hobbyist I would never reach the limit of Blender’s potential never mind 3D Studio and the rest. I never used 1% of those applications potential.

I am now using a different tact: instead of breaking copyright, I am looking for copyleft. I am now running linux and trying to use only GNU tools. In my opinion computer code is far to flexible and versatile a medium to try to apply old printing press laws. Illegal software simply won’t go away and its usage will spread.

For me it isn’t Blender vs Maya. It is GNU CG vs Proprietry CG. Blender is the centre of the GNU graphics world as many projects link together in Blender. Blender is so much more powerful when it is used in conjunction with other free software. I use Wings, yafray, Python, Toxic, Aqsis and a whole lot more with Blender. Blender may have a simplistic shading system but isn’t this issue more than mitigated for if you use Blender with RenderMan RSL in Aqsis?

For me what really makes Blender is Python. A complete, high-level programming language with more modules than you can throw a stick at. Advanced functions build up from simple operations, python gives you that control to turn a set of simple steps into something amazing. Like BlenderPeople, or the Beast. Unlike Maxscript or Mel which are program specific, Blender uses a completely seperate, well developed, GNU programming language: Python. That to me is a beautiful and elegant solution.

Blender grows by the accumulation of improvements by all who delve into the Blender source. And Blender is growing fast. It will gradually become more and more powerful without ever losing the wishes of its users. That is what I think software SHOULD be abaout. Maybe one day we will have true soft body dynamics, cloth simulation and volumetric particles. But this will take time.

I don’t expect anyone to take any notice of my opinions but as a hobbyist I’ve had my say. The people who use Maya are probably more qualified to talk about this subject.

Koba

67

I’m exactly the same Koba, I dabbled in all those apps just to see how I got on and really out of all of them (Carrara, pixels3d, lightwave etc.) I only liked Maya. But it was way too slow at loading and MEL was very limited and plugins crashed all the time. When they did crash, it was so annoying because you had to wait about 30 secs for the app to load again. Blender takes next to no time to restart if things go wrong (which ain’t often) and python is surprisingly fast. Another thing with Maya is that I could never get mental ray to work properly - every scene just crashed with unsupported texture formats and materials errors etc.

I didn’t know about Blender until I came across it by accident, through my frustration with Maya. I wanted an app that I could run properly on my lil’ laptop and I think Maya is just designed to be run on a workstation, whereas Blender works great on everything. I reckon maybe why more people don’t use Blender is just down to publicity. On all those dvd extras it’s always Maya this, 3ds that, so people who start out and don’t know apps like Blender exist just think that Maya or 3ds is the be all and end all.

I’m actually most interested by JoOngle, though. I totally agree that the Blender workflow is much faster. It probably just depends on what suits you best but I think it’s very intuitive. You’re right about the Blender coders too - I don’t think anyone in the forum could disagree, they have certainly made us very happy people. You’ve kind of hit on the point I was trying to find out at the start of the post. It’s not that I wanted to compare the two apps for which was better.

I wanted to find out if it was worth my while learning Blender because I want to follow 3d modelling/animation as a career and everywhere I look for work, I see “must have Maya or 3ds Max experience”. Very rarely did I see “must have Blender experience”, although I did find one recently. I applied, I was rejected (again, sigh).

Do you have a homepage so I can see examples of your work - I’d like to see what quality I have to get up to in order to land a job. Also, how did you land your contract? Maybe you advertised yourself as freelance or did you trail loads of websites hoping to find a job (like I’m doing). I’ve applied for work to 32 companies so far and only 3 have been vaguely interested. Also, did you study animation at uni or did you just learn it on your own and do you do other work and keep animation as an extra. Also, do you do post-production or gaming or both?

I’m sorry for all the questions but I’m just desparate to get work in the animation or gaming industry and I would appreciate any advice people have. Does anyone know the best way. I see so many great works of art online and I keep thinking I’ll never reach that standard. As long as I can reach it with Blender eventually then I’ll stick with it.

68

Fair enough, It’s ok to ask - how would we ever learn if we don’t ask?!

  1. My website is here : http://www.hamsterking.com

  2. They came by my site looking for a certain style in
    characters and decided that I had what they wanted.
    For once…I was lucky :slight_smile: This is the break I’ve been waiting
    and WORKING hard for over 10 years to get. It takes quite
    a lot of work to first learn to draw…and then 3d.

In all honesty - most customers who are looking for
logos, mascot’s, animation etc…don’t really care what
applications you use…in fact most of them would rather
prefer that you don’t mention it…and focus on THEIR NEEDS
instead of your fancy equipment. (Took me a while to
realize that…hehe) but of course…they don’t want to
pay anything for the equipment or application you use
unless they REALLY want what you do. etc. Since
there is a lot of competition they can basically pick
and choose anyone they want…I guess I was the
lucky one this time :slight_smile:

Such work is important. It gives extra experience,
but I never gave up - ever…that’s the secret.

Many times I don’t even go out to search for
related jobs because as an artist…you often
feel that you aren’t good enough so you just keep
working on improving again and again…the fun
thing is…so does your “quality-standards”…so
whatever you did yesterday …kind of sucks today,
well…thats how I felt for a long time, now it feels
better because someone actually wants to pay
good money for what I do. You can only imagine
what feeling that gives inside someone who worked
hard for 10 years to achieve it…and this is still
just the beginning.

I’ve lived on a poor-man’s budget for a long time
and was near the end of my unemployment-term
insurance…so the job really SAVED me in many ways.

I hope that inspires someone of you to keep figthing
and to never EVER give up.

Take care
/JoOngle

69

Many thanks JoOngle, that has given me some encouragement to keep going. I keep getting hassle from family and friends to just do something else so I can earn my keep. They don’t realise how much I want to do this and how hard it is to do this kind of work. I think mainly because it wasn’t invented, so to speak, when they were around. 3D art has only really taken off in the last 10-20 years or so.

I can only imagine how you must have felt just before you got that job but I think I’m getting close to that feeling now. I don’t think I could last another year let alone 9. I’ve only been at it a year so far so I guess I probably have a way to go yet. Still, thanks again for your post and I hope your job goes well, you certainly deserve it. :wink:

70

May I ask you if you produce feature films or broadcast television content?

Well I don’t at the moment. I develop web content and other new media materials. I think that Maya would be way more than I need at the moment. I would hardly use half if even that, of Maya’s features in my work anyway.

71

Most 3d folks don’t have large studios that house teams of artist and advanced CG hardware and customized 3d and 2d software running on special OS’s. I don’t know if it is worth most of our time trying to compare our artwork workflow to that kind of workforce.

Our time is better spent on improving our personal workflow, art design quality and software. Then we can work on presenting our work to real world clients for new media services offerings. As far as quality of workmanship, many freelance 3d artists outside of Hollywood are better than some of the lead artist on the staff of some major studios. Their work just ends up on a product box etc. or in some promotion.

It’s kind of like comparing a custom auto shop to Ford Motor Company. Hehehe. That would be a stretch.

Humm, although some custom made cars do tend to look better than mass produced models, now that’s a thought.

72

Look, all I’m doing is to try and establish how this community can make Blender the best. You might be happy to keep Blender as a hobby tool or whatever but I (and I’m sure I’m not alone) want to see Blender recognised as the best and it currently isn’t.

As fligh said “the best what?”. Believing that all software can be ranked on a linear scale between “the worst” and “the best”, is simplistic and naive. Not only are different apps good for different things, but different apps function differently and have their own ‘characters’. As I mentioned before, what matters is not some imaginary objective “best”, based on what other people use and marketing hype, what matters is what is the
best for you - the most useful, or the most economic tradeoff between price and quality, or the most configurable, or what allows you go pump out work fast in order to meet tight deadlines, or whatever. There are way too many variables involved.

If you think I want Blender to be a hobby tool, you mustn’t have paid any attention to what I wrote. Implying that because Blender is not currently used in Hollywood means that it’s only a hobby tool is absurd. I’ll reiterate - people are using Blender professionally every day. Hollywood is only a small segment of the 3D graphics world, no matter how sexy it may be.

Comparing it to the likes of Maya is not self-defeating unless you think Blender does not have the potential to be compared to it, which I think it does. If you think it doesn’t then you are insulting Blender developers. And in this respect, it’s no more dangerously close to saying Blender is a knock-off than saying 3ds Max is a knock-off.

You misunderstand me. I’m not saying “Blender is beyond critque”. I’m saying that if you use another application (for example Maya) as a benchmark of what Blender should be, then the absolute most Blender will ever be is a cheap knock-off of Maya. Blender has its own style and way of working.

But the mentality of always playing catch-up is a good thing, I think. Because it gives the developers goals and targets. And this mentality leads to innovation. “Necessity is the mother of invention”. If Blender doesn’t need to get better then why not just stop development right here and now?

Hell no. have you seen most open source software lately? There’s a huge mentality of “catching up” to other apps, which leads to a terrible dearth of innovation. It seems that a lot of the time, the single most attractive feature for open source apps is that they’re free. I don’t want Blender to be like that - Blender can and should stand on its own merits. Blender can and is getting better every day, in its own way. It doesn’t need to copy Maya to do so.

You appear to be the only person in this post who thinks this discussion is a waste of time and if so then you shouldn’t post here.

I do think this discussion is a waste of time. If you want Blender to get better, then put your money where your mouth is, and help out. Either directly by working on its code, or through researching and proposing improvements for Blender that fit within the Blender paradigm, helping out other members of the community, writing tutorials or documentation, contributing articles for the various web sites, and so on. Coming in here after a week with Blender and little understanding of the issues or community involved, ranting about these things is not a particularly productive catalyst for change.

73

have not read full thread pages, no time.

I have used maya and Max at some jobs.

Nothing serious, I don’t know Maya. But i know Max. And I think Max is very good . And as i don’t know maya, I suppose is very good too.The other game artist at the company was Maya user, and he liked it a lot.

I tend lately to be very careful to think my self a software is no good or worse…As one often gets wrong.

I have purchased myself Deep Paint3d(more than 1000$), Ultimate Unwrap(40$), truespace 4.3 (70$ recently), Character Fx(15$), Softy3d, Amorphium, Zbrush (just don’t remember the price) .I’m an active and enthusiast user of Wings3d and Metasequoia. I am very deep user of all those, plus those I learnt at jobs: Max, Organica, Photoshop …several other.

well, there’s no other incredible thing as Blender out there, I mean , for free. Just like that. None so complete, so advanced.

Even more: IMHO, if you really want to do a comparison (which would not be fair to Blender, and would leave the main advantages of blender out) strictly in what is power, etc, Then…I’d say…there are some key features that Blender has that other mid cost packages do not have.

I think those are the ones to be really frightened.
Is being polished x export, not much of those have it. It combines polygon editing, renderer getting really good (and you can always use yafray) and many other features not so easy to find in a mid cost package.

Weight painting for bones, for example. Complex constrains, etc. Loads of importers and exporters, which indeed are improving constantly, and you even have access to the code at any time. That’s in no kind of package.
I now have no kind of problem importing OBJ files into blender, and build a scene or make character animations (well, I’m hoping for that pinned bone feature :wink: ) , export for realtime, or render.

I don’t know, all what is in the works now, is going to make Blender something even more powerful and something I yet got to realize what will mean…

diplacement painting (zbrush) , ambient occlussion, fiber, etc, etc…
And free :o

Yup, maya and Max have their uber power money behind, huge teams, etc…

But I must point out something…Blender is done by enthusiast…paid work somtimes yes, but sometimes does not mean passion… :wink:
So, I disagree paid work is done better than that what you make for the love of it. You maybe slower as you just use your free time, but heh, it even can end better…

I see Blender like a flexible beast, thanks to python… I have a friend, is a great coder and loves python since always…I’m trying to attract him to Blender world… :wink: He’s starting to like a lot the way it looks like.

I may self…have been able to learn all what I need for now, and not too much need of touching the manual(I’ll need for the NLA), and imho it wasn’t so before…

BTW, I see you mention in sometime Max…see many Maya users consider bad Max (maybe is not your case) while I think for what is animation, scene building, rendering (specially with Final render, brazil, but lately also with skilyght and some tricks) is simply great.

The fact is Blender is giving me high end features, and advanced 3d realtime character stuff I never have at home…

Imho, the packages I mentioned I use…may excel in their areas, that’s why I use them (ie: deep paint3d for 2d/3d painting directly textures, it blows away anything else I’ve used for it) , but Blender already has a flavour of each, is just it can’t be as specialized as “do this only” tools…
but it concentrate all stuf in one package, life saver…

I still don’t think is bad using many tools with Blender for speed, some features… But is also good blender does so many things that i could even not use my other tools.

I don’t really see a point iin comparing with Maya.

74

Again … why compare blender immediately to maya ? What about those other commercial apps in between like cinema 4D, RHINO …

I think it’s more realistic to compare blender to those at first because there are pro’s out there using those apps …

md01

75

I don’t know if you guys read my reply to JoOngle. I think he made the most relevant comment to what I wanted. But first, I don’t know why people keep saying at the end of their posts how it is silly to compare Maya to Blender when most people are saying how many features Blender has that can rival other 3d apps - isn’t that a bit of a contradiction? You’re practically comparing it yourselves then saying it’s pointless to do so. Alright, it didn’t have to be Maya but that seems to be the standard these days.

And using Maya as a benchmark doesn’t mean Blender will always be a cheap knock-off, broken, I don’t think anyone here would think Blender is. My personal reasons include the following:

Blender can do radiosity, which is something the Maya internal renderer can’t do and Blender can easily output to loads of renderers, which Maya certainly can’t (or at least doesn’t) do well. It has a built in gaming engine, which Maya doesn’t have - I mean not one that you can use in the way you can with Blender. I think Maya’s engine is lower level so you actually have to write C++ code, yuck. Blender is sooo good that it is comparable to Maya. I’m not saying we should try and pick a winner. You’re totally right, there isn’t a universal best app - just the best app for the individual but I just wanted to compare features to see how much Blender can actually do. In the same way before I used 3ds Max I would like to see if it can do what Maya can. If you go to buy a car, you don’t just take one look from the outside and write out your $3000 check, you want to see if it will go the distance, maybe read online reviews or features lists. I know, with Blender there’s no real financial loss because it’s free but it’s down to time and here’s why:

The real reason I wanted to weigh the two apps was to see if it was worth learning Blender instead of Maya. I’m trying to start a career in 3d animation/modelling and the job offers I see mainly (about 95% of them) say “must have Maya or 3ds Max experience”. Now, if I walk in and say I have Blender experience I just wondered if I would be considered for the job. JoOngle says that he got work from his Blender use, therefore problem solved, mainly. Also, as other people have mentioned, by the time I’m good enough to use it’s full features, Blender will have gotten even better and so will probably let me do everything that I need even if it can’t at present, which I don’t know yet.

I just didn’t want to go through using Blender for months and then get through a project and say “how do you do X effect in Blender” and find it can’t be done. Well, probably anything’s possible as it’s open-source but I mean easily. I guess it sort of echoes the post I saw about a test for Blender and it being used on a commercial project. But I notice that post wasn’t criticised for comparing it to 3ds max. And I also noticed the guy reverted to using 3ds Max to do the job. I don’t want this to happen to me. I want to use Blender for everything.

And again to broken, I will put my money where my mouth is when I have the money to do so and I am trying to help improve Blender on the coding side by getting some cloth feature put in. And I frequently help out other users with their Blender troubles on this site, instead of just criticising them. How much money or expertise have you contributed? Just because you have more posts than I do doesn’t mean they were constructive ones either. Now, if on the other hand, you are a developer of Blender or a major contributor, I apologise if I offended you in any way but if not and you are just an average poster like me then I reiterate that if you don’t like the post then leave it well alone.

76

I don’t know why people keep saying at the end of their posts how it is silly to compare Maya to Blender when most people are saying how many features Blender has that can rival other 3d apps - isn’t that a bit of a contradiction? You’re practically comparing it yourselves then saying it’s pointless to do so. Alright, it didn’t have to be Maya but that seems to be the standard these days.

Well… I for one never compared maya to blender… I did say that some ppl thought that blender was easier to use than 3DS…

There’s always this thing going on about what’s the standard these days and personally I don’t know … because it might well be 3DS… I hear different things all the time so actually for this thread to be complete you SHOULD include also a package like 3DS in the ‘comparison’…

Also … because there are so many ppl also using other packages… it would be only good for the completeness of the ‘comparison’ to also include packages as cinema and rhino…because when you open some 3d mags… they pay alot of attention to those apps as well…

All I know is that threads like these are always going places they shouldn’t %| %| and will always work on some ppls nerves…

md01

77

Ok, I now understand where you’re coming from. Apologies for being a bit grumpy - these issues (especially that of cloning other software) often get me riled up and passionate.

I’m sure you don’t want to hear any more from me, but I’ll mention this anyway, now that your point has been elucidated. In this present day, knowing Blender won’t get you a sexy job on a major motion picture. Perhaps some time in the future if things keep improving as they are, but definitely not now. However Blender is still extremely useful in all the other areas of the industry that I mentioned. If you’re just starting out though (like it seems you are), knowing Maya isn’t going to get you a job either. It’s only once you can prove to an employer that you’ve artistic talent that anyone will take you seriously, and that can be done in any application.

PS. Whether or not I’ve contributed to Blender doesn’t matter. Take my points for what they are.

Cheers

78

Yeah, you’re right, these things do get out of hand sometimes - I didn’t intend it to. And I didn’t mean for it to be a sole comparison between those 2 apps, those are just the ones I know and have used.

Anyway, I’ve got what I wanted out the post thanks to JoOngle, so if there’s nothing more constructive to say, it’s probably best to let this post die off. Agreed?

79

Err…I don’t agree at all with that point!

Knowing and USING Blender can in fact land you that sexy job.
It’s more important what you CREATE than what TOOL you use.
Blender CAN be used to make GREAT art. And that’s what it’s
all about in the end.

I know for a fact that most reputable studios want ARTISTS for
the ART jobs…not technicfreaks. If you create something wonderful
in 3d/2d-whatever…they’ll look at your skills as an artist
and they won’t even ask what software you prefer to use.

The truth is - they want “traditional” artists above the “software-users”
simply because training them to the proprietary software in-house
is a breeze…it ususally takes 14 days to get people up to speed
if they already have the nessesary UNDERSTANDING of 3d/2d
thinking/working-art etc.

The reason I know this, is because I have friends over at
a “very-VERY well known company” AND I’ve been educated
in the traditional arts&animation for many years at a place
that delivers people to these companies. And we have famous
people from the studios over all the time to explain the “needs”
they have for artists. Belive me…they don’t care AT ALL for
the software you use…they care for what you can do as an
artist . Does the stuff you do look great to them? If so…you’ll
probably get hired if you have the right attitude and they have
enough projects.

And enough about that…to put things in another perspective
(wich I think is really what you ment)…is

Blender isn’t ready for the hollywood studio as an In-house
production tool. But that day might come.

But Blender will MOST CERTAINLY be good enough for
people to LEARN 3D and to CREATE great works of art
that CAN and WILL land them the sweet jobs if they work
hard enough for it (I know…because I’m one of those that
actually landed the sweet-job).

Take care - and keep up the FANTASTIC work you and others
do with and to Blender! I am SO thankful for this.

/JoOngle

80

I’m a max user, but the longer I play with blender I’m getting prefer blender for my own work.

Just my 2 cents and my own opinion because I’m not an old blender player, but I don’t think you can really compare blender with giant commercial animation software such as maya, the gap is too big. But with more consideration of what purpose you need an animation software, what kind of project, how big is the project is.

I like blender, i have everything I need in blender. I don’t need hair, cloth or dynamic and rich full blown effects, at least, yet. Blender don’t bloat my Windows and Linux with such protection services like C-Dilla or Digimation, or require much file association, only .blend. I like blender for its compactness combined with its completeness. Also with blender I began to learn much more than using more user friendly commercial softwares. I also liked how blender encourages me to use keyboard shortcuts rather than clicking the icons. This is what happen when I’m using max, I use the interface icons too much than keyboard shortcut, thus in some cases I work faster in blender than in max