First time poster, although I have been reading some stuff here on and off whenever it came up with google search, Ha!
I understand that comparisons such as the title of this thread are mostly useless/pointless and they come to no conclusions most of the time. That as it may be, such questions come time and again from noobs like me, as they are of paramount importance for noobs considering the time and dedication it takes to learn the software to any good level, and as the softwares are continuously being updated/upgraded, older threads become inconsequential - the information in old threads is not contemporary and thus not reliable.
Thus here is the same question once again.
What is better? Blender or Maya? I am asking this from capability point view. Like what are the things that one can do and the other not? What are the things both can accomplish but one is superior with respect to performance/end-result? Is the comparison not meaningful because both are geared towards different purposes? IF so, What are those purposes? and such.
I am asking this because I have made up my mind about learning some 3d animation as a hobby. Hobby as it may be, I will want to go to depths more than a hobbyist attitude would dictate. I would go to any lengths for creating the ultimate artforms with supreme details. And thus the tool must be ultimate as well, No? The steepness of learning curve is a non-issue. The price is also probably a non-issue, as I see it as one time investment, and if I’m going to take the plunge - It might be a necessary evil associated with the hobby. Having said that, time, efforts and dedication are at premium. I can not “TRY” both for myself and decide which is good for me. To be fair, until I learn both to a good level, I can’t decide which is good for me! I hope there will be many here, with experience in both blender and maya, and thus - in position to respond to my question. I understand the risk in making decisions based upon suggestions, but that’s okay I guess.
Maya is a very expensive professional tool. If you’re only doing 3D as a hobby, don’t invest the $5000 for a license. If you’d like, try the 30-day trial and see what you think. Capability-wise Blender is fully capable of anything Maya claims to be (with some exceptions, like NURBS and n-gons, but we’re working on that). I love both programs, but I’d recommend starting with a 30-day trial of Maya and downloading Blender 2.5.
Also pointless given that if you want to know which is best FOR YOU you’ve counted out the equation a number of other top tier alternatives (3dsMax, Modo, Cinema4D, Houdini, Softimage, Lightwave, Silo)
Ultimately, download the demos, watch some tutorials and see which one you prefer. This is a question only you can answer.
This absolutly depends on you and your needs. Thats all!
So I assume you no like nothing… in that case it really does not matter. I would suggest Blender as it is free.
You can use the Maya trial when you know what to look for at a 3d Modeller.
Finally it is like driving different cars. First learn to drive, then go and join a race :D.
Especially if you want to go ahead the hobby you should be able to work with different applications.
The good thing is, you are not resticted to just one. Finally you will decide which one you like most. As far as I know the most artists use multiple tools, they choose whatever fits most in the current situation.
Succinctly, this is my dilemma. I can not afford to learn two softwares. I have somehow limited my options to Blender and Maya. I hope the purpose of their existence is to accomplish the same thing (with different philosophies, of course). Now the question is capabilities. I want to save myself from future regrets two ways.
If blender is 90% as capable as Maya, everything is okay. If 75%, I would regret the wrong choice, given I can only learn one software. Kind of like buyer’s remorse.
If Maya is as capable as Blender, It may be okay. But if Maya is 75% as good as blender in terms of capabilities, I am in worse position then the first scenario.
I hope it clarifies what am I asking. Of course, this % thing is not practically measurable, but you get what I mean, I guess!
Curio
Edit: I know what 3d modeling and animation is, at the lease theoretically, like character posing, rigging, armature and very limited experience of doing it as well. I did some of the things (molecule model creation, and rocking animation) with blender before 2 years, bit at that time it was a requirement and One time job. I don’t even remember how I did it. But the concepts I know.
In my opinion, it’s not worth buying Maya.
Blender will give you everything you need for years to come.
However, if you somehow find that you want to switch from blender to something else, it won’t be a hard step.
All 3D anim software are more or less the same thing with a different UI… All you will need is just to kill some habits and get new ones and you are switched…
I’m not sure how much Maya is more powerful then blender… Maya doesn’t have some features Blender has, and Blender doesn’t have some features that Maya has… The usefulness is probably due to your needs… For example, Maya doesn’t have sculpting (does it?) and Blender does (And unlimited clay is also coming soon!)… That’s like extremely important for me.
But, you could ofcource try the other software, don’t limit yourself to maya or Blender.
you have limited your decision to between blender or maya, and yet you are here asking what the differences are? you’ll have to pardon me, but it sounds like your decisions so far are quite arbitrary.
Maya is obviously an industry standard and will never be lacking in straight up capabilities (given you can afford it). But as others have pointed out here, you’re overlooking a massive question of personal needs and workflow practicality. And in considering that, you really need to look at more than just the 2 extremes of blender and maya.
There’s a photography philosophy that goes “a beginner photographer worries about his camera, a better one worries about his lens, and the best photographers worry about the light.” Trying to choose your 3d software based on their feature list alone is the equivalent to thinking the most expensive camera body is going to have any real bearing on how nice your photos turn out.
Well in my opinion Blender outpaces all the other apps because it continually evolves, everyday there’s something new in development. What happens the day when we have ngons and nurbs? Holy crap! Blender will take over the world… ha ha.
Percentage is not a correct approach because nobody can answer that.
You can draw or paint the same idea. Results will be different but will be accomplished in both cases.
You can have similar results with the two softwares.
It is not the tool that made the artist. It is the artist that choose or create his tools to have the more comfortable ones.
When your skills will go further; you will probably search other tools to complete your graphical 3D suite.
You can go pretty far with blender. Blender have unique tools but now, it is a beta. Maya do a lot of things better than a beta and have a lot of plugins.
But you won’t become a god of 3D from one day to another. It takes years.
If you choose to learn blender, your learning won’t be wasted time if you decide to try Maya after. And learning Maya will be easier and fast because 3D concepts are the same everywhere.
But maybe, you will not have a feeling of a lack and will not try other software.
If you will begin by Maya; you will probably not finish to explore it before changing for a new release.
Blender have free releases. You can progress and follow development.
It doesn’t matter at all which application you start with. Man is more important than the tool. And in this case, visual education is most important. If you have a decent visual education(do not ask what decent means) you will not depend on any application. Also, a good programmer is not necessarily knowing a programming language but algorithms and several programming languages.
Start learning Blender for the following reasons:
It is free
It’s easy to learn
Unlimited number of online free tutorials
It is permanently evolving
It is not depending on Autodesk(Autodesk policy regarding future of Maya is unclear and someday you may find that you learned a program that no longer exists)
If you learned Blender than you could easily jump to any other similar application
Thank you all for your replies and bearing yet another boring “Vs.” thread. My apologies.
Your replies has cleared my mind. I sense some explanation regarding me limiting my options to Blender and Maya is in order. I know blender from past as I had used as mentioned before and my random searches through google has kept the name alive from my past experience. The selection of Maya was purely based upon it being the costliest commercial product in my practical range, may be a little out of range. Other options were barely given any thoughts, to reduce confusion. It is further consolation, and a very big one at that, to observe that what I learn with blender will not go in vein if I have to change to any other software in future. So considering all these, choosing blender is only natural.
I remember a few years ago there was a free version of Maya, Maya PLE (personnal learning edition) , but as i never used it myself, i can’t comment further on it.
But if the ‘rendering’ engine is what you have in mind… then try everything,… Or… just buy vray. lol
A second answer, this is even better. Compare the galleries of all these apps and pick the one with the better models, scenes, renders, quality. Whatever the cost is. Life is short.
If zbrush gallery is the best you can find around (possibly), then buy zbrush and get involved to character creation and digital sculpting. This is the present but its mostly the future.
Just do some tests - renderings - setting scenes with blender, this is enough for the next two years. Then you can decide. And this time you wont ask for advise. You’ll know what to do.
You don’t need Zb if you have blender!
And no, don’t compare gallery pictures
They just say how many good artists the software has, not how good the software is.
I’ve been using Blender for about 6 months, and I would say that it is just as powerful as something like Maya or 3DS Max. There are professional animation studios out there that do use Blender. The only reason other companies don’t is that the phrase “industry standard” sounds cool. But really, they all truly serve the same purpose (3D modeling and animation), and therefore makes sense to try out Blender because of it obviously being free. Anyway, if you’re just a hobbyist, I say go with blender. It’s your choice though. Give some of the trial versions of commercial software a go, try blender, and then make a decision based on what you feel comfortable with.
Has anybody here actually USED Maya??? Okay, so maybe Blender and Maya are pretty close in terms of modelling tools, I’ll give it that. But when it comes to dynamics, Maya is the winner, hands down. There is NO comparison. Don’t get me wrong, I love Blender, but it has what has to be one of the worst particle systems I have ever seen. Oh sure it’ll simulate just fine, but when it comes to DOING something with that simulation data (like hell I don’t know… maybe putting a DIFFERENT texture on each particle, or even changing a property over the particle’s lifetime… you know… basic stuff like that) Blender just falls flat on its face.
I know I KNOW! Blender is still growing, but AT THE MOMENT, it is NOT as good as professional software… at least as far as dynamics is concerned. I’m sorry I haven’t taken this opportunity to kiss Blender’s ass a little more, but I couldn’t find a good spot on it’s massive cheeks that wasn’t already covered in slobber. I’m not saying blender sucks, I’m saying it has a lot of room for improvement (which I know it will, but it’s not there NOW, and this thread is talking about NOW).
Has anybody here actually USED Maya??? Okay, so maybe Blender and Maya are pretty close in terms of modelling tools, I’ll give it that. But when it comes to dynamics, Maya is the winner, hands down. There is NO comparison. Don’t get me wrong, I love Blender, but it has what has to be one of the worst particle systems I have ever seen. Oh sure it’ll simulate just fine, but when it comes to DOING something with that simulation data (like hell I don’t know… maybe putting a DIFFERENT texture on each particle, or even changing a property over the particle’s lifetime… you know… basic stuff like that) Blender just falls flat on its face.
I know I KNOW! Blender is still growing, but AT THE MOMENT, it is NOT as good as professional software… at least as far as dynamics is concerned. I’m sorry I haven’t taken this opportunity to kiss Blender’s ass a little more, but I couldn’t find a good spot on it’s massive cheeks that wasn’t already covered in slobber. I’m not saying blender sucks, I’m saying it has a lot of room for improvement (which I know it will, but it’s not there NOW, and this thread is talking about NOW).
if you’re doing NPR rendering maya has a great toon line system thats easy to link into nodes and setup. the lines are shown in the preview and render fast. Blender’s edge rendering is only a visual trick.
Freestyle will be coming out on blender in a little while, but still maya would be the winner in this department. Freestyle will have more robust sytem for making line styles, but maya at least for a while will have a much more robust integration of the toon lines with the rest of the system. also freestyle is far from being done so it’s buggy and feature incomplete at the moment.
that being said, i’m dedicated to using freestyle and i think it’s simply awesome
most of blender’s system, especially the modifier system, i like better than maya… i think for a person who is doing a hole project by themselves Blender is a good solution.
Blender is faster at doing the main functions a 3D program should do. Maya’ dynamics, paint fx, muscle simulation, etc etc are really feature full, but really really hard to learn and implement, and in most cases you can do more faster in blender.
Now if i had a whole team of people, maya would be great because each person/group could utilize all of the advanced features of those areas that otherwise would not be used by an individual doing a whole project.
now, having said all that, F*ck Autodesk, i won’t use it
Main reason why people are coming to Blender is they don’t want to use pirated copies of software costing thousands of bucks anymore. If I have the money to buy a Maya license, there’s no point in asking which is better. Go for Maya. Since Blender is free, you can play with it in your spare time or add it to your tool set.
Frankly, I find these threads annoying. $5000 vs $0 is just too much to take. If this is Carrara or Silo/Hexagon vs Blender it wouldn’t be as annoying. Man…
If you’re just going to pirate Maya, go for Blender. It’s good for your conscience.
