I just wanted to know the differences between Maya and Blender in terms of features, and which one is possibly better?
In general, Maya is the most advanced when you want to do Character Animation. Blender is possibly the better allround solution and easier to get into because it has a lot more online resources.
If you don’t have a Renderfarm, but a decent GPU (or another Renderengine than Arnold), Cycles probably faster for small-intermediate scenes.
Believe me you don’t want to get down that road…
6 Likes
It really comes down to preference, but Stuntkoala is right, asking which is better will lead to a flame war 
2 Likes
Lmao, I always am just curious to know the difference.
Is Renderfarm in Maya?
Blender is free 
And easy to use. Download it on a USB stick and run it anywhere.
And a great online community!
3 Likes
I dont feel like maya has that much unique to offer anymore besides animation 
There are so many other programs that does what maya does, but better. Blender is not trying to be better than maya, so its not really a fair comparison.
2 Likes
Plus have you seen Maya’s outrages prices? Like why does it have to be so expensive? Its even more expensive than using Unity game engine.
I can actually answer that question.
Because the prices are targeted towards studios with multi million dollar budgets, and not individuals
And indie studios who hire artists often get lisences for the artists to take home, because they dont have too many lisences to pay for, so they can afford it.
Then there are freelance artists, who make a living from using maya. And If you make money from it, then the price aint really that high. They spend money on software, while constructionworkers spend extra money on food.
1 Like
I see mate I thought $200 per month was a price for an individual.
If you are doing a job for a studio that has standardized on <Maya | 3DS | Blender>, you are going to use exactly that software … and probably a particular version of that software … because everyone is preparing and modfying assets for a project that will probably take many years to complete. You will not use any other tool [version], and your contract will say so.
- From a “pure data-processing” standpoint, this is absolutely essential. If, two weeks before “go-lve,” we need to re-render an asset prepared three years ago, we must get a visually-identical result with 100% certainty. As the viewer watches in an hour and twenty minutes what took four years to produce, he must see perfect continuity.
License and maintenance costs are simply that … costs … absorbed in what you are being paid. (And, on US Income Taxes, deductible as a business expense.) Eventually, the viewer pays for it with popcorn.
But, today, there are [small …] studios who have standardized their workflows around … Blender. If the tool can do the professional-grade work that you need to do … and Blender, today, most-certainly does … then you will naturally use that tool, and standardize on it.
So, “versus” comparisons are really pretty meaningless, because nobody makes such decisions, except when they are setting-up their studios for the very first time. Once that decision is made, they will never depart from it.
5 Likes
I don’t think so. Maya and especially Max are better all-round solutions than Blender, C4d and Modo, because they do everything well, while the other 3 are lacking in some disciplines.
Autodesk’s documentation is excellent and exhausting, the web is full of high quality tutorials for their tools and there are professional courses in every major city in the western/eastern world.
While Maya is complex, i think the learning curve is much easier to handle than that of Blender.
Redshift, Octane, V-Ray RT are as fast as cycles and have more features. Arnold’s GPU version is in alpha and will probably make some waves when it arrives.
I go down that road.
Maya’s Rigs are still the fastest in the industry AFAIK. There is no other DCC as customize-able as Maya.
If time = $$$, then Maya > the rest.
That is if you want to do animation, if you don’t, then it becomes a matter of preference and budget.
It is important to take into account for what it is used. Nobody in his right would argue that something other than Houdini is the best for VFX.
For modelling, Max and Modo are in the top position, nobody sane would use Houdini for pure modelling.
The sole reason why C4d is still alive is the fact that it excels in Motion graphics (where all others fail except Houdini) and is easy to use for people who are embedded in the Adobe ecosystem, that’s why C4d is hold in high regard by designers and people who do advertising.
That might be true, but animation is THE high prestige area of 3D. Everyone wants to do character animation and/or be a part of high end movie production.
The only other program which could have been a threat to Maya was bought by Autodesk and killed off. 
If being part of high-end movie production is a badge of honor, then Maya almost always takes the price.
In the recent years Maya has also reached a high saturation in the video game market, so its not just movies but also games.
conclusion:
Blender is a good generalist solution that is lacking the large professional addon ecosystem of Autodesk products. It is terrible for VFX and its interoperability is extremely limited due to the GPL restrictions.
It is however moving forward with an very nice high speed only matched by Houdini and it will only get faster with the massive influx of new users thanks to 2.8.
4 Likes
I’m a freelancer working as an one man studio. Blender is the best solution for me, even if it lacks in some areas (but nothing show stopper).
1 Like
I’d also say Blender is an overall better option, specially because, unlike 3DS and Maya, it is also an okish 3D Sculpt and Texturing program. I’d also argue that while Maya and 3DS may excel at what they do, Blender probably covers 95% of what most users would need, at an unbeatable price.
I also know that time = $ and buying some programs will end up being cheaper than struggling with some of Blender’s weaknesses, which is why I’m planing to buy some other programs, but Autodek’s program are at the bottom of that list of cost benefit.
Modeling wise I think Blender is on par with them. I don’t do much animation, so Blender is good enough for me (and a lot of other 3D animator friends). The other fields are much better covered by other programs such as 3D Coat, Substance Package, ZBrush and Houdini Indie, at a pretty reasonable cost and payment model.
Something not mentioned: programmers salaries. This and other expenses have to be recouped by commercial developers like Autodesk. Blender may not cost money directly, but that’s because some of the work is donated through time or effort while the rest is paid for by donations. In other words: it’s not cheaper, the money is just coming out of someone else’s wallet.
And that raised an eyebrow here - Arnold with GPU? That should indeed make a few waves.
I’d just like to say i dont want people to start arguing back and forward. Maya vs Blender can quickly turn into a heated debate, which is a perfect recipe for disaster.
Feel free to voice opinions, but if someone has a different opinion than yours, then dont try to argue against it.
Trust me, its for the better 
2 Likes
I’ll also shut down the thread immidiately if a discussion breaks out, just throwing this out now. This is such a sensetive topic, if you find someone you disagree with, feel free to take it through DM.
You can include as many people as you want in that DM.
You’re probably right for just pure 3D stuff. What I meant was, that Blender covers more areas (2D, Compositing, VSE…) → It’s the best if you’re a hobbyist since you can do almost everything just with Blender, but it doesn’t excel in any yet.
Thats true. But imo if you are looking for the solution to a specific question, you are more likely to find a solution to it on the internet than for Maya. Blender has just a much larger community (because it’s free) on BA, Stackexchange, YouTube etc. The quantity of high quality free YouTube channels dedicated to Blender is much higher than for paid software, just because it clicks much better.
That being said, I do not doubt that there are many paid teaching series for Autodesk Products that are perhaps more “professional”.
Definitely true for pre 2.8 - we’ll see how it evolves. I think Blender 2.8 has layed out a good base and now it’s a matter of identifying the bottlenecks in the learning process and tackle them for future development
Definitely looking forward to that. Renderman (which is probably the most advanced one when it comes to flexibility out of the box) also comes to GPU & combined devices. That’ll also be nice for beginners since it’s free for non-commercial use. I’ll never leave Cycles though - i just love the material creation process of it and I always missed Node Groups in other Renderengines.
I agree. The high end features needed for high end movie production are often focused on team-work and highly specialized areas for making the work of specialists more comfortable.
It also tends to be the case that inside of Maya you have a lot of people working with only a subset of features, while they do not know much about other areas of the program. One program - many professions. I might be wrong but i have the impression Blender users are more often than not generalists, while this isn’t in general true for Maya users.
Renderman, Vray and Arnold are all going GPU in addition to their CPU render-pipeline. What raises eyebrows is that all 3 seem to aim not only for feature parity between the modes, but exact pixel continuity. It is also probably the reason why it takes so long.
Vray seems to have the pole position right now in-between the 3.
I wonder when these 3 are on GPU if that will have a negative impact on other pure GPU render engines like Octane and Redshift.
What i mean with more professional is that there are a lot of courses made by veterans going very deep into the matter, often over very long courses. It is something that i sometimes missed when looking for Blender tutorials but this has changed or is changing for Blender.
Definitely, its much more fun to work with 2.8 and i see a lot of potential. Can’t wait until 2.8 releases.
In contrast, Autodesk seem to move at a snails pace. The last update for Maya was a pure bugfix release, and while i am sure that is welcomed by many, from the outside it looks pretty boring. They also missed the usual release window for their 2019 version which is kinda strange.
2 Likes
Why would you say that the learning curve is better compared to Blender?
First of all what is VFX and with 2.8, would VFX become better?
Also with Maya does it have as many shortcuts as with Blender?