A little intro, I used to dabble in Maya years ago, and took a long hiatus from CG due to everything else, ie life.
Picked up Blender 2.8 last year, and honestly, there was a learning curve, but once I accepted that “this isn’t Maya” and stopped expecting that, it got quite comfortable!
Of course, there are still things that I miss from the Maya interface, most notably, MMB snapping, dragging panels to other monitors, etc.
I’ve seen this anime from start to end! Great job with Ayanami!
Because all video game jobs absolutely request Maya, I’ve gave it a try once… but my feeling is the opposite from you… I think I could learn it in a few weeks, but all feels a lot slower to do and harder
Similar, I learnt Maya back then because it’s the “industry standard”. The UI is “old school”, (eg, drag the gizmo) so, it’s somewhat intuitive.
I totally agree for modelling, Blender is much faster, it took me less than a week to pick up the sculpting + modelling + retopo workflow. I wouldn’t even imagine attempting it in Maya anymore, although my experience is dated from 7+ years ago.
Blender’s animation workflow would improve greatly if we could have multi windows or detachable tabs.
