Use both. Maya for in-class work and what you turn in for assignments. Then apply all the concepts to blender for your personal learning experience. If you can make blender work well enough, then use it for your assignments. Whatever you do, don’t cause yourself to worsen your grade by using blender when it is not appropriate.
the only thing i am concerned about is finding some damn cool feature in Maya that would have made the job so much easier. or learning Maya animation then not being able to use Blender animation because its so different.
Use maya. Although you haven’t given any details of the class, it’ll probably be easier to follow along if you’re using the same software as everyone else. Plus if you’re going to sign up and pay for the course, you’re better off learning something that you couldn’t have taught yourself. Even if you’re only doing it to stick on your CV, it’ll be better if you’ve studied maya since you’ll have been exposed to multiple programs and therefore have multiple skills.
I would say try for Maya, it never hurts to know more than one 3D package, and its all transferable knowledge, the basic concepts are the same, its just knowing which buttons to push and what menus and hotkeys to use etc… for a while there i was switching back and forth between XSI and Maya quite often, tho im not using Maya as much any more as i do prefere XSI, but would use it again if i needed to for a job, or education.
since the early classes are designed for learning basics of Maya i will use Maya for them, i will push myself and experiment a heap, so i get ok at Maya.
for the marked projects that are really worth somthing, i will use Blender, then export to Maya for animation. (this way i can still know Maya modeling from early stuff and learn Maya animation, while also being fast.
so i’ll go in and out of maya all the time. perhaps UV mapping it in Blender.
i tinkered with Maya a bit last year, and was already better than a guy who had been doing the course for a month. and i agree it is just more buttons.
i will probably just use Maya and play it by ear as to if i want to use blender for a certain task or not.
the guy stated that he had a student who used Maya, XSI, Max, C4D, and Blender, Wrote all his own scripts for pretty much all of them, then moved to holland to help develope some blender features… dunno how try this is. so it can’t hurt me if i know more than one.
oh and Bapsis i know your postition, so i will respect what you are saying
the only thing i am concerned about is finding some damn cool feature in Maya that would have made the job so much easier. or learning Maya animation then not being able to use Blender animation because its so different.
Construction history.
There; I said it.
(well, technically construction history is more a modeling thing, but it’s still something I wish rhino/blender had)
Always good to learn new software if you have the chance. You may even come back from the experience with one or two feature requests for Blender.
Mind you, I’m saying this as someone who thinks that from an artists perspective Maya is the bane of all humanity. If you can use Maya, you can use anything. Hence why you should learn it.
If you get the chance, also try out XSI. With the exception of their material and texture/UV system (which I mostly dislike), it’s a pretty great program.
Hehe, hope you would have anyway! I think if you really want to be a talented (and flexable) 3D artist you should know the main programs, and maybe a few others.
So far i’ve used 4 3D progs indepth (Pov-Ray->Blender->XSI->Maya) as well as others like Teragen and Vue, and lesser know progs like Knotplot and Xfrog for specialty workinz.
But no matter the program used, make sure to always concentrait on the importants like the art itself, good animation tactics (9 principles of animation are a great start).
Best of luck to you at school, i hope you do well and really enjoy your time there!!! Just remember, dont work TOO TOO hard and always make time for the ladies!!!
well being 4th year at university, (Industrial design degree, so i am crossing over to a new department with the 3d stuff) i kinda have that stuff sorted.
i work way to hard allll the time, and its fun (ha ha till the GF, a classmate of mine gets a hold of me)
she’d kill me if i made time for the ladies
BTW yeah i would respect your opinion, but knowing it comes from somewhere with experience adds more weight to it.
For me Blender is much better but Maya is the industry standard. When applying for a job most design type jobs are looking for experiance with 3DSM and Maya…sadly.
I’d say model in blender and animate in Maya.
Blenders sub div surf is far superiour to the Maya one.
Poly modeling in Maya is a pain once your model crosses the 1024 faces.
Both packages have a total different idea on modeling workflow.
With UV mapping you are save in both. Material assignment in blender is much faster/easier, but more limited. Maya has projection widgets.
Object animating is pretty much the same in both. And so are relative keys / blend shapes. It’s MEL and expressions that can extend automation alot without the Python grammar hassle. And everthing (everthing) is accesable with MEL/expressions.
Generaly Maya is more tolerant in changing things, in blender you are often better off starting from scratch. That sayd; Maya can have some nasty crashes on unstructured scenes. Deleting stuff in Maya can create a big unacceseble mess.
In blender it can be fun to find a way to get your thing done, in Maya everything you come up with can be done… But at a cost of having a slower workflow for simple things.
I think if you really want to be a talented (and flexable) 3D artist you should know the main programs, and maybe a few others.
(ha ha till the GF, a classmate of mine gets a hold of me)