Durand said:
Oh Maya, I,ve only toyed with the learning edition briefly a long while back, looked kind of slick but bulky. Chucky, Tell me a little of what you think of Maya , perhaps in comparison with 3d S Max? Where can I get this software?. Is it worth it?
Hi Durand, I bought an educational licence for Maya 2009 Ultimate which allows for self teaching- so no proof of course was necessary- I paid under $600.00 for the full kit, including subscription so that was freaking magic.
I am only just starting with Maya, so I'm
hoping some experts might pop out of the woodwork here, I have run into some issues with subsurface scattering (back scattering in particular) already so hopefully someone might help me out on that one.
My initial reaction is that it is really great for modelling and a dream to animate, texturing is effective but clutzy.
It is undoubtedly a very powerful and somewhat daunting application,
I can compare it to Animation Master (AM or Hash for short), Lightwave(LW) which I know a enough about the old and limited hobby prog called Raydream (RD) a little of CD4, Vue Poser, not much on XSI, Zbrush, mudbox, Bodypaint, and painter 3D, I have never really spent any great deal of time with Max so I really can't comment on that.
To be honest I would have preferred CD4 for it's slick interface and friendly demeanour towards small studios and one man outfits, but over here in OZ very few use it so I've gone for the industry standard Maya.
The first thing that struck me about Maya are it's cons, which are what us noobs always seem to find first, most obviously the crappy and overcomplicated interface and lack of manual.
Yes , I know the UI is completely customisable " apparently" but that doesn't change some rather strange approaches especially in the texture department and the fact that it is as ugly as sin, which is often a clue to software being angled more toward programmers than artists.
The hypershade editor put me off Maya for years after having really good experiences with RD and LW, these apps where and are like playgrounds for texture building in that they are so easy to use, admittedly RD is very limited and left the scene long before subsurface scattering and had no fresnel- AM is very good but such a slow render I just had to move on.
The thing with hypershade that allows for such flexibility is the ability to plug textures and materials through over and around so many variables that the mind boggles. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to default to any really sensible first option and you have to plug things called shading groups and light maps into materials to get them to render. This can be pretty confounding and support for noobs on this is pretty thin on the ground so full education could be the only way to get through these issues painlessly.
Even the hardware renderer does not render some materials at all with default settings giving black or red surfaces instead of an approximation of the real surface, you have to play with obscure settings to get joy from that.
I will post an example here.
This model is my first attempt with Maya so apology for topology, it was very quick- maya is AWESOME for modelling- 5 thumbs up for that, much easier than AM.
We all know that Maya can give dazzling results , unfortunately my back scattering isn't working here so the skin is a bit plastic and lacks that jelly like glow in the cartilage which gives the realism which I want to achieve.here is Maya interface and render.
Here is the UI and an actual render.
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Here is the interface render as displayed in my ancient copy of painter 3D, which is actually much better realtime render than maya even at highest settings and I can paint directly on the model and notice I even managed to fake the subsurface scattering (translucency - ears) by using a glow map.
If you can get a copy of that, it works great on vista- not xp , if you as I can't afford z-brush or bodypaint ATM.
Anyway I am still a full stick noob so apologies for the quality, I'll post some actual animation with a new model in the near future.
Conclusion even with the annoyances that are plaguing me, Maya is definitely WORTH IT.
