Character animation:maya is losing ground

[urunkhan]

Ok guys , I know I am going to get flammed for this and may be I am a little bit depressed but I think Maya is losing ground pretty fast and I think max is becoming THE competitor (bye bye XSI , too little , too late):

REnderer:no need to come back to that issue
Hair:Paint fx is not good for realistic ones .LOok at sasquatch/shave and haircut (lwg) or shaghair (max)
Cloth:stitch for max has just been released and it looks as if it is doing things that mayacloth cannot.

Apparently the next release of max will be a killer :maya kind of interface (hotbox copy),subdiv,IPR renderer .Therre are even persistent rumors of H splines.

In the filed of character animation max has already a pretty strong line up:character studio, ventriloquist,shaghair and stitch.

I switched from max to maya 1 year ago and I have invested a lot of time and money into maya ;today I have the feeling that Maya is about to loose the top slot in the field of Character animation .....The next release (3.5 or 4.0) better be real , real strong.

I hope the big guys in Toronto will read that one

[pgo]

I hear Max 4 might become known as Magma or will it be Magma* ? Anyone else heard that rumour?

[stengah]

"magma"? That's crazy talk!

Frodo

[nowinc]

magma is the name its given during beta...

im sorry...but i dont think max will dominate over maya when it comes to animation...

why do i say this?
because you dont have to buy plug ins to get most that stuff for maya! it is standard! If max was so good..you would not NEED all the addons.

Max is still too buggy and unstable for my needs...ims sticking to maya...

--now inc

[jtk77]

max ( magma especially) is WAY too bulking and slow for my tastes . IT might be cool, who kows ? I think discreet* needs to totally strip down MAX and rebuild the code from ground up. ITs gotten to that point . WAY to much code and memory leaks , sorry , unimpessed with magma even though I use maxwhen i have to.

.............

[animayation]

Hm..
But let's not forget Max with all those plug ins still cost much less than Maya. I love Maya, but I certainly feel the same as the original post.
Unless Alias/Wavefront finally look at how the market's changing and adapt to it, they will most definitely lose more market share to Max. Bottomline is that Maya is not "that" more advanced compared to Max anymore, and especially with the newer version of Max and their plug-ins supports. If Alias wants to attract more new users, they really have a work cut out for them.

[koekjesbaby]

I can't believe this... MAX 4 (or magma or whatever) is beter because they steal the maya interface (it took them 3 versions to figure out that their interface sucked or that the inteface sucked more and more as the version number increased?)? The only "con" for Maya is the cost. I luckyl study on a school where they always have the newest version of maya. Furthermore are you guys forgetting artisan, great NURBS contol (compared to max) the node based system?

well I loved max a year ago, I detest it now.

greetz vapula

[marinobambino]

I totally agree on this one..... I started using 3d studio 6 years ago..... and then went on to max....... but since i started using maya a year ago , I will never ever go back to max..... Sure, maya is too expensive..... but you don't have to buy all these plugins just to get fur/cloth etc..... also max IS ripping a lot of stuff from maya..... i'm sure there will be a mayapaint ripoff in one of the upcoming versions of max...... also maya is only a few years old, max is much older, and still there are a lot of bugs in it..... maya is developing at a much higher rate...... imagine what it will be like in version 6.0..... did you ever tried using nurbs in max>!>!?!? that's some real slow stuff...... i think in general max is slower..... ok, so it's got a good renderer..... but that's about the only + i can find in max.........

[waboflex]

Same old, same old. I used Max for years and loved it. I learned Maya because it had the feature set I needed for the work I was doing, and Max did not. I've hardly looked at Max again since, not because it's crap, but because I've moved into different areas where Maya excels and Max is weak (high-res character animation with Character Studio? - hahahahaha, good one). Both packages are very good at what they do, but if you're going to continually change to the latest greatest piece of software (at least for a few months...), the chances are you'll never learn any of them in great depth. And in a working environment, continual change is neither practical nor productive.
I'm just happy to see such healthy competition because it's this that pushes the developers along and provides better tools for the artists. Somehow I can't see AW getting forced out of the market just because of a few catch-up features in Max4. And given that AW's track record is one of invention and innovation, compared to Discreets amazing ability (legally speaking) to rip off everybody else's good ideas, I think I'll just stick to Maya for now thanks.

[jtk77]

As to the better renderer comment in MAX . I think people beleive that Maya has a porr renderer becouse it does take a while to get used to it and to know how to get great images out of it . Max is pretty much good at the first go around , but once you want to custumize or change your look with it , its so simple to use you simply can't . Maya has one thing above any program I've used , its VERY complex which means you have ultimite control . In max you get to a certain point and hit a wall with all the instant "push-button" controls..

.............

[blitzbo]

Max take over for character animation? HUH?!! what are you smoking? hehehhee just kidding Damn I use max and maya. At work right now I am using max 3 and I have seen smagma in action with all its new features and can tell you that it has many half implimented "borrowed" enhancements that make it better than it is now but its speed and conveluted work flow make it a poor choice for serious longformat character animation. gee right now Im using max 3 for a series of shorts with 8 characters and I am seeing the pains!!! For quick motion capture stuff is fine with character studio etc. FOr real character stuff though with key frame fk and constraints arrrrggghhhhh!!!!!!!![sad] its horrid!!! The biggest enhancements in smagma* for character animation are "set driven key"ISH stuff and object based bones that you can scale (ooooohhhh big deal) its HORRID!!!

True max's modular approach leaving it up to thirdparty companies to devlope plugins to add functionality give max users a huge range of expansion. The down side to this is that plugins make max unstable and crash prone. The more you add the more you have to worry about its stability. Even character studio is a plugin.

For character animation production I still love softimage 3.x better than anything else but for all around production using 1 package I like maya the best since it offers everything out of the box and I can complete something without looking elswhere for basic tools that are 3rd party in most other packages. With that Maya is cheaper because its faster. I love SHAKE!!!!!!! hehhee (just a plug)

"I put my faith in the power of my own mind."
ICQ#58898276

[jerry-hnk]

Max is better than maya for character work. HAHAHAHA, you out of your mind!!! you ever actually tried to weight a character with the lame Character studio physique tool... Its SOOOOOOOO slow and gave SUCH bad results, Maya is like 3 times faster using the same hardware.

[blk]

i think each program will find its palce in the industry
theres lots of room for lots of programs here

some personal thoughts i have to agree with most the people ehre to sit there and say max is now better then maya cause its doing all the tings maya does allready is ridiculus
1 magma isnt out yet and its still gonna be a good couple months and with A/W track record with maya im sure 3.5 will be here in a couple more months too with lots of new features that discreet hasnt had a chance to copy yet
2 please dont even compare character studio the character animation features found in packages like Maya, Softimage, or XSI because im sorry to all you max users they are not on the same level
they have a post over on 3d ark from some guy who saw a demo of Magma and the biggest thing he was floored by and all the other people at the show was the interactive render and in his post he said hes never seen anything like it that no other program has this uhh hello Maya and XSI both have this
this is something ive found common to alot of Max users i know they say to me why use Maya use max max can do all the same things Maya can then i say can it do Interactive rendering thats when i get the schocked you mean maya can do that look
it seems to me and im sorry i hate to generalize like this but i see alot of it alot of Max users only know whats going on in max (im sure people say that about maya users too, thats why i read all the forums on here and keep up with whats going on in all the programs)
its just something to think about that fact that Magma is basically just takeing things from Maya and Softimage and now the max industry is going nuts
also look at this Max as far as i know was only used in Lost In Space as far as movie work goes
if you were to list all the movies that Maya, Softimage, and say Houdini were used in itd be one hell of a long list
(i group those 3 together cause its very rare that only 1 is used at a time)
these were justs oem of my personal thoughts

[fredc]

I agree with Johnpv. While Max is an excellent product, you can't base how powerful a product is by making a check list of supported features. The issue is not if a feature is present, but how well it works. The argument could be made for cars. They all have the same features, but some certainly perform better than others and their prices reflect this. Just like Max is priced higher than some other products too.

Again, Max is a great product and I am glad to see users on this site. Max users deserve just as much respect as other products on this site. However, making statements that a product will overtake the animation market isn't really justified by any product. Besides Max already outsells all other products, what more can you want, total domination? We don't need another Microsoft.

Just my opinion,
Urp

[bismark]

Poser ROCKS!

[nowinc]

What really amazes me about all this, is the whole concept of "They copied, so now they are better"
huh?
if u copy someone..then you can only be as good as them..since they are bound to do something you have not yet..

as for some of max's improvments...granted..they are trying...but so are so many "lower grade" apps...such as Truespace (those who hung around to see Caligari's Truespace 5 demo at SIGGRAPH will know what im talking about)

so what do I say about this new MAX?

BFD

Too little...too late...a lot of people (myself included) have left max where it belongs....on the shelf...

--now inc

[blk]

the other thing id like to point out its that it seems all anyone has doen is watch a bunch of demo guys play with magma no one has used it yet
so we dont know how well these tools are executed
i mean sure 3d studio max HAS nurbs but they are horrid to use
so sure it may have a new IPR or new skeleton features but we dont know how stable they are yet or how well they work
so dont go counting your chickens before they hatch

[srikt]

I just have one thing to add..

first of all Lost in Space was done 50/50 in Max and other 3d software (i.e. maya, softimage)

but take a look at Might Joe Young the ENTIRE MOVIE. from modelling to texturing and animation to rendering was done COMPLETELY IN MAYA..

so take that u max freaks who think it will be better..

oh yeah and take a look at final fantasy - both the game and the movie are being done only with Maya and Renderman - NO MAX!

[geoffcrowther]

smegma?

hahaha babs! your a killer 8)

...weren't you the one that posted the imac vibrator site? is there something we need to know about?

lol

[ezra]

heared something that "Smegma