So Maya is not a good for getting into games?

[diggitydanks]

I heard that 3D Max is better for getting into the gaming industry and Maya is more for animation films. Is this true?

[jeffd]

No.

Both are used in both industries. Sometimes both are used on the same project.

--JeffD

[jtk77]

that statment was true in the 90s but now both are used in gaming and films.. though maya is still used FAR more in film production.
AS far as video games. Both are about even.
If you have an undestanding of modeling , polygons. and 3d. Any program you use should be fine.

[diggitydanks]

Sweet, because I love videogames and I don't want to restrict myself from having the chance to enter the gaming industry.

[jtk77]

no matter what they say, Maya is everywhere. It may need some adjustments and have some things missing. But since most places have found it very easy to amnipulate into whatever custom program they need it to be through very nice scripting..so they say anyway.... Its used a lot.

[jozvex]

Unreal Tournament 2003 includes a copy of Maya Personal Learning Edition.

Because that's what they used to make UT2003, so you get to use PLE to mod it.

[ozz-2005]

no they didnt. while i was over at Digital Extremes james said it was all Max and Lightwave. which is why i dont understand the whole PLE thing. thought they do have a guy from alias there.

and if your thinking epic did the work. well Epic has actually been working on U2, and works on code along with DE. the graphics for UT2003 ( a majority of it, if not all of it ) was handed to DE because theyve had a good experience of working together in the past.

so what im saying is that i doubt maya was even involved in UT2003.

[daanbanaan]

yeah....it's all about marketing......AW seems to be getting very aggressive.

[shuggypudd]

Im making the switch to maya and its not at all easy. Maya Does not have the gaming industry in mind yet. Mostly on the animation end. Games usually consist of a multitude of characters and each has small animations with limited bone counts. Maya Is not friendly to this end of gaming!!

[gnip]

Nope, switching from any 3D software to another is difficult. 3D packages are very rich, complex pieces of software and they all do everything a little bit differently.

Just for the record, I'm a part of a team of 40 people (programmers, artists, level designers) developing a game for PS2, GC & Xbox and we do all of our modeling, animation, texturing, level design, data exporting and cut scenes in Maya. So, IMHO, I think Maya can be used quite well for games.

But, as with all things, do some research before hand and make the best choice for your specific needs. What works for one person may not be best for someone else. Boy, isn't that profound?!? (smirk)

[joojaa]

Cange from max or lw to maya is very painfull thats the problem... They seem to work the other way around rom maya.

In maya you would normaly do alot more work on yoyr pipeline than max would even offer once its set up and running maya gets to show its claws allright! thi even applies to film. Max just has shorter pipeline dev cycles (or ahumm lets say more limitted!)

[-undertow-]

Maya and Max both have the same ActorX plugins as each other (for unreal), they aren't identical because of they way they work there are differences. Such as the way Maya does smoothing (hard/soft edges) ActorX doesn't "bake smoothing groups" (by seperating faces) on animated models at all well. It's best to seperate them yourself.

The thing Max offers over Maya is Character Studio. For game animation it's great for quickly rigging a character (although vertex weighting in Physique's a pain). Although now in games, animations and skeletal structures are getting more and more complex. Michael Boon from Infinity Ward says they do all their animations for Call of Duty (and for MOH:AA) at 30fps. A couple of years ago, that would be unheard of in games.

Anyway, Maya is now a well suited program for Game development (it's poly modelling tools are some of the best around. Also, now it's price makes it very attractive to developers). However it still lacks in some areas. Such as something to compete with Character Studio.