Strengths and Weaknesses of Each Platform?

[BlindTelepath]

This is sort of like the "d00d what m0d3l1ng pr0g do u uz3?" threads, minus the "l33t speak" and plus some fore-knowledge. I'm hoping people can help me outline what each of the big packages' strengths and weaknesses are, to help me decide where to start. What I write below is based on what I've read in various places, what I think I remember, etc. Please correct me where appropriate.

3D Studio Max
This one is the most prevalent, as far as I can tell, but I can't for the life of me see why. I've never read a post about how Max does something another program can't do, or does something better. But it's gotta have something...

Maya
From what I've read so far, Maya is where it's at for animation (and, by extension, stand-alone movies/cinematics), and has the best implementation of NURBS. Reportedly also has the best interface and the best general flow/completeness (especially counting things like Maya Cloth and Maya Fur).

Lightwave
All the gurus seems to like LW the best, but they never say why. The most common comment I've seen is "don't start on Lightwave or you'll never be able to use anything else happily." If it's so awesome why isn't in 3DS's role?

 

[mikeandike22]

what they didnt say about maya, was to do their complex animations u need to use like advanced calculus. Maya is ridiculously hard to use when starting out modeling, i found that 3ds max is the easiest, i never used lightwave so i dont know about it being really great, and u forgot xsi which is very robust both in modeling and animation, but i have never seen a tut with a modeling technique that worked really well.

 

[The Dark Elf]

This is sort of like the "d00d what m0d3l1ng pr0g do u uz3?" threads, minus the "l33t speak" and plus some fore-knowledge. I'm hoping people can help me outline what each of the big packages' strengths and weaknesses are, to help me decide where to start. What I write below is based on what I've read in various places, what I think I remember, etc. Please correct me where appropriate.

okies

3D Studio Max
This one is the most prevalent, as far as I can tell, but I can't for the life of me see why. I've never read a post about how Max does something another program can't do, or does something better. But it's gotta have something...

It became popular because its effectively been around the longest in a way where the average user could get hold of it, from its early days in DOS with 3D Studio. then eventually the Max versions. Personally I reckon the early DOS versions were better, its not trying to be part of everything and not doing that good a job of it, its overly complicated for simple tasks, and it also uses naughty little cheats to get away with things, like hiding lots of polygons from being visible to the modeler until the model is taken into another app and they suddenly show up. I'm not a fan of it. It's also got the _worst_ object format known to man.. its hugely bloated and it really eats up memory on high polygon objects

Maya
From what I've read so far, Maya is where it's at for animation (and, by extension, stand-alone movies/cinematics), and has the best implementation of NURBS. Reportedly also has the best interface and the best general flow/completeness (especially counting things like Maya Cloth and Maya Fur).

Yep, Maya has the best NURBS support (aside from Houdini) and animation.

Interface is closer to Max than Lightwave, so many Max users can switch to Maya with little trouble. It also has Paint Effects, which at first seems like a cool toy, but is very powerful and very useful. It's fur engine isn't all that great, but its soft/hard/cloth dynamics are thought to be one of the best, not including dedicated software that sell for thousands of dollars more.

Lightwave
All the gurus seems to like LW the best, but they never say why. The most common comment I've seen is "don't start on Lightwave or you'll never be able to use anything else happily." If it's so awesome why isn't in 3DS's role?

It's not in Max's role because Newtek concentrated on the film/tv industry as a cheaper solution to CG effects, riding on the success of Babylon 5 at the time which basically kicked off more accessable CG along with the Video Toaster Suite, that before then was the domain of ILM and the massive studios with millions to spend on powerful (at the time) Silicon Graphics workstations and software. Lightwave is great, its pretty simple to learn, and its stayed with its routes concerning modeling, it doesn't hide anything under lots of trickery, its object format is tiny, well documented and easy to convert to others.. Has a host of plugins available to pretty much do anything you want. However it does fall down a little with network rendering, also its the only 3D app IIRC that isn't capable of using different render engines natively.


You forgot Softimage XSI, Softimage 3D, Houdini, Electric Image, ZBrush. All those are highend applications mostly geared towards film (with the exception of ZBrush which is still relatively new and hasn't really found its place in the world yet.. but still mighty powerful), though Softimage are now trying to get into the games market more, but in a very limited form compared to what the real package is capable of.

 

[BlindTelepath]

Judging from your use of LW in my other thread, would I be correct in guessing that it's your favorite, TDE? (And if so, do you have any tutorials on hand?)

 

[The Dark Elf]

Judging from your use of LW in my other thread, would I be correct in guessing that it's your favorite, TDE? (And if so, do you have any tutorials on hand?)

It's the one I've used since the beginning pretty much, with a few stints on 3DS before settling on LW, then later used Max for a while, went back to LW.. since then just learnt the others cause I had to (always a good idea to learn the major ones you might end up having to use at some point) so now LW is still my favorite, and also the one I've put a lot of money into over the years with plugins n such compared to the others. But its a case of what kind of job I'm working on at the time as to which app I'd use for which task. Right tool for the right job. No sense me struggling to do something in one app if another can do a better job.

As for tutorials
http://members.shaw.ca/lightwavetutorials/ thats your best bet for LW.

 

[mikeandike22]

now i think i will try out lightwave, i can usually get stuff from my brother's job for free in their graphics design department, as for switching platforms, i first started modeling about 2 yrs ago on maya 6, then stopped for a little while, and when i was getting back into modeling for my mod now i use 3ds max 6, and that was a pretty easy switch. I have found that the basic techniques of modeling carry over from platform to platform, and once u know the techniques all you really need to learn is the programs hotkey and interface which takes like 2 days.

 

[thereisaspoon]

so far xsi kicked the ass of both max and maya and interface and workflow. Its on par with maya on strength (except mel) and better then max in ease of use. Can't comment on lightwave, never dug the interface.
from person experience
max: good poly tools, decent interface, crashes most often for me
maya: ok poly tools, needs interface revamp, good if u know how to use it, nurbs (worthless for me)
xsi: insanely fast workflow and interface, especialy once u know all the "hidden" shortcuts, animation tools comparable to maya, poly tools comparable to max, favourite uv editor for me.

 

[The Dark Elf]

so far xsi kicked the ass of both max and maya and interface and workflow. Its on par with maya on strength (except mel) and better then max in ease of use. Can't comment on lightwave, never dug the interface.
from person experience
max: good poly tools, decent interface, crashes most often for me
maya: ok poly tools, needs interface revamp, good if u know how to use it, nurbs (worthless for me)
xsi: insanely fast workflow and interface, especialy once u know all the "hidden" shortcuts, animation tools comparable to maya, poly tools comparable to max, favourite uv editor for me.

Agreed with XSI's workflow and interface. Aside from Lightwave, its the nicest and easiest to use, one thing I hate with 3D app UI's are icons.. Houdini is probably the worst, its icons are like 4x4 lol not great for the old tired eyes at 4am. So XSI and LW have always been my favorites as its all text, and configurable (something else I like with XSI, it loves dual monitors)

Only thing that bugs me with XSI is its NURBS features aren't very good, especially compared to Maya. But so far they do what I need them to do. I really like the rendertree and being able to do pretty much any kind of surface with it.. Though the realtime shaders are a tad confusing, never successfully got a custom one to work, though thats hardly important in pre-rendered work heh.

It's dynamics are so easy to setup compared to other packages I was playing with them within the first few minutes of originally trying it out. I've always used the same mantra as Ron Thornton, "If I can't make something decent in 30 minutes from running it, without looking at the manual, its not worth using"

It's strange though that you don't like the LW interface, as traditionally LW users would go to XSI, Max users to Maya, for the most part. Because the setup was all very similar.

 

[The Dark Elf]

i first started modeling about 2 yrs ago on maya 6,

I thought Maya 6 was only released around May last year?

 

[mikeandike22]

mb maya 5, i am not sure, i had maya a long time ago so i dont remember the version, i didnt find it very easy, and when watever new version came out i chose not to buy it, and fooled around with blender a lil bit.