Why 3D Software Can't Replace Maya

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Whether you're a seasoned animator or just getting started in the world of 3D animation, this video is a must-watch for anyone looking to understand why Maya is always considered the best in the business.

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[hombrezoo]

I was a maya user for 20 years too, I still use it bc it's encysted in every pipeline. I switched to Blender 2 years ago and never had to look back. I was allowed to use Blender in a biiig studio and while working on a huge project I was tasked once to fix something, against my own gut, decided to use Maya bc I didn't want to break anything, I was so used to Blender by then that I assumed such simple fixes in Maya would be done in the same way, respecting the previous stuff in place. Guess what? One of the most shameful days of my career.


Maya is not the worst, it's just dated and I believe it's a piece of software very difficult to fix bc everything seems to be a patch on top of a patch that can't be rewritten bc in doing so it would break something esle. I understand Blender devs rewrite and clean up parts of the code everytime there is a new addition.

Both softwares have their pros and cons. I find Blender to be the best of both, it does things maya will never be able to do. Blender it is still growing and improving, needs better handling of large scenes but it's getting there.

One of the things always makes me laugh is when people tells me that Blender has no support. Man, I paid for maya for years and every time I asked for support not even crickets showed up to make noise. On that note Blender has a huge and genuinely invested community that jumps to help after you post your issue.

Using maya is like pushing a cart with square wheels, it will take you there but will need to push harder. Blender has circular wheels, hence...

[Dhruv]

I had to reopen Maya recently because I had outsourced some work and their topology was incorrect. Here are the steps I do in blender for the workflow:
1. Create plane and bevel it's vertices.
2. Create a supporting loop
3. Create a circle and snap it to the supporting loop.
4. Cut the circle in using knife project.
5. Use solidify modifier to give thickness
6. Set bevel tool to 2 segments and a value of 1 to create supporting loops for beveling hard edges.
7. Set bevel tool to 5 segments and a value of 0.5 to get smooth bevels on corners.

Same effect in Maya:
1. Create a cube and bevel edges
2. Select all other faces except the top one and delete.
3. Create supporting loop using multi cut
4. Create cylinder and use Boolean to cut it out (weird wireframe exists which I don't remember how to hide)
5. Invert face and then extrude with a -ve value to give thickness (the models not just a simple plane I'm leaving out a few steps of modeling I did to it)
6. Flip normals so that they face the correct way.
7. Go to bevel tool set segments to 2 and turn changer off
8. Bevel the outer edges to get supporting loops
9. Go to bevel tool and turn changer on set to 5 segments
10. Bevel outer edges to get smooth chamfer.

Now I opened the output fbx from blender in an old version of Maya and it was perfect. Even in my version it was perfect.

I then opened the one I created in Maya in an older version and there were shading issues. The shading issues are not present when I import the same into my version of Maya not are shading issues present when I import it in blender.

Yeah so basically more steps and if you're working with someone with an older version of Maya you'll keep getting issues. Amazing how they charge so much money for a piece of crap.

[stevenpike]

Maya, and Autodesk - are ripping you off. The differences between Maya and Blender are minor - and considering one costs thousands of dollars a year to rent it- those differences should be MILES AND MILES away. You're pretty much a sucker if you keep sending Autodesk your money.

[crubn]

I was using MAYA for almost 20 years. But after retired, now I have using (and still learning) Blender for 3 years to making low-budget projects and games mods. Both of them have their pros and cons.
You buy mouse then you get mouse too! ;)

[yapdog]

As someone who'd developed and sold commercial CG software from the 1990's to 2000's, I can tell you that the main reason Maya has remained dominant is established studio pipelines. Once a tool is entrenched, you can't dislodge it, especially when upper management had relationships/deals with Alias/Wavefront at the time. So, the rich got richer, the poor got poorer (i.e. the demise of a lot of applications). But that also led to the rise of Blender.

[TheLillianYoung]

It's so good to see a video clearly articulating Maya's dominance and value. I learned Maya and 3DS Max in college, but continued with Maya over the years. Lately I've seen so many anti-Maya comments but worse, instructors who used to make content for Maya are Blender focussed.

I'm happy to hop around to whichever has the best tool for said task. I use C4D often. That said, they all have learning curves and I can troubleshoot in Maya so I'd rather not stretch myself too thin trying to know it all. Maya still rocks to me.

[dakintsugi]

As someone who's been working professionally with Maya for 15 years I'd say its main reason to stay in the pipeline is being able to handle big scenes. Every other 3D software is improving at a pace that Autodesk can't (or won't) match. Most colleagues I know and myself tolerate Maya at best, knowing it's a dinosaur piece of software that has its days numbered. Since I started working with Blender for my personal projects I really hate having to come back to Maya with its archaic UI and workflow.

[nebuchadnezzar]

Maya's treated me well over the decades. Like a faithful companion it's never let me down.

[LHK-art]

As an animator, I just wish blender to have better file referencing (like maya), and get rid of the eye icon in the graph editor for hide & unhide animation curves, it should isolate animation curve by just selecting its channel. Implement animation layers.

But I am very comfortable with everything else so far. Most of obstacles for maya user switching to blender is the key mapping, at least for me it was. Follow some simple tutorials to get used to the blender hotkeys, you will love it.

Next new feature I wish is a more advanced and more organized pbr painting and texture baking workflow.

[Battan]

Counter arguments from perspective of freelancing for gamedevs.

1. Maya is falling behind in development and is getting replaced with blender and houdini it's just a matter of time. So evidently the title is incorrect.

2. You really should mention the conservative factors as a big negative. Maya WAS the standard and companies opted in for that. Change takes time and companies that stay with maya might just do so cause they fail to adapt to better workflows.

3. Indies are winning.
The option to go for university to learn 3d and then get a job is very much catered towards big companies and being a cog. There's too many cogs at the moment.
Indie teams are conquering the game market and is replacing them. Basicly one man armies is getting more and more possible since procedural workflows are getting better.

And I personally wouldn't hire someone who did the university approach since the skill you need as a indie is to find your own way to obtain the skills you need. Instead of having a tutor telling them what to do.

[basspig]

When I first got into computers and computer graphics the King of the Hill was wayfront Technologies back in 1986. They had preview modeler and animation software there were three separate modules and they were like $15, 000 for the software and they ran on Unix workstations.

[_blender]

I have both Maya 2014 and Blender 2.93 on my laptop. I haven't touched Maya since 2020 because I'm now too comfortable with Blender as I already accustomed to the Blender tools and workflows.

[hamuArt]

Side note - Softimage died because of Autodesk not because was bad or weaker then other competitor on the market. (I think the modeling part was much stronger than Max or Maya at that time)

[_casg]

this video just encourage me to use Blender even more

[DejiDigital]

The fact that blender is free and not 3-5 thousand freaking dollars makes it automatically better.

[MMMM-svlk]

Become a good 3d artist first, use whatever is available. You are judged on what images you can produce, not how many hot keys you have memorized.

[JazzyJazzRock]

I think the ReDefinefx footage you have shown at 4:20 is done in 3DsMax.

As far as Maya is concerned it's not a big deal in the VFX industry like it used to be before. The only strength of Maya is Rigging and Animation and anything else is not that impressive now. Also in my personal experience Houdini, 3DsMax and Clarisse handle large scenes way better than Maya. Around 2005-2006 there was not a huge difference between 3DsMax and Maya but when Autodesk bought these software autodesk almost ignored 3DsMax development and put his focus on Maya. 3DsMax would have been relevant in VFX industry today if autodesk would have introduced Render Layer management and updated particle tools of 3DsMax. In VFX and animation most studios are moving to Houdini + Renderman or Arnold pipeline for lighting and rendering now and i would be happy if sidefx comes up with improved rigging and animation tools and throws the Maya out on that area too like it threw it away in FX. Maya. Houdini is the future.

[toquitad]

In addition, Maya is an "all-nodal" program, which means *everything* is a node and you can plug anything into anything (even before construction history, etc).
This alone makes Maya the most powerful rigging tool out there.

[lastone]

Didn't watch the video but the answer is too many studios built their tools directly into Maya with its scripting language making a transition away from Maya too expensive. If not for that, XSI would have been the standard.

[omarsmusic]

For me I was taught 3DS max when I was studying Animation in college so its what Im comfortable with I also know Blender I plan to learn Maya at some point but right now blender and Max are getting the job done for me.