How old is the Maya program?

>>535018
No, it won't be worth it. Iterations are built up, and you'll have a much, much easier time using a newer version.

>>535024
I'll probably torrent the new Maya, but start out with the free trial first

Plugins for import/export will be so out of date.

>>535027
I was thinking the same thing, but I didn't know if there was any way to use it in any way to get the new versions free. I wasn't really interested in actually USING the 90's version.

>>535018
for the anecdote, Maya's from 1998, which makes it one of the younger 3d programs. For comparison softimage is from 1988 and 3d studio (now 3ds max) is from 1990. Blender's from 1995.

Get Blender or modo

I've been using Maya since version 7 and I really have been meaning to learn blender or modo

Why are almost all the best 3D programs Canadian? Are they that good at programming?

Wasn't maya originally some weird NURBs modeler.

It was originally known as PowerAnimator

how fucking hard is it to do a wikipedia search? honestly? maya's first release was 1998 but it was based on the source code of older packages by alias and wavefront. many maya adopters were people who had previously been using poweranimator, which was one of the software packages maya was built from

>>535100
>some weird NURBs modeler

yeah, you mean that weird modeling package that was used for the effects terminator 2 and star wars episode 1? fuck i wish more people here had a clue about vis fx history (NURBs were the standard)

>>535097
Autodesk was founded by ex-softimage guys, so it makes sense they'd be in the same area. Alias was an american company, result of the merger of two american companies, so I can only imagine they moved to canada when autodesk ate them.

So essentially it's just due to the history of the branch.

File: box-manual-ts4.jpg (187KB, 1056x674px) Image search: [Google]

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>>535110
>yeah, you mean that weird modeling package that was used for the effects terminator 2

That would be trueSpace 3.2. tS4 even included a T-800 endoskeleton on the box art, manual, and splash screen. I actually started out with 3.2 back in 1996- my first character model was of Croc (as in the main character from Croc: Legend of the Gobbos), done with NURBS and Metaforms.

>>535025
Get the student vesion of 2016

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>>535018
Maya was a 'lite' version of alias power animator, which was been used to make 'BINGO', the animation created to polish the animation tools in maya.
Seems like the programmers first cerated the animation in Power animator, then optimized tools to make it faster in Maya, re-making the animation from scratch.
I was always a max user, so when i first got Maya and saw its texture format limitations and weird interface, i lost interest almost immediately.

File: PR_1999_bingo_002_p.jpg (917KB, 1181x1772px) Image search: [Google]

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>>535214
I remember trying to mimic the results in BINGO with a fucking Pentium, no graphic card accelerator and limited amount of space.
God, i love the easy way we can do stuff today.

>>535165

I still have a data folder for TrueSpace 7 kicking around in my documents folder.

>>535250
Neat. tS 4 was the first 3D soft I 'pirated'- had to do it the old fashioned way, snaked the installer disk from my Multimedia Tech 2 teacher (sorry, Steve) and installed it on a K62/500 back in 1997. From there, I moved to Lightwave (RIP) on a Macintosh Performa 6400/180 that I had upgraded with a PDS G3/400 CPU card (fucker was $500, like two weeks of pay back then, damn). Then got involved in Quake 1 map creation for like a decade, eventually went to unit at FullSail (I know, I know, but I actually graduated with 11 other people out of a class of about 200) where I stupidly focused on character modeling. I'm back to environment and prop modeling and am a helluva lot happier now.

I've posted images of this, finally getting things up on Sketchfab now:

https://sketchfab.com/models/eaafb42422c34e9b92a3f4ad639e1583/embed