What is easier to learn and use, Blender or Maya? I put some

(it's not the package, but how you use it)

There's honestly not that many differences between 3d modeling packages. Blender will have more free/youtube documentation (for being free itself), Maya will have more paid tutorials (cause it's used in the industry and Blender's not.)

That aside I would say to learn Blender if you're looking to freelance, Maya if you want to work in the industry.

Maya is easier to learn and use.

>>554861

How 'bout this? Consider learning both options, but here's the catch.

If you learn Blender first, it will still be easy to pick up Maya.
If you learn Maya first, Blender will seem like a nightmare learning it, and you'll be stuck on Autodesk's tit for years.

>>554861

(Assuming you have no prior experience) Just leanr with whatever you feel more comfortable right now.

The important thing to keep in mind tough is, that while the principles behind modeling are pretty much the same (regardless of the tool) the workflow and how you handle specific problems are often quite different.

So look for videos/streams of experienced people and watch how they work with the tools that interest you.

In the end this will at the very least give you insight in some options for the future and make transitions into other tools much less painfull.

>>554864
>>554919

Wtf is with this equivocating bullshit, learn Maya if ease of use is a priority. If you care about the GPL or you want to freelance without annual fees then use Blender

What should I focus on for modelling for video games anyway? As in techniques and procedures, I can figure that lighting and rendering for instance won't exactly have top priority

>>554960
focus on learning good topology for animation.

>>554893

I can vouch for this.

I first learned Maya in school. Before I thought every program was like Blender (all in one, multipurpose) then I come to find Maya is just one tool that is highly refined for certain purposes. When I did eventually want to learn Blender it was a hard transition. Also don't buy into name brand hype. Marketing is a big deal that's why "industry standard" is even a term. Even if you learned to animate through SFM, the same basic principles apply to every other program.

>>554861

Maya isn't easier to learn, you just need to know less to get "good" results

You have to tweak pretty much every single thing in Blender, the defaults for everything are garbage (render settings, default world setting, default materials, default UI, default UI color scheme, and so on)

So it's easy for beginners, which is what most of /3/ is, to conclude "blender is shit!" because they never put in the time to actually learn all the ins and outs and how to set things up properly

And by the way, all that shit I said, is things you're going to end up doing to Maya, Zbrush, etc eventually

>>554861
Ultimately it's the user, not the package. However Maya has much more comprehensive in depth tutorials than Blender because you have professional creators making paid tutorials non stop for the program. People who've been in the industry for 20+ years and more, who firmly understand how to accomplish something while being optimized in their creation pipeline. There is a reason why Maya is industry standard, and it's not a meme unlike some users on /3/ try to pretend. However Blender is not a bad program, and I've dabbled with the Filmic plugin which is surprisingly well made. The flipside here is that Blender is free and has a decent community which on any hour of the day you can usually find new videos being uploaded to help you comprehend the seemingly bizarre toolset.

Some tools just do things better than others though. Maya has in my opinion the best rigging toolset out there, as well as a very polished animation system. So if you're doing anything in this area, I would advise to switch to Maya. However if you're planning to model and game art, Blender is a great choice as you won't need to bother with piracy concerns and the job can be done more or less like any other 3D software. Bottom line, your fundamentals will transfer to the next package you decide to migrate too. It's not immensely difficult to transfer with some practice, though I have noticed more users dislike going to Blender than coming from it. Good luck anon.

>>554985

Lol, you do realize filmic is just a LUT, right? Most other rendering engines have had the ability to compensate for light intensity like that for awhile now, I'm surprised it took someone this long to write one for Cycles desu...

>>554988
While true I like that it doesn't have to be fiddled with very much whereas Corona I need to play with the settings. Still doesn't detract at all from my main point.

>>554861

I've never used Blender, but I wasted nearly 10 years of my life with Maya before finally switching to 3DS Max - and consequently I'm actually really really fucking angry at myself for sticking with Maya for as long as I did.

Compared with Max, Maya is fucking hideous. Buggy, opaque, convoluted and holy shit - the modifier stack in Max (to which Maya doesn't have an obvious equivalent) is a fucking revelation.

As I say, I've never touched Blender but speaking as someone with 8 years experience - I would recommend to anyone, particularly anyone starting out - for the love of god; go with Max before Maya.

That is all.

>>554992

(samefag addendum)

To relate this to OP's question though - learn multiple softwares (whatever you chose) at the same time. I'm serious.
I learned the hard way that it really, really does not pay to be 'loyal' to any piece of software. Keep your software environment options as WIDE open as you possibly can from the start.

I used to mistakenly believe that Maya was like the 'Photoshop of the 3D world' (as Autodesk puts it) and that I would never need for any other wares as Maya did it all. Which it does. Just... kinda badly sometimes. (Maya is, as far as I can tell right now, not the best thing at anything).

I now hop around from app to app throughout my working day, learning new stuff every day, developing my own workflows, allowing new tools to influence my decision making. But it took me too long to get to this level of fluidity and I regret it massively. The earlier you adopt this philosophy the better: be general, never specialize.

>>554992

(samefag addendum 2)

I like Maya's viewport navigation controls better than Max. All the camera movement seems much more fluid. I also like the 'press D to move working pivot' function while working with an objects components.

Oh and being able to simultaneously select and work with the components of completely separate objects is really useful.

Besides those things - I don't miss Maya in the slightest.

File: 1422574102631.png (200KB, 600x451px) Image search: [Google]

200KB, 600x451px

>>554861
OP, if you're serious about it, choose Maya
an employer will need someone who knows Maya over Blender 999 times out of 1000 - in fact, Blender isnt used at all in the game and VFX industry, so it could be a roadblock for you in the long term
Maya is simply the best for animation, plus you get to work with renderers like Arnold, Vray and Renderman

I'm a 3dsmax user and I wish I was more at ease in Maya, it's an essential tool in any professional pipelines

>>554995
You obviously don't rig then. Maya is superior in this respect and I pulled my hair out with 3DS systems.

>>554989

Wasn't trying to detract m8, I've no experience with Corona but I've seen and heard nice things.

>>555001
>in fact, Blender isnt used at all in the game and VFX industry, so it could be a roadblock

That's a myth, if you're good enough it doesn't matter.

Here's a real quote from TomTom_Attack Sr. Tech Artist at Epic Games and moderator of ribbit's Unreal Engine subribbit

> "I've become a Blender fan over the past few years after being introduced to it at Naughty Dog. I've been using it regularly ever since so along with the Naughty Dog testing, it has officially touched Call of Duty:Ghosts, Battlefield 4, Hardline and I'm pretty much using it daily here at Epic Games. Now I'm probably the only artist using it but it integrates very well into a AAA pipeline and I've never heard a complaint other than the tools guys saying they wouldn't support it (too much work to support one artist). The community is amazing... to the point that I had a guy in Germany write my tools for exporting to Radiant on CoD. That exporter worked better than the in-house version (Maya) because it kept the UVs between 0-1 where Maya would throw those things all over the place.

>So the answer to your question is that it doesn't matter. If you like Blender, you're fine."

As for Arnold, Vray, and Renderman you an use all of those with Blender.

OP, or anyone in the thread thinking the same thing as OP, you should try Maya, Max, Modo, Blender, Houdini, until you find the one that you like.

And remember 80% of the work is done with 20% of the tools; mastering every single feature of a package isn't necessary (which is why basically every task an be done in every software).

I use blender for video editing and it is great for that. I have no experience with maya.

>>554861

OP ho gor Zbrush man... it has all the tools
I use it even for box modelling for some time

>>555062
So basically the only reason Blender was viable in that pipeline was because he had a personal code monkey creating custom tools for him specifically to be accommodated.
If some random applied saying they wanted to use Blender they'd be left to deal with the lack of pipeline integration by themselves.

>>554992
Since you brought it up - how does modelling compare between Maya and 3DS Max?

We use Maya at my university and I've gotten pretty used to modelling on it, learned all the fundamental shortcuts and tools like multi-cut, quad-draw, soft-select and such, to the point where, if I have a reference, I can probably get the mesh job done fairly comfortably given time. It's a little buggy (I've gotten crashes where all I've done is try to scale two edges together, I swear), but I've gotten used to saving very frequently so that's not a problem for me.

From what I understand though, Maya is a package focused on modelling *and* animation, while 3DS Max is solely focused on modelling. What does 3DS bring to the table compared to Maya in terms of modelling? If I mainly use Maya for modelling and texturing, and not so much animating, is it worth it to consider a switch?

OP here, I have now decided to go with Blender, one of the reasons being there are those excellent tutorials by Darrin Lile. Sweet Jesus, they are just perfect <3
What's the deal with Houdini? Is it just another 3D modelling program, because I got the impression it's for slightly different purposes than Blender and co.

>>555062
Its not a myth when its the truth.
That one guy at Naughty Dog and that Epic guy and the one guy at Blizzard, they are fucking exceptions.
You want a job from a pool of 1000 or you fight for the one odd job nobody knows about?
Thats even more true for VFX than for games. Yes there might be one studio who uses Blender, but then there are 1000 who don't.
And no you can't use Arnold in Blender, Renderman is very unstable on Blender, and Vray, well i never got it to run with Blender, so i don't know.
You like Blender; me too, i prefer to model in Blender than in Maya, but lets not twist reality. Its not there yet (in the industry) .
If you know ONLY Blender you're fucked.

>>555063
Why not Resolve?

>>555089
You are an student, get a free license and find out.
I found modelling in Maya always a little clumsy, but i also never got comfy with Max either. Modo is another great modeller you should keep an eye on.

>>555096
Do you like to code, write scripts/expressions, deal with math and logic, are you a technical guy?
If your answer is an enthusiastic YES, then look no further.
>>> https://sidefx.com/download/
If your answer is anything but an enthusiastic yes, just forget about it (for the next 5 years).

>>555062
>Now I'm probably the only artist using it
Not much else to say. You have one guy, who's coincidentally one of the top artists at a major studio, working with Blender. It's nothing. He can't even get his own tech guys to support him, he has to get it from some eurocuck who's doing it for pennis probably.