Replacing Maya

>>556500
Maya LT is 360 dollars a year (30 a month) and comes with everything Maya-related except for a couple of features.

For a thousand dollars, you could be subscribed for up to three years, do whatever shit you want to do there, and make your money back easily if you're serious about 3D. And then you don't have to give up on the software.

never gonna make it

>>556502
>Maya LT is 360 dollars a year (30 a month) and comes with everything Maya-related except for a couple of features.

I have considered this. My issue is that I don't want to be at Autodesk's mercy when they decide to raise the price, and it has no full rendering engine (at least the last time I looked). I need that.

Thanks for the attempt to help tho.

>>556503
>herp derp derpity derp

U wot m8?

>>556506
>U wot m8?
people who make it do whatever it takes to succeed. You're some retard posting about switching from maya to fucking lightwave. Just kys

>>556508
I think you might be projecting.

>>556509
u wot m8?

>>556509

Just wanna point out, this post is not OP. I know, because I am OP. Looks like more than one person on the slowest board on 4chan sees through you.

>>556500
>Lightwave

That desperate, huh? I don't really think Lightwave has much of a future, its usage and popularity has been on the decline for a decade. It's coming up on two years since the last version was released, there probably isn't much development muscle behind the program any more.

Don't get me wrong, you can definitely make fantastic work with it, just like any 3d package. But I personally don't care for it (I've been using it at work for 4 years) and IMO you could do a lot better.

Have you looked into Houdini? The Indie version is $200 a year.

Modo Indie doesn't have any scripting abilities and you need them for all the nifty scripts and plugins.
Modo 10.2v1 crashes on start, i only get it to run on a Linux system. Older versions run fine (and more stable than Maya).
But on the other side if you want to rig and skin and animate stay away from Modo, very far away. Its an excellent modeller, bloated with lots of stuff, pretending to be a fullfledged 3D DCC (its not!).
Lightwave is no real option either, ESPECIALLY not for rigging. You think Blender turns your Brain off, try riggin a character in Lightwave and you go insane.
That leaves Cinema 4d and Houdini.
I wouldn't recommend Cinema 4d for rigging either, because that and unwrapping was the reason i left C4d as my main program for Blender.
It works for smaller stuff, but the moment you want to create a complex character you'll hit the glass ceiling of that walled garden. Still unlike Modo, C4d IS a full 3d DCC only not as competent as Maya/Max.

I would actually recommend a combination of Blender, Zbrush and Houdini.
The Houdini indie version is worth the price, they do sell permanent Licenses, they are a private owned company with healthy customer relationships, and you can get a free Non-commercial version in under 5 minutes.
You can download a trial of C4d too.

>>556516

I honestly don't know shit about Houdini. Is it a full DCC application, with modelling/texturing/rigging/animation/rendering? I really need an app I can do all the meat and potatoes stuff from.

>>556531
its a meme, dont fall for it. Its only decent for hollywood VFX particle effects. Literally nothing else and anyone who says otherwise doesnt know what they;re talking about or is shilling

>>556535
>it's a meme

Dude, if you're going to try to troll, at least try not to make it obvious.

>>556536
see
>anyone who says otherwise doesnt know what they;re talking about or is shilling

>>556539

Now you're just being a tryhard. You do realize they give a free version of the software so people can try it out and make their own decisions, yes?

>>556539
Just cuz anon writes it doesn't mean anon is right.

get indie modo + indie mari combo
case closed.

>>556544
modo is completely useless without scripts. Just download real modo from cgp

>>556531
>Is it a full DCC application, with modelling/texturing/rigging/animation/rendering?

Yeah. It's a fantastic package, but not everyone's cup of tea. It can get pretty technical.

Either way, before dropping any money on your Maya replacement you should try the learning/trial versions of these programs, see how you get along with them.

>>556547
i work with blender for 2 years and you defiantly need plugins as you move on. i bet max is the same case without fancy plugins

>>556549
>It can get pretty technical.

Well, Maya can get pretty technical.

>>556552
theres a reason Weta uses maya for rigging animation and houdini for particles and not houdini for all my man

>>556555

Yeah. That reason is custom tools already developed for Maya.

>>556555

Thing is, studios use what is best for each step in the process. Best to them means fastest. So they might use something just because it saves them 5% in that step's time cost, because deadlines are a hell of a thing.

>>556560
houdini is a particle machine my friend. Its been around for over 20 years, with initial release in 96. Its always been a particle machine, always will.

>>556500
Cinema 4D

>>556506
OP why not just pirate the software to test it out? You don't have to use it in commercial practices, but you can sample the software unlocked to see if it fits your needs. Modo is a good utility but to be honest Maya has many of my animating and rigging tools that are crucial to my pipeline. I'd suggest paying 30$ a month - that's really not a huge deal. 600 / 30 = 20 months which is the cost of Modo in Maya subscriptions. Can you not make 360$ a year in 3D to pay for Maya LT?

>>556535
>and anyone who says otherwise doesnt know what they;re talking about or is shilling
Go to bed kiddo, this is an adult conversation.
>>556544
That would work if OP wanted to model and texture, but what about Rigging and animating?
You not actually recommending Modo for that?
>>556552
Yep, but Houdini is the TD's swiss army knife, it doesn't get more technical than that.
>>556555
Maya is undoubtedly a fine animation software, and Weta can afford whatever they want. OP doesn't want/can't anymore. Also Houdini 16 is the biggest update in the history of SideFX, lets see what Weta and others do with it.
>>556564
Its more than that.
>>556590
The full version of Cinema4d is as expensive as Maya (but you get a permanent license), unfortunately C4d is not as competent as Maya, but it does get shit done until it doesn't.

>>556632
Point me to some rigging/animation tutorials in Houdini my dude

>>556661
>666
we all satanists now?

Actually i am learning H since 3 weeks, i am a lowly apprentice and i haven't found much (rigging) tutorials of H16 since its brand new and they changed lots of stuff since 15.5.

This is the only one i found.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmUFziCLTNM

>>556500

Blender. You are a fucking coward and a fool to think its useless. You are literally being brain washed away from something you can use now, without risking a cent. Stop listening to all the neckbeards on 4chan. ( Even this post. )

Use your own brain, try something regardless what people say. You might find your dream software and it could be cheaper, free or cost you a fuck ton more than maya.

Do whatever.

>>556517

Lightwave imo is the easiest most brainless and fastest way to rig a character. This person doesn't know shit about Lightwave. I can't comment on modo.

Blender > Houdini > Lightwave > All else. imo..

>>556707
>>556708

Hello shills:

Blender may be free but my time and energy is precious.

>>556737
I'd at least give it a try. Cycles is as competent as any other rendering engine at making things look pretty, you just need the right node setup. It also has a Maya shortcut preset to ease you into learning the software (admittedly though, when new updates are released, the preset is left in a bit of disrepair until they fix all the keybinds).

Like this, you don't have to be at Autodesk's mercy or, in fact, pay anything at all, plus you'll have your rendering engine. In fact, if you grow to like it enough, the Blender Foundation may even pay you to shill for it just like they're paying me right now!

(I don't even use Blender, I use Maya as well, but it seems pretty petty to not try a free software just because of some prior bias towards it.)

>>556737
people are excited about blender so let them.

the main downside of it is that cycles don't have direct PBR nodes or any PBR at all, you need to create materials yourself or download something.
also the UI, everything is done either through hotkeys or popup menu's

>>556763

There are PBR node setups for Cycles, they're just not bundled with the program. I dunno if/when that will change. As it is now, the default install has tons of flexibility, but at the cost that it takes some time and knowhow to set it up.

Andrew Price did a couple tutorials on PBR in Cycles recently, and there are plenty more out there. Once you get a PBR node group you like, just save it in its own .blend file and import it when you need it (or just set up the nodes and save as your startup file) and reuse it to your hearts' content.

I use blender to model and animate, substance to texture and then render in unreal engine. Works well for me.

>>556760
>>556763
>>556771
>>556787
Blendershills.
Never know when to shut up.

>>556500
Like someone else said, you're never gonna make it. Get a student copy of Maya for free and stfu.

>>556500
I'm using cracked Modo 10 and it crashes less often than Max (which means basically almost never, while Max crashes a little bit). Dunno about the indie version but I can't see why it would be any different.

OP here. I haven't been participating in this thread in over a day. Just so everyone knows, the people you are arguing with at this point don't include me.

>>556707
>>556794
bait.jpg

I didn't say it was useless. I just don't like it. Also, I have had student Maya, and now legally licensed Maya. I'm just fucking tired of paying so much every month.

>>556797

Useful input. I'm impressed.

>>556797
Supposedly the latest version crashes more often than Maya.

Also Foundry software spies on your PC looking for cracked software.

>>556500
If money is an issue, use Blender. Workflow can be modified through scripts and you'll save a shitload of money.

>>556798

There is no reason not to just pirate Maya and keep using it.

You aren't going to get sued, no one is going to report you, the people who get sued are studios making millions that don't have licenses and get reported by a disgruntled employee.

The reason they, and frankly a lot of software, have extremely lax protection is because they'd rather people stole their product than used a competitor's.

If you're REALLY worried about it, once you start making money you can Incorporate and then you can buy the license and write it off as a business expense.

Or if you end up working for a studio, they can buy you a license (or most likely not, but they're the ones liable not you).

I GUESS if you're a Freelance contractor sending raw maya project files, MAYBE you could get in trouble if someone decided to report you? But again, it actually costs money to sue someone and they aren't going to bother when they're only going to get a tiny amount of money and a lot of negative consumer sentiment.

Probably unpopular opinion incoming, but I'd still spring for Maya LT even though Blender is free.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYiiD-p2q80
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIedljapuz0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWacQrEcMHk

I've used Maya for around two years now, and I never thought the interface to be anything amazing, but when I tried to make the switch to Blender it was eye-opening to see how much I was taking it for granted.

I'm not even talking about the left-click right-click shit, I changed that first thing when I opened it. Everything on the interface just looks too much alike everything else, lacks icons and relies a lot on prior user knowledge and shortcuts. The worst part is, you watch that third video where Andrew put out about a proposed interface, and it looks fucking sweet as shit, like it would make Blender a thousand times more accessible, until you realize that that interface already largely exists in Maya: the sidebar, tabs with tools grouped for specific tasks, output and specific component windows, it's all there in a lite form.

Blender devs also put out a response that an interface revamp isn't high on their list of priorities, they'd rather implement new features into the software. That was three or four years ago or so, and very little has been done to make the interface more intuitive. Blender foundation could pay me to model in it, but I'd still take a software with a cleaner, more user-oriented interface any day of the week over it.

>>556921
And just to re-iterate, IN MY OPINION the interface in Blender is so bad and there's so many things wrong with it, that I'd rather you pirate Maya or any other software more focused on modelling and rendering, and get your work done faster that way.

>>556921
>>556922

Blender Foundation knows, certain parts of Blender are hardcoded and it's starting to cause problems even now, so they know they're basically going to have to re-write Blender sooner rather than later.

I'm not going to say that they've made plans to do that, but 2.8 is the last version for a while until a big update, and then after that there won't be any updates for a while as they plan to do some sort of major overhaul (including significant improvements to the Viewport)

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>>556924
>certain parts of Blender are hardcoded
you know nothing about programming, dumbass. everything is changeable. Nothing is "hardcoded"

>>556924
hardcoded means some data or parameters (like the matcaps for some odd reason) is part of the programming and can't be changed without rewriting the program

hardcoded means nothing to the people that write the program

>>556929
>hardcoded means some data or parameters (like the matcaps for some odd reason) is part of the programming and can't be changed without rewriting the program
everytime you change anything you rewrite the program and have to recompile it. Have you ever programmed anything dum dum

>>556919
Isn't .fbx a proprietary autodesk file format? If you're exporting files with that extension willy-nilly, isn't that as big an admission that you're using Maya as an .ma or .mb file?

>>556934
no, it was developed by autodesk but modo reads and writes it as well. So do a lot of other programs

>>556931
Yes, everytime you change anything you rewrite the program and have to recompile it. Hence "hardcoded means nothing to the people that write the program".

I'm saying the user can't change it unless they rewrite it, but the programmer is the one writing it in the first place so it's not an issue. So claiming some parts of Blender are hardcoded and that this prevents things from being changed by the programmers is silly.

I'm agreeing with you dum dum.

>>556919
What file formats would be considered safe to send when using pirated maya? OBJ?

>>556924
>>556927
>>556929
>>556944

Can you people stop being so fucking aspergers about word choice. Instead of "hardcoded" anon was clearly trying to say something like "Fixing the UI would require deep refactoring."

Anyway fuck Blender and its vomit interface. In Maya you get to live in the channel box and attribute editor. Open up the hypershade for a bit. Open up the UV editor for a bit. Everything has nice clear text labels so you don't have to memorize 5000 icons to navigate the menus. It's so much more fluid.

>>556954
If you're that concerned about it, you can do one of two things:
1) Save as ascii fbx (or obj), open the file with a text editor and delete the comments or anywhere it mentions Maya
2) Export, open in Blender, then re-export from Blender

>>556955
All blender has to do is adopt QT as it's UI which Maya and modo have already done. QT also has GPL licensing options for community projects lmao

>>556965
I love Qt myself but porting a large desktop app to Qt is an insane amount of work. Blender has rolled its own UI framework pretty much forever and it Qt would have to offer a serious improvement to make it worthwhile. Blender can probably make all the improvements it needs while keeping the current system with a fraction of the developer effort.

Even if the result is 15% less beautiful and clean than porting to Qt it's still better not to waste 1000% more developer time on a Qt port.

>>556977
ease of third-party plugin development is reason enough

>>556977
>I love Qt myself but porting a large desktop app to Qt is an insane amount of work
its not

> Qt would have to offer a serious improvement to make it worthwhile
it does, thats why serious applications use it. Nuke uses QT as well

>>556793

>being this mad

How does autodesks corporate cock taste senpai? Literally no reason to hate blender if all you do is model / UV in it. They made all the cgi in man in the high castle using blender and substance

>>557037
Hello shill:

I mostly do rigging and animation. That Autodesk cock tastes juicy fucking sweet to me.

>>556500

Try this: https://neobarok.com/

I have no idea if it's what you're looking for, but it's free and looks pretty cool.

>>557053
Nevermind, it's a cute program but it's nowhere near maya as capabilities.

>>557037
You are the fucking fanboy and the joke is on you.
I AM using Blender for modelling and UV and i don't hate it. I hate stupid idiots who try to shove something down someones throat even if he/she said no 5+ times.
>How does autodesks corporate cock taste senpai?
Don't ask me, i wouldn't know because i am fucking them over and THAT feels great...
>>557051
Have you downloaded Houdini yet and took a look at it?
I can not really judge if it compares to Maya as i am not a rigger, and nothing beats first hand experience, but i am curious what some rigger has to say.

>>557075
>I can not really judge if it compares to Maya as i am not a rigger, and nothing beats first hand experience, but i am curious what some rigger has to say.
maya is the golden industry standard for a reaason senpai. Nothing will ever beat it, especially with the new tools in 2017.

>>557075
Anon >>557051 here. Houdini seems interesting and I'm curious to try it. I will wait until I see some good tutorials on getting started Houdini 16 and learning to rig in Houdini. I am not interested in reinventing the wheel.

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this is what I get for actually purchasing Maya LT instead of using my virtually flawless (apart from crashes) cracked Maya 2016? This is what my scene looks like when I opened my save from an hour ago, what the fuck is this. I swear 2017 is fucking gay

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>>557037
>They made all the cgi in man in the high castle using blender

Yeah, and it shows.

>>557110
Can confirm Maya 2017 is a buggy mess. Really wish i just stayed on 2016.

>>557217
Yeah that looks like shit kek

that being said, Blender is capable of a lot better than that

>>557229
Installed update 3, Maya shits the bed when trying to import any mesh.
>uninstalled, back to vanilla 2017
Seriously, how can they get away with that?
Its update 3 Jesus titty fucking Christ, how can the third update break one of the most basic file import options?

>>556500
It depends what you want to do and do you want to do it as a career later on.

a) if Animator or Rigger, stay in Maya and learn scripting and shit as well

b) if Lighter = I have no idea, probably safe to stay in Maya, get Katana and prman and practice with those, light your own small cg project

c) if effects = Houdini is the best solution for fx as well. Maya is very good too but seeing that so many people who come to work can't even do a basic fluid setup and do not understand how voxel resolution etc correlates to what is happening on screen... Sad.

It depends really.

>>556500
Un related but how would that fire effect be done? What program?

>>556987
>It's not

It is. I don't know what posses you to think the development time to take a mature project with a complicated UI and recreate it from scratch in a new frame work would be "trivial."

>>557419
Houdini, FumeFx (plugin for Max/Maya) or PheonixFD (same). There are other pyro solvers around like TurbulenceFD but quality is lower.

>>557217
What the fuck were they thinking? There is no way this is a real screen from the show.

Blender is a very capable software, but it has way too much stigma associated with it at this point. You either have the guys who have been using it for years, have gotten used to the interface and will religiously defend it, or you have the people who use Autodesk stuff, who will admonish it for being crappy software that doesn't even come close to the "industry standard".

Blender needs a re-branding at this point. If you re-released Blender with a new name like Toaster or something, tightened up its features to a Maya LT-esque package including only modeling, UV mapping, AO map generation with TURTLE and animation, removed the useless stuff that 3D modelers seldom use like video editing from said package, adopted an interface like >>556921 or >>556965 said, while still keeping it open source and free, you would have an instant home run in your hands.

At that point, normal Blender could still exist for the nerds who have gotten used to it over the years, with its extremely shitty UI and very spread-out, multipurpose package, and this Toaster could be the thing that makes companies jump away from Maya in droves, because at that point, you're offering almost everything Maya is offering, with a very similar interface and usability, but for free.

>>558524
this is just comfort vs. functionality argument.
if you want to pimp your blender to match maya, its possible to do today. but it would take some tinkering on your part.
can you use default blender to produce high level work? from my experience i would say yes. is it likely? i would say no. for production work you need many many things automated through plugins, you need more options. you need quick shaders, rigging tools etc.

>>558525
cont.
that being said maya needs her plugins too. fumefx, genx etc. so in both cases you would need to spend money and time to get high functionality out of both programs.
the real shit here is cycles. cycles needs quick shaders,hdri's,pbr outputs etc. so it would probably cost the same money to buy vray for blender as pimping your cycles

>>558526
I'm thinking more in terms of game development, where you don't need a fancy rendering engine like Arnold or Cycles since you'd be rendering using a game engine, and can afford to have just a couple of PBR shaders in there like Stingray PBS to check out how your product is going to come out before you export it to the engine. Hell, you could even use that as an excuse to launch a refined version of Blender Game specifically for stuff like this, just like Maya Hardware.

I'm not saying that studios wouldn't develop plugins for things like that, but it'd be plugins for automating tasks like unwrapping UV's from multiple submeshes at once in a certain way or such.

Again, you could keep Blender for the guys who are looking for a software with an engine that can do stuff like archviz, and the devs who have already gotten used to the interface and developed plugins for it, and this new Blender version would be more focused, for smaller studios or ones looking to cut costs, and beginners who want a quick entry point into 3D without spending a week learning shortcuts and the software's interface.