Maya or 3Ds Max to make SL avatars?

[Lilly Figgis]

Which program is better to make SL avatars? Any other?

[linkin Slate]

Well Zbrush also is a great  tool , its better for avatars   then for buildings ,just no rigging tools.

[guY Ralior]

I think if you want the most information and tutorials Blender would be the way to go as many more people use it than others. It is great to know and you can transfer all knowledge to other 3D programs. As far as between those two you mentioned I would use Maya but I am partial as that is what I use along with Blender and a few other programs in my workflow.

[Chelsea Malibu]

For character building (animals, humans, monsters etc.) I use MudBox.  Also works great for terrain meshes.

[LillyBleh]

i Find that Zbrush is best. Not only is it that well known, game designers use zbrush for models/landscape and the fact that its quite easy to use (works best with a tablet).

you can sculpt the model in zbrush and transfer it into maya for some rigging  or just make the model in Maya c: (3d max is also a good program but i don't use it so i have no clue of it)

or if you cant afford the programs you could always use blender

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

I use 3ds Max, but that's because I started learning it two years ago, and have hopes to use it professionally.  There seems to be a built in function (modifier) or plugin for Max for anything you can come up with.  To some degree "better" depends on your personal style.  I like how Max works, and do not like SketchUp or the 2.49 Blender (which was all that was available 2 years ago).  I'm sure other people have opposite feelings about 3D programs, just like they love or hate specific SL viewers.

[Baloo Uriza]

Why go for the two most expensive titles on the market for this, when Blender is FOSS?

[Nalates Urriah]

For any single specific task, there may well be a best. For general purpose modeling, I suspect it is more about personal prefference than the software. In which case the better modeling program depends on what you plan to do.

Maya and 3DS are good professional tools. They have about every tool one can imagine. So, it you plan to do professional level production, go with them.

Sketchup and similar programs are a novice's tool. Professionals can use them but will find them limiting. If you are a beginner and just want to learn some basics, they are not a bad place to start.

Blender, TrueSpace, and similat tools are some where between being a professional's and a hobbyist's tool. One can do most of the things in them that one can do in Maya or 3DS, but things are not as polished. One skilled with Blender can do impressive work. Since both of these are free, they are good starting places for beginners yet to decide how deep they want to get into modeling.

Blender has a reputation for being hard to learn. However most people using it learn it on their own. I don't have numbers, but I suspect more people go to school to learn 3DS than are self taught. I'm not sure my assumptions about which is actually more complex or difficult to learn are valid. But, I can say from personal experience that Blender 2.5x is far easier to learn than 2.4x and prior.

For building regged mesh, what you would use to build an avatar, most modeling programs' export is a problem for SL import. The Lindens are working on fixes. Do not expect any program to work perfectly with SL. I'm not sure if the recent 2.59 release of Blender has rigged mesh working well with SL. Most people working with rigged mesh use 2.49b or 2.5x to make the model then export their .dae files of rigged mesh items with Blender 2.49b. So, working 2.5x requires the additional step of moving the rigged mesh to 2.49b for export. But, they may have been fixed.

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

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Baloo Uriza wrote:

Why go for the two most expensive titles on the market for this, when

Blender

is

FOSS

?

---

If you check what a professional computer graphics forum has for posts relative to various softwares, 3ds Max & Maya have

959,000 posts combined, Blender has 34,800.  It appears to be a fine program, but it simply is not used by many professionals.  Since that is my goal (to do professional graphics), I choose to learn Max and Photoshop.  If I was just a hobbyist and wanted to save money, I would choose Blender and GIMP.  I may yet learn to use it anyway, but for now I have other software to finish learning first.  And by the way, I do have Blender 2.57 on my machine, I have nothing against it, but it was not ready to use at the time I started learning.

[Baloo Uriza]

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Nalates Urriah wrote:

Blender, TrueSpace, and similat tools are some where between being a professional's and a hobbyist's tool. One can do most of the things in them that one can do in Maya or 3DS, but things are not as polished. One skilled with Blender can do impressive work. Since both of these are free, they are good starting places for beginners yet to decide how deep they want to get into modeling.

---

Not sure it's exactly fair to dismiss Blender as a hobbyist tool or somehow less professional than the expensive options when Blender's been used to make a couple feature length movies now, as well as the CG effects in Starship Troopers (and likely many other movies of the same era) back when Blender was competitively priced against Maya and 3DS and was a product of notAnumber.  Especially given that it's way more powerful and easier to use now than it was then.

[Baloo Uriza]

---

DanielRavenNest Noe wrote:

---

Baloo Uriza wrote:

Why go for the two most expensive titles on the market for this, when

Blender

is

FOSS

?

---

If you check what a

professional computer graphics forum

has for posts relative to various softwares, 3ds Max & Maya have 959,000 posts combined, Blender has 34,800.  It appears to be a fine program, but it simply is not used by many professionals.  Since that is my goal (to do professional graphics), I choose to learn Max and Photoshop.  If I was just a hobbyist and wanted to save money, I would choose Blender and GIMP.  I may yet learn to use it anyway, but for now I have other software to finish learning first.  And by the way, I do have Blender 2.57 on my machine, I have nothing against it, but it was not ready to use at the time I started learning.

---

Keep in mind that in most, if not all, professional cases, are in shops where managers who know nothing about the work make the purchasing decisions.  All that proves is that AutoDesk and Adobe have nicer brocures, and setting your licensing fees per seat in about the same territory as a servicable used car triggers the "it costs more, so it must be better" response in the pointy haired bosses of the world.

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

---

Baloo Uriza wrote:

---

Keep in mind that in most, if not all, professional cases, are in shops where managers who know nothing about the work make the purchasing decisions.  All that proves is that AutoDesk and Adobe have nicer brocures, and setting your licensing fees per seat in about the same territory as a servicable used car triggers the "it costs more, so it must be better" response in the pointy haired bosses of the world.

---

Not to start a software religious war, but don't you think the graphics artists who actually do the work would tell their bosses what they need to get the work done?  I'm sure they complain at least as much as Second Life users do about which viewer they use.

 

[guY Ralior]

They same argument can be made on the other side, cause it's free is it supposed to be better? Cause people can freely add to it all they want and build it on their own and call it whatever they want does that make it better? There is a reason that people use Maya and Max and its not cause of pretty brochures. If you have used both extensively you would clearly say that Maya or Max would be far superior to Blender, now granted most people don't have the money to go out and by an Autodesk product just to build stuff in SL as you would Sculpt Studio or a paid version of JASS even if you are a merchant, but that does not at all make Blender better.

Do you think Boeing or Aerospace Engineering firms are using Maya or 3DS for designing their planes and ships? No they don't they use programs like Alias and Rhino. Maya and Max are looked at in the film community like a pedicel uncle at Christmas, you don't want him around but he is part of the family so you have to invite him NURBS need to be revamped in both to call them up to par for anything outside of film or game animation. So in this regard Blender, Maya and Max are all kinda the same, but in no way equal. Until you use other programs, it is very hard to get out of the Blender cult

[Baloo Uriza]

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DanielRavenNest Noe wrote:

---

Baloo Uriza wrote:

---

Keep in mind that in most, if not all, professional cases, are in shops where managers who know nothing about the work make the purchasing decisions.  All that proves is that AutoDesk and Adobe have nicer brocures, and setting your licensing fees per seat in about the same territory as a servicable used car triggers the "it costs more, so it must be better" response in the pointy haired bosses of the world.

---

Not to start a software religious war, but don't you think the graphics artists who actually do the work would tell their bosses what they need to get the work done? 

---

That's not how life in the office works.  Especially in this economy.

[Vivienne Schell]

So here goes the "shared building experience", the "collaborative approach", the "direct access"  and all this...

This "mesh" forum is more about tech tools than Second Life. Sad.

:matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

 

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

---

guY Ralior wrote:

Do you think Boeing or Aerospace Engineering firms are using Maya or 3DS for designing their planes and ships?

---

Actually, they use CATIA  (I used to work there).  That's more an engineering design and manufacturing program.  Instead of of outputting a rendered animation, it outputs instructions for machine tools and shop drawings for the airplane factory.  Creating a 3D model is similar in any program you use, but what it gets used for can vary dramatically.

 

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

So here goes the "shared building experience", the "collaborative approach", the "direct access"  and all this...

This "mesh" forum is more about tech tools than Second Life. Sad.

 

---

 

What part of making animations, photoshop work on textures, editing sound clips, or sculpt making has been an in-world activity?  And once mesh objects are imported, you still build with them just like prims (adjust position, link them, texture them).  If Linden Lab had called them "custom prims" instead of "mesh", perhaps people like you would not find them so scary.

[Ashasekayi Ra]

No offense, but there are plenty of professionals in the virtual content arena that use Blender. Now, if this was a discussion about the best program to use if you want to get a job at a game or movie studio, I'd agree that the only serious choices are Max and Maya when it comes to 3D suites. They are the brand of choice for those industries since studios have already invested a considerable amount of money in them.

However, that isn't the case when it comes to freelance content creators. In that area, a person can pick and chose whatever offers a toolset that works for them. 

I could say the same for 2D graphics. I can use Photoshop CS5 Extended for example since I own that and GIMP. I've used Photoshop for ages in my profession, and I adore it. Just this year, I started playing around with GIMP on my laptop. Now, I can say that I'm more comfortable with Photoshop since I've used it for ages. However, *most* anything I can make in Photoshop (as it relates to painting textures), I can do in GIMP.

So, if someone prefers Max, that is great. However, there are people that prefer Blender which is a great choice if you are a freelance content designer. But, when it comes to modeling, you either know how to model or you don't. Because, if you know how to model, you can model in any program. 

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

I'm hard to offend :matte-motes-big-grin:  The "best tool for the job" has a subjective and an objective aspect.  If the job is making mesh content for Second Life, you are constrained to making Collada .dae files as an output.  So no matter how good the 3D program is of itself, or how much you like it, if it cannot do that, it is useless for that job.  Programs like Max and Maya are set up to use "render farms" (clusters of computers) to render high quality sequences for films, because each frame takes a long time on a single computer and you need many frames to make a movie.  If you are not making movies, that feature is not relevant.

And I use several other programs myself besides 3ds Max, when they are better at a given task.  What I look at is first, does the software have the features I need?  Then if I have a choice, which one do I like better?  Two years ago I had Max, Sketchup, and Blender 2.49 to start learning on, and for my own personal reasons I chose Max.  Someone else might pick another program.  So the original question in this topic "which is best?" cannot be answered, because each of us is different.

[guY Ralior]

Not sure where you live ( I live in CA ) and when I first moved here before opening my own business, I had a few offers from Boeing they use Alias which I have had very little experience, I know nothing about CATIA, but I can tell you for sure that you can't loft a 4th or 5th degree curve with Blender. I was also told by Boeing that knowing Alias was good that many auto manufacturers use it as well, so learning it would have good benefit for me.

Some people want to make out that your an idiot for using a program such as Maya or Max when there is a free program Blender available that will do all the things that Maya or Max will do, and in some ways that may be true but in others it is so far from the truth it isn't even funny.

In my first post in this thread I suggested Blender?? That is because I would never tell someone they have to go out and spend close to 6K USD for a seat on Maya, just to build stuff in SL. Unless there is some other reason you need the program such as myself ( I build models all day long at my business ) then there is no reason to purchase it. I know no one in the industry that that has access to both and decides to use Blender over Maya or Max for modeling.

And as Ash says, if you can model it doesn't matter what program you use, you can model. I use Maya and Blender and advocate both and don't put one down over another but to make both equal would be like calling apples and oranges the same fruit. They simply aren't.

Sorry if somehow I have offended someone I mean not to at all, I am simply pointing out that people on the Blender side just jump down the throat of anybody suggesting to use something else for use in SL.

[Lilly Figgis]

Thank you for your replies to my post! I really appreciate it!

I have been making shapes in SL since 2007, and with Mesh coming into scene in SL, I want to learn how to make them in mesh. I have Maya, 3Ds Max (trials versions) and Blender on my PC, so no worries about getting them.

So in order to make shapes in SL which is better Maya or 3Ds Max? I want to put my back on it, so I must begin with the correct program.

[arton Rotaru]

---

Lilly Figgis wrote:

 

So in order to make shapes in SL which is better Maya or 3Ds Max? I want to put my back on it, so I must begin with the correct program.

---

Blender :matte-motes-silly:

Sorry ,couldn't resist after reading a few of the last posts. :matte-motes-bashful-cute-2:

Probably you won't get the desired answer. If you have access to all 3 programs, just try simple modeling in each of them. Search for the tutorials for the desired task and see which one comes closest to your liking. You will never know which works best for you, if you haven't tried them all by yourself.

[Ashasekayi Ra]

I'll give you that you can get some cultish Blender people. But, I have seen the other side with rabid Maya/Max users. I have even had "the superiority of Max users" chats with people illegally using academic versions/cracked versions of the software commercially. That was quite hilarious by the way.  So, yea, it goes both ways.

I wouldn't call anyone stupid because they choose this or that program. I know a couple of people that use Maya because they have had it for years and use it outside of SL professionally as well. However, I would wonder about the sanity of a person that decides to pay 5,000 plus US dollars for a copy of Max if they don't plan to work at a major studio though. 

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Chelsea Malibu wrote:

For character building (animals, humans, monsters etc.) I use MudBox.  Also works great for terrain meshes.

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I've often heard it said that a few years of military service also work great for character building

[Poenald Palen]

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Baloo Uriza wrote:

---

DanielRavenNest Noe wrote:

---

Baloo Uriza wrote:

Why go for the two most expensive titles on the market for this, when

Blender

is

FOSS

?

---

If you check what a

professional computer graphics forum

has for posts relative to various softwares, 3ds Max & Maya have 959,000 posts combined, Blender has 34,800.  It appears to be a fine program, but it simply is not used by many professionals.  Since that is my goal (to do professional graphics), I choose to learn Max and Photoshop.  If I was just a hobbyist and wanted to save money, I would choose Blender and GIMP.  I may yet learn to use it anyway, but for now I have other software to finish learning first.  And by the way, I do have Blender 2.57 on my machine, I have nothing against it, but it was not ready to use at the time I started learning.

---

Keep in mind that in most, if not all, professional cases, are in shops where managers who know nothing about the work make the purchasing decisions.  All that proves is that AutoDesk and Adobe have nicer brocures, and setting your licensing fees per seat in about the same territory as a servicable used car triggers the "it costs more, so it must be better" response in the pointy haired bosses of the world.

---

I think you might see some earlier threads in the cgsociety forums where there is a person posting on Autodesks buying of software lol. Some are not happy, it is like the borg and som hate learning the new industry standard later on after autodesk took so much marketshare lol. I can see your point!

[Poenald Palen]

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DanielRavenNest Noe wrote:

---

guY Ralior wrote:

Do you think Boeing or Aerospace Engineering firms are using Maya or 3DS for designing their planes and ships?

---

Actually, they use

CATIA

  (I used to work there).  That's more an engineering design and manufacturing program.  Instead of of outputting a rendered animation, it outputs instructions for machine tools and shop drawings for the airplane factory.  Creating a 3D model is similar in any program you use, but what it gets used for can vary dramatically.

 

---

Vivienne Schell wrote:

So here goes the "shared building experience", the "collaborative approach", the "direct access"  and all this...

This "mesh" forum is more about tech tools than Second Life. Sad.

 

---

 

What part of making animations, photoshop work on textures, editing sound clips, or sculpt making has been an in-world activity?  And once mesh objects are imported, you still build with them just like prims (adjust position, link them, texture them).  If Linden Lab had called them "custom prims" instead of "mesh", perhaps people like you would not find them so scary.

---

Uh, seriously..I am making a thread about this! lol. Desault anyone...solid works doesn't exist...only CATIA? multiple tools, different reasons!! this thread is so funny because techically it is being hijacked BUT....this is an interesting issue...why does the OP think they need only maya or 3DS? It is slightly irrlevent....So, I will make a tech troll thread!