Which Way DO I GO ...

[Cerridwen Keneinan]

I wanted to ask you a quick question. I have decided to learn to mesh, before I start I want to learn my platform fully, but also want to pick the right platform. Wanted to ask which software you use and the pros and cons you have discovered meshing in second life. Currently I am deciding between Maya, 3D Max, or Blender. Ofc price plays a part but I am more concerned with the best software then price. Your replies will be most appreciated!

[OptimoMaximo]

1 hour ago, Cerridwen Keneinan said:

I wanted to ask you a quick question. I have decided to learn to mesh, before I start I want to learn my platform fully, but also want to pick the right platform. Wanted to ask which software you use and the pros and cons you have discovered meshing in second life. Currently I am deciding between Maya, 3D Max, or Blender. Ofc price plays a part but I am more concerned with the best software then price. Your replies will be most appreciated!

This is a question which will receive a lot of biased answers. Blender users will say Blender is the best, 3dsMax users will say 3dsMax is the best, Maya users will say Maya is the best. 

Maya user here and former Blender user as well, when I couldn't get a license for home from the studio and I could not afford one for myself. When things changed (extra studio license at bundle subscription plan) I switched immediately back to Maya and threw Blender outta window. In Blender, there simply isn't an equivalent to all the stuff Maya does. But I have to say that I've got the training and years of experience using it, while I kept growing on it. For me blender didn't make the cut. Maya is the best. I can't say anything about 3dsmax though as my experience with it is limited to 2 weeks of tutorials back in the days when I was making up my mind to decide which one to use, and it didn't click for me (actually, I hated it lol). But I assume it's got a similar feature set to Maya's. 

So if price isn't a main concern and you also may want to, one day, turn your skills into a profession, Maya is the best way to go, followed by 3dsmax.

Now see all the Blender users jump all over me 🤣

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, OptimoMaximo said:

Now see all the Blender users jump all over me 🤣

Not sure if jumping onto a tyrannosaur is such a good idea...

Blender is free and can do pretty much every task you need if you can only figure out how. I can't compare it to Maya or 3D Max since I've never tried them.

[Janet Voxel]

Blender is free, if you’re learning free is always the best option.  ‘Nuff said.

[MaxMare]

I`m a Max user and I will admit that latest version of Blender is really great, you won`t go wrong with it, they evolved and adapted to industry standards and offer a variety of features, not to mention overwhelming support in terms of tutorials, plug-.ins etc...just to be clear, f you asked this question 2 years ago, I`d say go with Maya or Max, but  Blender 2.8+ definitely made all the right steps in the right direction, plus it`s free..

Speaking of how hard it is to learn, difficulty level is basically the same, no matter which one you pick...I suggest starting with the very basics, please don`t start in the middle as most do, you can thank me later!

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

On 4/1/2020 at 5:07 PM, OptimoMaximo said:

This is a question which will receive a lot of biased answers. Blender users will say Blender is the best, 3dsMax users will say 3dsMax is the best, Maya users will say Maya is the best.

Na, I say Blender is free, I can't afford Maya so I have to take it on trust when Maya users say Maya is better .

On 4/1/2020 at 3:22 PM, Cerridwen Keneinan said:

before I start I want to learn my platform fully, but also want to pick the right platform. Wanted to ask which software you use and the pros and cons you have discovered meshing in second life.

Blender was originally animation software. There's a ridiculous amount it can do that's not needed for making mesh for SL.

SL mesh has many quirks and requires many compromises, so there's a lot to be said for learning as you go. Make something, then slive with it awhile to get a feel for how it works inworld and figure out which compromises matter most for what you're making and what you want from it. It's at least as much an art in that respect as technical skills.

The beta grid is good for uploading practice and test mesh to avoid wasting too many lindens on upload fees.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Former 3dsMax user here, moved to Blender and will probably never go back (do keep in mind I moved nearly a decade ago so things might have changed).

The big issue with commercial softwares that I've had is that you're either a pirate (or a "student"), or you have money. If you are a pirate (ooor a "student), nobody cares about you, and if you have money, more people want to separate it from you.

What this means is that most tools you might want on 3dsMax either cost an arm and a leg, or aren't made because there isn't enough of a market for them. In addition, since there is a bit of a relationship between autodesk and commercial plugin creators, addons, unless they are just scripts, never come with sourcecode. You can't tweak them, you can't fix them.

Updates are typically only free for minor version changes.

 

Blender is free, but it's free as in freedom, not as in free beer (kill me). It's a software written by software developpers to satisfy their needs, and in second place, the needs of the average non-technical user. This means that it is an incredibly powerful, but incredibly complex piece of software.

Unlike commercial packages all addons, even commercial ones, can be edited to your needs, should you want to.

 

In both cases they have a fairly healthy community, both have paid classes obviously, and both have TONS of free tutorials.

(most tutorials thend to be of dubious quality, written by people who barely know more than a complete beginner but are eager to share their bad practices for internet clout. There is still a handful of professionals/experienced users sharing good knowledge for free, but they can take some time to separate from the chaff)

[OptimoMaximo]

8 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

What this means is that most tools you might want on 3dsMax either cost an arm and a leg, or aren't made because there isn't enough of a market for them. In addition, since there is a bit of a relationship between autodesk and commercial plugin creators, addons, unless they are just scripts, never come with sourcecode. You can't tweak them, you can't fix them.

This might have changed with 2.8 series Blender release, but the core of Blender is made up of tons of dll files, which means it's basically closed source because you need to decompile them to tweak or fix things. Saying that it's open source doesn't lift the fact that if it's compiled, you either have to be tech inclined to a certain level or you can't do crap about it except to report issues and hope they get fixed next release, exactly like a commercial software. Addons are just scripts exactly like the scripts available for 3dsmax or Maya, so in these 2 regards the ground is even. With the difference that developing addons for blender means that they have to be open source and, after some time, either get included within blender itself (as it often happens) or distributed freely with no chance of appeal, because of the open source licensing. So it doesn't appeal a serious developer to work and  make money in return on resources they might be developing because either way, the time they are "allowed" to monetize on their work is limited. See for example the developer of the addon that speeds up cycles :it lasted 12 months on the market before it was absorbed by blender, becoming a native add on. 

 

8 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

It's a software written by software developpers to satisfy their needs, and in second place, the needs of the average non-technical user.

Which is the weak point of Blender. Tech people doesn't always know what is needed in production by artists (almost never) . On the other hand, commercial software is written to satisfy the end user's needs based on production people feedback and requests. Sure it needs to be a studio, but if you find a showstopper at any point in production, phone call to autodesk and within the shortest amount of time possible they deliver a fix. A monthly subscription license doesn't cost a fortune anymore nowadays, and any serious creator in SL can afford that. I can understand who thinkers around making content for personal use or just from time to time, but not those with an established business. The packs of tools available for industry production in Maya, for example, make the creation of anything for SL take just a fraction of the time needed using blender. transfer the UVs from the default avatar to another body: five minutes work and 1 click. Perfect results. I tried in blender... Tweaking and tinkering for days. No thanks 😁

[Beq Janus]

5 hours ago, OptimoMaximo said:

This might have changed with 2.8 series Blender release, but the core of Blender is made up of tons of dll files, which means it's basically closed source because you need to decompile them to tweak or fix things. Saying that it's open source doesn't lift the fact that if it's compiled, you either have to be tech inclined to a certain level or you can't do crap about it except to report issues and hope they get fixed next release, exactly like a commercial software. Addons are just scripts exactly like the scripts available for 3dsmax or Maya, so in these 2 regards the ground is even. With the difference that developing addons for blender means that they have to be open source and, after some time, either get included within blender itself (as it often happens) or distributed freely with no chance of appeal, because of the open source licensing. So it doesn't appeal a serious developer to work and  make money in return on resources they might be developing because either way, the time they are "allowed" to monetize on their work is limited. See for example the developer of the addon that speeds up cycles :it lasted 12 months on the market before it was absorbed by blender, becoming a native add on. 

Which is the weak point of Blender. Tech people doesn't always know what is needed in production by artists (almost never) . On the other hand, commercial software is written to satisfy the end user's needs based on production people feedback and requests. Sure it needs to be a studio, but if you find a showstopper at any point in production, phone call to autodesk and within the shortest amount of time possible they deliver a fix. A monthly subscription license doesn't cost a fortune anymore nowadays, and any serious creator in SL can afford that. I can understand who thinkers around making content for personal use or just from time to time, but not those with an established business. The packs of tools available for industry production in Maya, for example, make the creation of anything for SL take just a fraction of the time needed using blender. transfer the UVs from the default avatar to another body: five minutes work and 1 click. Perfect results. I tried in blender... Tweaking and tinkering for days. No thanks 😁

I am not sure I agree with this at all @OptimoMaximo (not sure you expected me too really 🙂 ). Blender is fully opensource, it is GPL and thus has to be. The underlying engine is written in C which is exactly the same as is the case for Maya and Max (the c source code is fully open though unlike those, so you are not dependent on just the "owners" but anyone out there can submit patches, and that frequently happens). Pretty much the entirety of the user space functions, not just the addons but all of the UI and API layer services etc are written in Python, actual real Python3 too, not a legacy Python2 or a proprietary scripting language like MEL. It is therefore true that you have to be able to understand the C code to fix a major engine problem, but you'd never get the performance required if it were not written in a language such as C/C++. The rest of it is completely accessible and addressable through the Blender Python API.

One of the most beautiful things about Blender scripting for me is that I can right click on most controls and directly access the python code underlying that in a text editor inside Blender. I use that a lot when I want to find out how a certain function achieves its goals.

The assertion that a large studio gets fast responses from Autodesk is not really born out by the general dismay expressed by the industry in recent years at feature-light releases and slow updates. The main reason that studios remain invested in Autodesk is not support or quality, it is their own deep investment in in-house pipelines and workflow tools that have grown over years. At the same time UDIM support was added to Blender by a developer who was working on the Amazon Prime series "The man in the High Castle", the production studio needed UDIM support in their pipeline which is houdini and blender IIRC and it was developed and then contributed back (in a raw form) which Blender foundation then funded to be developed further. In this case they actually employed the original developer. It is a different commercial model for sure, many great addons are maintained through patreon/gumroad support, it certainly doesn't seem to stop people investing a lot of time in AddOn development. You need only take a look at Blender Market and other places to see that. 

The investments by both Epic and Ubisoft in Blender last year (1.2 M USD in the case of Epic) were interesting. I don't think it was necessarily a case of them "moving to Blender" but more likely a large warning shot across the bow of the Autodesk super tanker. Saying "buck your ideas up cos we're at least looking in other directions".

All this said, my answer to @Cerridwen Keneinan is to pick your horse and back it all the way. I tried Maya, I tried Max, I tried all sorts as well as Blender. they are all high quality and I hated every single one of them, they were all nasty complicated behemoths and I would crawl back to my inworld tools time and time again. In the end I committed to learning one of them, I chose Blender because I could afford it and had no need to ever use this in a professional career where autodesk might hold some value; it had the widest range of high quality tutorials and a lot of SL focused support too. Having made my choice I stuck with it, through thick and thin; now, I love it. Whatever choice you make, stick to it and give it your best shot. You'll stumble and fall, pick yourself up and get right back on that horse. 

 

[animats]

Blender is - OK. Not great, but OK. As of 2.8x, not too bad.

Over a decade ago, Blender had the user interface from hell. Hundreds of buttons in search of a user interface. You needed to divide the screen into four views to see what you were doing. 13 pages of hotkeys. It was like EMACS meets 3D.

Today, it has a sort of OK user interface. Still has 13 pages of hotkeys. The functionality is pretty good. There's a good renderer, it understands the latest physically based rendering descriptions, and wiring up a shader wiring diagram usually isn't necessary any more. I can't say I like it, but I can get work done with it.

Everything takes way too long, though. You're working down at the face and vertex level, where you can do anything if you have enough time and artistic talent. SL needs something mid-level like Sketchup or Archimatrix or Dreams for the average user who wants to make something.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

3 hours ago, animats said:

Everything takes way too long, though. You're working down at the face and vertex level, where you can do anything if you have enough time and artistic talent. SL needs something mid-level like Sketchup or Archimatrix or Dreams for the average user who wants to make something.

I disagree. If you're making game grade models that's literally what you're supposed to do, regardless of the art package.

It's the idea that "Doing the gritty work is beneath me" that leads to most of the *****ty meshwork people push on SL.

[OptimoMaximo]

11 hours ago, Beq Janus said:

I am not sure I agree with this at all @OptimoMaximo (not sure you expected me too really 🙂 ). Blender is fully opensource, it is GPL and thus has to be. The underlying engine is written in C which is exactly the same as is the case for Maya and Max (the c source code is fully open though unlike those, so you are not dependent on just the "owners" but anyone out there can submit patches, and that frequently happens). Pretty much the entirety of the user space functions, not just the addons but all of the UI and API layer services etc are written in Python, actual real Python3 too, not a legacy Python2 or a proprietary scripting language like MEL. It is therefore true that you have to be able to understand the C code to fix a major engine problem, but you'd never get the performance required if it were not written in a language such as C/C++. The rest of it is completely accessible and addressable through the Blender Python API.

Anyone in the Autodesk forum can address an issue and propose a solution as well. Many have done that in the past and over time, many plug ins were added to Maya core; See Turtle as a baking engine or the Muscle plug in, for instance. Python is fully supported as well, and that has full access also to the core C++ functions of Maya or Max, as opposed to Mel or Maxscript for example. It is true that they are stuck with python 2.7 series, but so is the whole industry. From Houdini to the Substance Suite, all support ONLY python 2.7. Why? because it's a mature and stable version that is not going to change across releases. See all the issues Blender has with addons support almost everytime they update the python API to a newer version. How long did take to the Avastar team to deliver their add on for blender 2.8? I haven't had the need to touch one single line of MyAniMATE for it to work on Maya 2018, then 2019 and now on 2020 ( i had to do some tweakings to support earlier versions than the one i used to develop on, 2017, because of parts of it using MEL, mainly interface windows)

12 hours ago, Beq Janus said:

The assertion that a large studio gets fast responses from Autodesk is not really born out by the general dismay expressed by the industry in recent years at feature-light releases and slow updates. The main reason that studios remain invested in Autodesk is not support or quality, it is their own deep investment in in-house pipelines and workflow tools that have grown over years.

Feature light releases? Maybe under a shallow modeling-only point of view, but for simulation and animation, TONS have been added that are completely new, writen from the ground up, that are life savers in the department of works where things were lacking. Examples: fluid simulations using Bifrost now are completely new and work under a node based environment, mostly coming (or copying) Houdini workflow, with tenfolds of efficiency improvements; rendering-wise the transition from Mental ray to Arnold 4, then Arnold 5 that sped up rendering by 4 times, now the latest iteration using GPU that renders in 20 seconds what previously rendered in 12 minutes; animation, oh my! how many features and nodes have been added, from the TimeEditor for non linear animation to matrix blending nodes for rigging, things are countless. If you just read the first entries in a google search about the new features, obviously you're gonna find rants of mostly unqualified people (basic users, students, tinkerers) and of course, you'll get the idea that added features are just a few. The "general dismay expressed by the industry" you talk about is from people that really is at the base of the production pyramid who look at newer softwares approaches (like Houdini or whatever) and claim to dismantle a two decades worth of development software to rebuild it anew, basically wiping out all the learning other people has had in the past to re-learn it? Studios remain invested in Autodesk sofware because, as you rightly say, in-house toolsets have been built and pipelines have been established so that they actually work at delivering, and again, since i've seen it happening over the years, once something stumbles into a bug, and providing you're a paying customer with dozens of licenses per year, Autodesk actually listens and delivers solutions. This can't happen with Blender. Raw features aside, where Maya stomps Blender by thousandfolds, a studio can't rely on Blender to base a pipeline on, unless they find a sweet-spot release that works and stay stuck with it until the next usable version is out and after the current production is done. Which can be fine for an indie, but projects cross over time and that isn't something a studio can avoid, if they don't want to risk going bankrupt. Moreover, pipeline toolsets are not granted to work perpetually in newer versions, so that is more time wasted in reworking in-house addons and tools whereas with Maya or Max that doesn't happen. See the EpicGames' rigging toolset for Maya for example, developed on 2016 version and it still works flawlessly now on 2020. Does something developed on Blender in 2016 still work in later releases? At some point things need to be updated in order to keep working in Blender. I already wrote a wall o' text, so i will leave you to an interesting video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0gjmE3hJ2M which explains in detail what i'm talking about.

 

12 hours ago, Beq Janus said:

The investments by both Epic and Ubisoft in Blender last year (1.2 M USD in the case of Epic) were interesting. I don't think it was necessarily a case of them "moving to Blender" but more likely a large warning shot across the bow of the Autodesk super tanker. Saying "buck your ideas up cos we're at least looking in other directions".

Epic Games has  an interest in supporting Indie developers because they have their own platform to sell games. So that's an investment in supporting their engine to support their own version of Steam, where developers get a better deal for royalties payment than publishing on other platforms. They indeed provide their own in-house tools, mainly Maya and some for 3dsmax.

Ubisoft, on the other hand, is mainly having trouble finding animators (see the job posts from them on Indeed or Glassdoor) that work on Autodesk softwares. These softwares require a rigging TD to have working rigs and only then hand rigged characters to animators. That means LOTS of money saved by allowing the animation department to use Blender, since most of their games use human figures and the rigify add on covers that aspect and can be done by any animator without mounds of rigging knowledge. Games work mainly with animation clips, so even if the rigify rig isn't production battle-tested, matrix overlaps issues are less likely to be produced. On a side note, in the art/modeling department instead they are only concerned about the outcome, so whatever tool you use doesn't really matter and Blender may be good enough, if the only thing that it is used for is to export a finished model to be handed over to another department. However, take a look at Ubisoft's job postings and you'll see that Blender is mentioned almost exclusively for jobs in the animation dept.

12 hours ago, Beq Janus said:

It is a different commercial model for sure, many great addons are maintained through patreon/gumroad support, it certainly doesn't seem to stop people investing a lot of time in AddOn development. You need only take a look at Blender Market and other places to see that. 

That's where i saw what i was referring to, in my previous post. As an example, there was an add-on that sped up Cycles renders and was for sale. It lasted roughly one year, then it was acquired and integrated by Blender itself. But i wrote enough about this, here's another video with Andrew Price who explains why he himself wouldn't invest in developing addons for Blender https://youtu.be/BRWAx3bnNcQ?t=33  it's the beginning of the second part of this interview, so feel free to watch them both.

 

[Beq Janus]

I know the arguments well. It is, not a model that everyone can work with, but it is a well established model nonetheless that works well enough to see massive progressive strides being made. It works equally well for people like Microsoft and amazing ecosystem that has grown up around the VSCode editor. Not everyone needs to charge people the earth to justify working on something, think perhaps of investment of time over the last 15 years or so that has gone in to the various flavours of Second Life viewers. The python2.7 problem is a significant one for a number of industries, I have little sympathy, people were given 15 years to update to Python3, as of January 2020, Python 2.7 is officially dead, there are no more maintenance releases, no security patches, and rapidly dwindling 3rd party library support. It is a sad reflection on so-called professional software development firms that they cannot keep to a supported version of a programming language even given an extremely generous migration period.

Anyhow, I am not here to trade rhetoric, I think we can simply agree to disagree, so I won't detract any further from the main thrust of the OP's question.

My position remains:-

If the OP has any plans to extend their expertise into a professional field such as VFX or games then it may be better to start with Maya. If they plan to go into ArchVis or a similar architectural/industrial design route where 3DS Max is (perhaps) the stronger player, then Max would be a decent choice. Frankly though, if like myself, there is no expectation that they will do this professionally then save your money.

Whichever tool you choose, it is ultimately the knowledge you learn outside of the tool that will make good at the task. Understanding efficient mesh design, good UV layout and utilisation. etc. These are skills that apply to the discipline not the tool chain.

 

[OptimoMaximo]

On 4/2/2020 at 3:18 PM, janetosilio said:

Blender is free, if you’re learning free is always the best option.  ‘Nuff said.

If you're learning, autodesk provides free student versions. Nuff said 😁

[Beq Janus]

On 4/12/2020 at 1:30 PM, OptimoMaximo said:

If you're learning, autodesk provides free student versions. Nuff said 😁

You had to have a recognised academia email address to get a legitimate student license learning and being a student are not the same thing (sadly).

Companies are quick to revoke too. I graduated last March, by June I had lost almost all of my student licenses, with them being replaced instead by "generous" commercial fees. Sadly I had to give pretty much all of them up. I kept Adobe, switching to a lower subscription that I could afford. In the software dev space many companies do at least offer a community edition but that is less common in the creative space as far as I can tell.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

On 4/12/2020 at 2:30 PM, OptimoMaximo said:

If you're learning, autodesk provides free student versions. Nuff said 😁

If you are running a business, you most certainly do not qualify for using an educational license.

[OptimoMaximo]

13 hours ago, Beq Janus said:

You had to have a recognised academia email address to get a legitimate student license learning and being a student are not the same thing (sadly).

Not true Beq. Twice a year i teach at an Information Technology school here in Rome as a collaborator, just for the 3D modeling and animation modules, that last 2 full months, in the Graphic Design courses. Students apply (as i do) indicating the school name and the role (they do as students, I do as teacher) using their own email addresses (and i do it with my own email address, although a different one from the one i use as my account for my full license to avoid online license check conflicts). Never a problem or a verification call or email from Autodesk. The student license remains active for 3 years regardless of the course completion date (which is not asked anyway) so that students can use the software to keep practicing at home and build their portfolio/reel.

8 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

If you are running a business, you most certainly do not qualify for using an educational license

Again, not true. As stated above, i run those classes to a variety of people of any age, including business owners and people who are already employed as well as freshly high school graduated boys and girls . The right to study and develop one's own expertise is granted until the end of an individual life, regardless of age and employment position. Signing up to an online school course also qualifies you to get a student version, as it happened to me years ago when i signed up for a ZBrush course online and could get an educational license for a very affordable rate from one of their retailers in Ariccia (near Rome) just showing the receipt of payment for the course. Autodesk's happens to be free. Like Houdini, for which you don't even need to indicate a school or student status to download a fully featured version for learning. But now i digress.

Granted, those versions should never be used for commercial production. Once one gets in the position to get paid for work done on such softwares, a full license is due.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

This is not what I said @OptimoMaximo.

An educational license is given for the purpose of learning yes. But as soon as you are making money from your usage of the software, you need to acquire a commercial license too, the fact that you are "learning" at the same time doesn't override that, the educational license only covers the "learning" part.

 

One of my reasons for pushing Blender is also to keep SL users away from mixing money and software piracy, because that doesn't end well.

Edited April 14, 2020 by Kyrah Abattoir

[OptimoMaximo]

13 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

An educational license is given for the purpose of learning yes. But as soon as you are making money from your usage of the software, you need to acquire a commercial license too, the fact that you are "learning" at the same time doesn't override that, the educational license only covers the "learning" part.

which is exactly what i said. In response to janetosilio's comment, "if you're learning", that's learning and nothing else. As i stated then, once you get paid for the work you do on a software, a full license is due. This doesn't mean that if you're a business owner in SL already you can't switch to Maya. Learn it while your commercial products are stilll done in whatever (Blender, Wings3d etc), it would be easier and faster process, transposing what you know from one software to another, since you already know what to do. Once you're confident with the software the full switch can be performed. FULL SWITCH, meaning usage AND licensing. There simply aren't the same features in Blender, to achieve what Maya does. At most some hacky workarounds, which takes time, so why not realizing at some point that with Maya it is a few button clicks and the same job is done in 1/10th of the time? Time is money. Less time per release, more releases in the same time span, more items for sale, more sales, more money.

17 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

One of my reasons for pushing Blender is also to keep SL users away from mixing money and software piracy, because that doesn't end well.

Did i ever imply, suggest or condone such a thing?

[Janet Voxel]

Oh you guys...