Autodesk Maya or 3Ds Max?

[Fetito]

Hello friends!

1) Anyone has experimented with Maya so far?
2) Where can I find good tutorials which are suitable for the design of rooms and characters?
3) Which is better for adventure games graphics? 3Ds Max or Maya?

[TheDude]

Try Google Sketchup. If you buy a good renderer for it then it's great.

[Anian]

Try Google Sketchup. If you buy a good renderer for it then it's great.

Even without it, you can print screen and then paint stuff over if needed. Plus there are free renderers like VRay, Kerykthea, Indigo, or semilimited free IDX (actually double chek those, might not be free still). Yafaray and Luxrender are free.
You'll need some plugins for some features, but 95% are free.

The only real drawback to Sketchup is that it doesn't yet offer multiple views (you can change them over the keyboard though. And it doesn't offer more complicated aniamtion (like bones). So for characters it isn't that easy/practical, but for designing rooms and arhitecture it is awesomly fast to learn and easy to use (though things like normal mapping, might require some reading on the renderers part).

Max or Maya...either, just stick with one, they're fully equipped with everything that a beginner might want, for tutorials just google or youtube search. There's more than a few available. For room making, you might wanna look at videos InCreator made, about combining basic 3d with painting, they're very good and will get you started fast:
http://www.youtube.com/sininemeri#p/u/6/CRZgK4kG2VY

[Ketskari]

A game artist's opinion about both. Deviantart has some good tutorials, although so far, every time I've looked for 3D-related tutorials on google or dA, the results are mostly 3Dsmax resources. So based on the fact that there are possibly (??) more 3dsmax resources out there for a beginner, that's what I'd learn first.

I use Blender and Sketchup, but then... only for reference for my illustrations/digital paintings, not professionally (or meant for games).

[DoorKnobHandle]

Adventure game graphics is a very broad term. You need to decide on the techniques that you want to use throughout your game(s) first. All 2D (but rendered out in a 3D program), all 2D with backgrounds rendered in 3D and painted over and traditional 2D sprites for characters, 2D backgrounds with real 3D characters, all in true 3D? Sketchup for example is, to the best of my knowledge, absolutely useless for doing characters (ie. doesn't support skeleton-based riggin, animation, skinning).

Apart from that, asking what is better, Max or Maya, is like asking whether this or that brand of screwdrivers are better when you want to build a house (or whether Gimp or Photoshop is better to draw backgrounds). They are two tools with a very similar set of features and a decision will most likely come down to personal preference. I personally use Max and Cinema4D sometimes.

[Buckethead]

I've seen numerous discussions on forums and sites about which program is better. But really you just have to check both of them out and see which of the two you like better. I personally prefere 3ds Max because of the flexability of the modifier stack. But Maya is suppose to have better modeling tools and more precision.

But I don't think it matters all that much for adventure games anyway.

For tutorials I recommend 3dbuzz.com to get started. You do have to make an account (which always seem to put people off) but they have some great fundamental videos. Although you have to pay for the later ones.

[Pixelton]

I originally used 3D studio max and did so for a number of years but when I got a job I had to quickly learn Maya and I'd recomend Maya over 3DS Max to a beginner. When it comes to experienced 3D artists that use Maya or Max there will always be personal pref...for me it's Maya all the way.

For games...exporters can be alittle difficult to find for Maya but usually you can find most plugins and exporters for either program.

Both programs have pros and cons...personnally I hate the UV unwrap tools in 3D studio Max and the whole way you go about doing it...while in Maya you can figure it out in a matter of minutes (this goes for character rigging too) But Max has some amazing rendering options and when it comes to the more advanced stuff...like baking out Normal maps then 3D studio Max has much better tools (most people these days use external programs for that kind of thing anyway...like xNormals or even the Doom3 renderbumb tools).

I suggest to trying to get hold of a copy and have a play...see how you feel with them

[Fetito]

Maya convices me more than 3Ds Max, because (1) it runs faster on my machine and (2) the UI is more logic to me and (3) it does not crash that often. Moreover, there are a lot of high quality tutorials of Digital Tutors available.

Right now I am “playing” with the Mayas particle system and it is quite impressive what you can do. Anyway, I want to get well at most of Mayas basic functions in order to create my first rooms for my game.

Is mental ray really that bad implemented in Maya? What kind of renderer do you use?

[Layabout]

3ds Max is far easier to set up a skeleton system as it has 2 built in rigs to use. Biped and CAT. CAT is a more traditional IK/FK rig whereas Biped just breaks all the laws of rigging, but that says, is pretty easy to use anyway. Also, as Buckethead mentioned, the Modifier stack is brilliant. It's non destructive like photoshop layers.

Maya you have to build a rig and set up the necessary IK/FK systems, which for a beginner is actually rather difficult.

For a beginner, neither is going to be easy, but to get animating faster I would choose 3ds Max over Maya any day.

To Mark Borg: You might want to look at TexTools if you find the Max unwrap tools to be insufficient. Personally I find it very quick using a combination of pelt, quick planar and cylindrical mapping with a bit of stitching where needed. Oh and the relax tool is a godsend. You can get pretty clean unwraps with little distortion this way.

[Anian]

I once used the LithUnWrap, but this is kind of better, since you stay within Max and when you have more complicated models.

Also had trouble with Unwrap UVW modifier, kinda seems overly complicated and not very feedback friendly, but I was learning the whole concept while doing it so, when I first opened it I had a big WTF!? moment. Later I found a lot of tuts and bought the Max Bible so that helped a bit.
This TexTool fixes a lot of those thing that bugged me.

Also helped reading that obj files save texture info, don't know why but I just couldn't figure out the concept behind it before.