Why Maya?
 

I realize that this is going to get a very biased answer, but that's what I want.

I have tried to do the research to find the best program to start with and for some reason I think Maya is the way to go, but I don't know why.

So what do you guys like about Maya?
Why is Maya better than _________?
What does Maya do well?

Hmm...it's propably not the easiest 3d package to learn but...

It's stable
It's flexible
It's loaded with features
It has everything you need...

I'm a previous 3dsmax user (used it for many years) and so far I don't have anything negative to say about Maya. The renderer has propably been the weakest chain in Maya but that is about to be change since they're integrating Mental Ray in it fot free!

I don´t know, it has a certain "it" that I find appealing. (Must be the cigar hottie :D).

Great answer huh?

<adldesigner takes off his clothes and runs>

kbrown had a good point - Everything I read said that Maya 3D Render is a POS and that to get decent results you had to use it in connection with Renderman (which has a huge price tag).

So, with this new Mental Ray, will that replace the need for Renderman completely?

I can't comment about that since I don't have any experience on either of them. I only know that I've seen some pretty darn nice images rendered with both of them :).

try 3d max for a week, you will soon see why!

The Maya renderer is just fine, nothing wrong with it other than the fact that you have to set it up yourself. Once you learn it you can make some great images. But RAT and Mentalray are so much easier to use.

Maya was originally made for professional artists, so no "make pretty picture" button in it. But now with the price drop 3d hobbyists can now afford to use it so I guess A/W will continue to "dumb down" the product, but as far as I'm concerned, it's the best out there!

Darkon

Straight to the point, excellent reply!

Couldnt have said it better myself... only thing I'd add it that the interface is an absolute joy to use (especially in comparison to MAX).

Im comin from using Animation:Master, and if any of you know A:M, you'll know exactly why I switched.. You would think the coders purposly screwed up the code just so it would crash every 5 seconds... Its also very limited.
To me, maya is great because:
1) Everyone uses it - cant be bad if it's one of the most popular out there.
2) Its only crashed on me I think3 thimes, but I was doing complex things...
3) You can do everything with it, except pay bills.

To me, it just feels more polished. I dunno, I'm not some expert.

Maya=Power.....nuff said:D

i wudnt say mayas the best program cos max can handle games better, houdini does particles better and is more open ended etc etc it just depends on what you want it to do

Hmm ... this is just common thinking after the fact that Max has been used in a lot of games, but this is slowly changing.
Hmm ... I don´t see how Maya can be more open ended with the way the API works with MEL scripts.
Got that right, overall Maya´s got a good grasp out of every aspect so I would say Maya´s the best. Overall. Others can be better at particles, or modelling, or whatever, but they don´t combine their tools in a single package as powerfull as A|W´s one.
My 2 cents anyway ...

max has a lot of tools for exporting and converting max scenes into a format engines can understand, plus it has the basic tools needed to make games