Wow! I started to do a reply and got to about 6 pages of stuff and realized this might be a better topic in a fresh thread.

I will try to split it up into the three entertainment packages I have the most experience with Maya, Max, and Modo.

I use Lightwave from time to time and have dabbled with blender and student and trial versions of half a dozen others..

I think most will agree that Maya probably is the best overall package and is why it is so popular in commercial studios. It has a really nice and to me intuitive user interface. Based on other packages I have used I find it has the fewest button press to action ratio and really nice feel to the camera navigation. For modeling it offers almost nothing above what you have in all the other packages. It is very basic. In an odd sort of way this can be a blessing. With other packages (especially Max) I have gotten lost in the what seems like endless list of stack modifiers and side screen menus.

Nurbs and curves used to be an advantage in my view (but my professional background was nurbs surface modeling). But now both Max and Modo have a very powerful and arguably more intuitive spline system. There have been a couple posts recently from someone transitioning to Maya where it is clear extruding shapes along splines and making shapes from spline is far simpler and more powerful in Max. In his case you could still acheive the same result in Maya but it was a much more convoluted solution.

Max has better precision, much larger modeling tool set with much more control over pivots and edge and vert movement. Things like make planar for instance is very difficult to achieve with precision in Maya. The addition of the graphite tools (a set of Nex like plugins) was added to the base package in 2011. Things like pattern selection (not as powerful as Modo) but light years ahead of Maya. For hard surface modeling I would argue Max beats Maya easily because of all the features to control vert, edges, and faces that in Maya you just have to do by feel.

Modo has the best modeling and subd modeling tools and I would argue that to the death! The new pixar subd's almost made me ditch Maya once and for all. But I hate the feel of the modo camera navigation. It just feels unnatural and the UI is dark and I have trouble seeing details. The cut and paste concept had gotten me so bewildered I had to trash an entire days work because I could not figure out how to get a shit ton of stuff I pasted into a layer out. These are all things that with time would not be a big deal though. Modo is more stable then Maya and a little less stable then Max. A short list of tools in Modo that blow both Maya and Max away....

-Action centers (like soft selection on steroids) Max has something better then Maya but not near Modo
-Remarkable pivot and axis controls
-surface constaints like making a surface live but you can push other surfaces onto the constrained surface (I pop in and out of Modo ALL the time for this feature!). For hard surface modeling I cannot live without it. You can kinda use make live but it is extremely tedious.
-adpative sub division that actually works!
-automatic pattern selection. pick any combination of edges or faces or vert and just press the up arrow to repeat the pattern
-built in asset management. You have to buy very expensive third part solutions for this in Maya. How many times have you just rebuilt the same dohicky because you could not find one the fifteen you had built already? With modo reset libraries assembling things with out recreating the wheel is very powerful.
-built in sculpting tools, short of mudbox and zbrush but way beyond maya's turn you mesh into a lumpy bumpy mess sculpting tool.

There is a butt ton more, I just don't have the time and need to sit down and jot them down. This is already getting ridiculously long and I apologize.


That is all I should say in this thread. I will think on writing a feature by feature list in a new thread if I get some time.