Maya for 3D Printing - Rapid Prototyping
In this course we're going to look at something a little different, creating technically accurate 3D printed parts.
# 1 07-03-2021 , 03:00 PM
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Maya vs 3ds Max ?

Hello, probably this was asked many times before, but I'm going to be more specific, I'm curious what Maya does better than Max since I know Max pretty well but I'm new to Maya and I'm not sure if it's worth a switch.

Here's what I do mostly including what I plan to do:

- Look Development / Shading or whatever you wanna call it.
So far Maya seems bit more comfy in terms of UI customization, nodes seems a bit harder to work with, but there's some pros too such as "Favorite material", "Zoom to Material" etc.
- Texture Mapping
Still newbie in this area, but I'm not sure if Maya supports multiple UV's on same model, for example in Max there's map numbers, I can for example set map #1 as original UV map and then add another UV on top e.g. Box or Planar and set is as map #2 then in the bitmap settings set which UV to use. Also Maya doesn't have Multi-Sub material so if let's say I assign material on selected faces and accidentally delete the shader how do I find the selection? I suppose it gets deleted too.
- 3D Modeling
Imo Maya wins here especially since it even has sculpting.
- Lighting
Seems like Max sort of wins here by a little, Maya has look through, while Max has Highlight Picker which is way more powerful tool in terms of placing lights and the rest is sort of same.
- Motion Graphics
Max has TyFlow, Thinking Particles and PFlow, Maya only has MASH which is very basic and super limited. BiFrost as far as I know is only for Fluid simulations sort of alternative of FumeFX and PhoenixFD.
- Large Scene with a lot of materials management
Max is just insane I guess that's why it's the most popular software for ArchViz, it's so easy to find stuff very fast, replace materials and so on. Heard it's similar with Maya.

Of course I don't know a lot about Maya so I'm curious if there's some fancy stuff in Maya since it's animation and rendering software used a lot in the Industry so it has to have better lookdev and lighting features.

P.S. I'm using V-Ray 5 as main renderer.


Last edited by FluxMode; 07-03-2021 at 03:06 PM. Reason: typo
# 2 09-03-2021 , 05:13 AM
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The Programs do the exact same thing. How they do it maybe a bit different so just pick your poison and get your hands dirty.

# 3 13-03-2021 , 01:31 PM
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Well, pretty much every 3D Package does the same thing but the differences even small ones can make huge impact on the workflow and efficiency/speed.

What I was curious about is how they differ in terms of workflow for example once "mastered", which one is faster to model stuff, in which one is easier to handle LookDev of large scenes, which node editor ( Hypershade vs Slate Editor ) has better and more useful features, in which is faster and easier to do lighting etc.

For now to me Maya seems simply way slower and way worse than 3ds Max in nearly every possible way but that's because I'm not used to it very much that's why I was curious, I bet here is a lot of people who are experts in both. Of course I can invest weeks-years and then I will know the answer myself which one is actually better for me.

Or maybe I could make a list of what possibly I would do and then compare each feature which one feels better and does faster and then sum everything to final "score". Or even better: Quit Autodesk & Learn blender user added image


Last edited by FluxMode; 13-03-2021 at 01:38 PM.
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