buying maya, advice needed

[matty429]

Buy Soft Image....My expierence with A/W Has left me no choice
but to Advise against diving into the hell that is A/W

Purchasing Maya may have been the worst mistake I’ve made yet.
As you all know Maya’s price dropped to $1999. Any one who had purchased Maya
In January up until the announcement would receive a free upgrade to Maya Unlimited.
I thought, “Well That’s not so bad, I’ll just get the really nice upgraded version and everyone will be happy”…WRONG. Seeing that I purchased Maya in late December and did NOT receive the codes to run it until January 3rd, that it is my loss and I’m supposed to eat $3769.13 . Now the money, It’s not that big of a deal. It’s the principal. To me this is like Blissfully returning to a Fast food place that used to be a fancy restaurant that spits in you food every time you go there….

Initially I was told I would receive the upgrade, and then I was told, “well we don’t know”. And finally I was told “NO”.

Soo after a billion Phone calls Faxes And Forms to Canada I reached an agreement with the general manager to Give me the upgrade if i purchase a new maintenace contract..witch i've done and I am Still waiting for the upgrade Almost 5 months have gone by and i'm still fighting to protect my purchase ...Something...I thought that was the software companys job to do ...Soo now i feel like a totally Alienated Isolated Customer that will reap no benifits from the company and will have to fight to get upgrades and sutch..I can't wait for the day when I need to fill a large pipeline and decide to go with something else ....If your a little guy A/W doesn't care about you .....soo if you think you'll ever have an issue with the software you purchase the stick with Lightwave...


Good Luck

[alexx]

i have to say matty is true in what he says..

alias cared a shit about the customers who bought maya unlimited before the price drop.. NOTHING.. not a single benefit..
if you had complete you could at least update to unlimited for very few money.. but still. what they did with existing customers sucked.

but away from this:
maya is a really nice software that handles just nicely and i have oppinions from users from a lot of other products who changed to maya. (lightwave, max, soft)

but to be honest: i would be careful, since maya has a shitty renderer with a serious lack of features, quality and stability.
you will be forced to another renderer quite fast or deal with the troubles in countless nights.

additionally maya did not get real improvements since version 3.0. 4.0 was just a joke.. should have be called 3.1. and concerning maya 4.5... hm.. i can only count on what i have heard from beta testers: naja.. not really much happened. if you compare what new features get implemented in nearly any other package - especially xsi and max as direct competitors - maya really looks bad. ok.. there will be the fluids.. but honestly: how often you really gonna have to use them? ... something like paint fx.. nice idea but not really something to put that much effort in..

maya should take care for their renderer. but from what i hear they only say: "why talking about the renderer: there is mental ray for maya.. " but they tend to miss the fact that mental ray is more expensive than maya complete...

so what conclusion..
maya is a great tool with great flexibility. i love it. but the current situation and development status leads me to not recommend it without any hesitation..

alexx

[matty429]

I would agree...I seems Maya Is falling Behind

Even though My moneys in Maya

I'd bet On SoftImage Or Houdini For High end

And Lightwave Over Maya Complete

[beaker]

First of all, I have delt with the people at a/w, softimage and discreet and all of them have shitty accounting and purchasing departments. I was in charge of purchasing them back when in the PA/max1.0/soft3d 3.7 days. They are all a pain in the ass to deal with and are all a fumbled mess. That is why alot of people go through a reseller and then you can let them deal with the BS. You may have to pay a little more but atleast the reseller takes care of the bullcrap. The best companies I have ever delt with are the small tiny ones that have a tiny user base and only have to address the needs of a couple thousand people. None of these are the 3d software companies.

>>alias cared a shit about the customers who bought maya unlimited before the price drop.. NOTHING.. not a single benefit..
if you had complete you could at least update to unlimited for very few money.. but still. what they did with existing customers sucked.

Yea, this can suck, but its just bad timing. It is a fact of life in the marketing of products in order to get them to sell. A/W cannot make money if they go around giving away free copies of their software everytime they lower the price. They wouldn't be around today if they did. Do you think sofimage gave everyone refund checks when they lowerd Soft3d 3.5 down too 18k from 50k. Did SGI go out and buy you a new machine when you bought an indigo personal iris for 60k and 3 months later the indy comes out which is twice as fast but costs only 15k. Its a fact of business life.

>>but to be honest: i would be careful, since maya has a shitty renderer with a serious lack of features, quality and stability.
you will be forced to another renderer quite fast or deal with the troubles in countless nights.

Maya's renderer is not shitty. It does need alot of work and you have to know your way around it, but it does yeild quite alot of nice imagery. For the single person or the small group it works just fine. The biggest problems are it's memory usage under windows, and the 2d/3d motion blur is slow and troublesome.

>>additionally maya did not get real improvements since version 3.0. 4.0 was just a joke.. should have be called 3.1. and concerning maya 4.5... hm.. i can only count on what i have heard from beta testers:

Ok, I have a bone to pick here. First of all, a/w has been comming out with a new version of maya every 12 months and some years a major release every 6 months(1.5 and 2.5). Every single 3d software company out there has a development cycle of 18 months. Max, LW and Soft. People get a little too greedy when they expect a/w to come out with absolutly amazing stuff and a huge amount of new features with every single version when everyone else takes a year an a half to come out with a full version.

Second 4.0 was not a joke, it was exactly what the customers asked for. Since 2.5 came out, everyone on the maya listserve complained all year and they said they wanted one main thing. For a/w to stop adding so many new and buggy features and fix the ones they have. This was not one person saying this. It was a common theme every other week by someone new. Maya 4.0 squashed a huge amount of bug and 4.0 was a pretty damn cool release. Have you actually read the maya 4.0 what's new doc's? There are still alot of new features, just nothing mind bending that they have gotten in the earlier versions.

>>if you compare what new features get implemented in nearly any other package - especially xsi and max as direct competitors - maya really looks bad. ok.

Sorry, but hogwash dude. XSI 2.0, half the stuff that was "new" was either stuff that they were still adding from soft3d that they still didn't have yet. Alot of stuff was like, oh wow, we had that in maya 1.0 and everyone is oohing and ahhing about it. Max is just finally gettting proper character animation tools that Maya again has had since v1.0. The only reason why is because they hired from the competition to get those features(one of the maya animation programmers went to work at discreet).


Too answer the original question. Personally I think it totally depends on what your need to do in the animations you are creating.

My main beef with the previous answers to your question were that they weren't based on whether you should choose maya because it is the right tool, but simply because they had trouble with the accounting department or because they greedy from getting so many new tools before and think the last version didn't have as many "new" features as other new versions of other software packages or previous versions.

Can you give us more information about what kind of animations you are doing or what your audience is. Also what is your goal personally in purchasing maya. Are you doing it so you can learn the software and then go somewhere else later, or do you just want to improve the look of the animations? Does maya have specific tools in it that you believe will make you life easier, or does it do things that you cannot do in other packages, etc..etc...etc...

[matty429]

All I'm saying is that Buying 3d is begining to belike dealing with a used car salesman...and Poor support IS a functionality of the software that you invest in..And It is the deciding factor for alot of people

I did my deal with a reseller and A\W shits on them too...

BTW....The renderer truly is the worst renderer money can buy

I still say buy SoftImage......I wish I did.....But thats just my opinion...In the end I hope no one has to go through what I'm going through...

[iC4]

the worst renderer?........can't agree

lightwave over maya?........erm, are you sure you are talking about the right software?

[beaker]

>>and Poor support IS a functionality of the software that you invest in

But that wasn't support of the software, that was purchasing and marketing and they are all that way. A big pain in the ass. Discreet(Kinetix in those days) was the worse when it came to purchasing and licensing support, and then a/w and softimage were tied for second worse.

>>I did my deal with a reseller and A\W shits on them too...

Yea, but then you don't have to deal with a/w, your paying your reseller to deal with it so you don't have too.

>>BTW....The renderer truly is the worst renderer money can buy

Just a couple examples, www.amazonsoul.com, all maya. Square did alot of their rendering in the beginning all with maya. The very first images of the eye blinking plus others they released to the public were all maya. The guys at Kleiser Walkzak render all their film work in maya, the transforming sequence of mystique in xmen. Many of the shots in "The One". A bunch of face replacements of Jet Lee's stunt double to look like him. Many of the shots he looks directly at the camera. Also that awsome intro sequence where the action is speeding up and slowing down where Jet Lee is kicking all the SWAT team's asses. Almost all the SWAT members that Jet Lee grabs onto and throws in the air or hits are all 100% digital.

[matty429]

OK fine

Alias rules

The renderer is the best

Besides....Just relax....it's all opinions

I'd bet that Lightwaves renderer has seen more screentime than mayas

INFACT...Lightwave was used Quite a bit in Starwars Episode 2



Look at lightwaves image gallery....

You can get good images out of Maya...but you have to spend waaayy too mutch time to do so..witch is why it finds its way out of pipelines Quite fast


Im a maya user .....And the maya renderer sucks comparitively ......I accept it

I think Alias accepts it too

[beaker]

I never said anything about maya being all awsome and lw sucking. All software has issues it's just a matter of finding out which one sucks less :) Just that you said flat out that maya's renderer sucks ass with no reason to back it up or explanation why. Too many people read everyone else saying it sucks and just take on that opinion simply because everyone else says it too. They just give up on maya's renderer so easily.

[matty429]

Noo way I never said it sucks ass.......
I said it was the worst of the packages
Eg the worst money can buy....
Or the worst in comparison

I still use it...But im not happy with it at all

[MCronin]

Back to the original topic, Since you are talking about doing animations of the workings of the inner body, I think going with Maya would probably be the best choice. You've got great particles and dynamics which Max and from what I've heard XSI can't compete with, and with 4.5 you'll have fluid dynamics which maybe useful seeing as how the body is what; 85 percent water? Other things in Maya you may find useful that Max at least cannot compete with, character animation tools, blendshapes, influence objects, and deformers are easily more robust and open to greater possibilities than Max. Cloth in Maya Unlimited is useful for creating things beyond clothing such as tissue and membranes. Mayas renderer isn't the best, but you are talking about doing industrial videos on strict deadlines. Features like GI and caustics would probably be useless to you in your day to day work. Maya's renderer certainy will serve you well enough, no need to run out and buy MR or Renderman, you can produce very high quality work with Maya's default renderer.

As far as the horror stories about Alias' support, that's just the way it goes. They have to draw a line in the sand somewhere and unfortunately some people end up on the wrong side. I had the same thing happen to me with discreet going from Max 3 -> 4. I was ordering like a dozen full versions of Max 4 as well as some upgrades from 3 and 2 for the place I was working at. They wouldn't cut me a break on the price, and they wouldn't allow free upgrades for a couple of Max 3 seats that had missed the deadline by less than two weeks. If anything discreet is worse because they constantly charge their customers for features that should be built into their software in the first place (Character Studio).

Maya isn't falling behind, it's more of a case of other packages catching up. There's only so many features you can implement. Once Maya 4.5 Unlimited ships, what features will be lacking? The renderer? They'll have a greatly improved Mental Ray, supposively. In Maya 4.5 you'll have all major surface primitive types, rigid, soft, and fluid dynamics, character tools, NLA, 2D and 3D painting, sculpting, hair, etc. All the features can be improved, but aside from the renderer not having GI and Caustics, and desperate need for hardware rendering improvements, what major features are missing from Maya? I can't really think of any. All the tools are there. They may not function the way you want them to, or be as robust as XSI in certain cases such as hair, but they are all there. All that's left is to stamp out bugs and make improvements. Seriously, what features do Max or XSI or LW have that Maya doesn't aside from hardware and software renderer issues? I don't use XSI or LW so I don't know. I'd like someone to point them out to me.

[alexx]

Originally posted by beaker
Too many people read everyone else saying it sucks and just take on that opinion simply because everyone else says it too. They just give up on maya's renderer so easily.

just to mention some of my "giving up too early":
i work with the maya renderer for about 4 years in production now.
i am the one who has to care for render issues (breaking renderers, non rendering scenes, asliasing problems...).
a year ago we had roughly 20 maya artist - all working with the maya renderer.
i was TD for a sci-fi-pilot series with 349 FX shots.

all that is why I say: mayas renderer sucks!.. and i mean the word. i have not written that it is not that good or so. i really mean it.

btw.. for still images you can get along very well with it since neither aliasing over time nor breaking renders in animations are a problem there.

alexx

[-wT-]

But it depends, is bad renderer a good reason to ditch the whole program?

[alexx]

as i said.. i like to work in maya.
but would you buy a programm that has severe animation problems? or one that makes it hard to model?
i think when it comes to buying a 3d package it is a good idea getting one for the money that can handle it all.

al.

[-wT-]

True, and what I said wasn't directed just to you, don't get me wrong.
I just think that rendering is relatively simple to do better in some another renderer, changing the way the program/modeling/animating works isn't that easy anymore (If not possible at all)

But yeah, I like Maya alot, though it's renderer isn't the best out there, but that's something you can fix.

[alexx]

maybe time for a small conclusion for gareth:

- yes, maya is a great tool for all up to the point when it comes to rendering. very flexible and all "problems" can usually be worked around.
- prepare to have some problems with the renderer. it is managable but sometimes painful. for small jobs and still art it should not really matter that much.
- think if you really need maya unlimited. since 4.5 complete will have all the modelling tools and standard dynamics it might be enough. if you need unlimited later you can still update.
- maya has a great comunity, that has tons of plugins, shaders, tuorials and ppl who are willing to help :)

cheers

alexx

[matty429]

I recieved my upgrade today ...after 5 months if you read my earlier posts.....

[twinkletoes]

thanks guys.

sorry for the lack of interaction on my part :eek:


don't know what's going to happen yet, (money is still there though:))
maybe with all the price cuts i should recommend getting maya complete and softimage 3d.

oh well, we will see.

thanks again all.

gareth.


oh, and to beaker:
i have to admit that i did have half an eye on my future when suggesting maya to my boss, also the fluid dynamics in 4.5 do look rather tasty.

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