considering a divorce after 10 years with Maya, if 2009 isn't spectacular

#101

I run a small studio, we ran maya for three years.

We swapped over to XSI about 2 months ago, it was a measured desision based on cost and operator performance.

More stuff works out of the box, and is easier to achieve in tighter timescales - I can’t stress enough how important this last statement is to us.

Rendering is a dream, I found it increadibly hard to get my head round quite why it’s so difficult to set up a production ready buffers setup in maya compared to how breath takingly trivial it is in XSI.

I’m no fanboy - I base stuff on making myself and my staffs lives easier without sacrificing what we can pull off aesthetically.

$5k for five full machine render nodes…

It’s not without problems, but for small studios I can’t fault it so far.

The ICE stuff is amazing and makes effects work actual fun. bizarre.

jules

#102

didn’t you know? Too many cooks spoil the broth! :wink:

#103

And you know this how? I will tell you one thing: the Maya team is a LOT less then the supposed 200 you wrote…lol:)

#104

Well, we can all wait for Siggraph, right? (or perhaps you cannot, depending on your workload/deadlines)

Who knows what’s going to come out? A lot of the posters in this thread want and/or need something dramatic to stay aboard, and I hope they get it in 31 days (the siggraph page has a countdown!).

#105

Or maybe most of them are some sort of “media and entertainment” board members and managers that came with all those aquisitions.

#106

I’m curious, isn’t ICE in XSI 7? So how are people saying it rocks. It just seems to me, that there’s a lot of flame baiting going on here versus just commenting on maya and the improvments the complainers would like to see. Maybe i’m wrong, I didn’t read all of this. I’d also like to say, that I’ve used maya for quite some time now, and i’ve used many other softwares as well. I found some things easier in others and harder in others, but what I really want to know is, do people really think that software is going to magically make them rock? If so, have fun with that. And really, there will never a be a “perfect” software, wouldn’t it be boring if there was? Sure sometimes it gets frustrating, but if you don’t want frustration, then go do something else. Frustration is the handmaiden of creativity.

#107

this siggraph is more crucial than ever for maya.

#108

And you know this how? I will tell you one thing: the Maya team is a LOT less then the supposed 200

okay, sorry then. I must have gotten wrong data.
But I KNOW that the XSI team is about 50 people

#109

We are gonna wait to at least give them the benefit of the doubt. I had the Regional rep for AD call me and he said that while he couldn’t tell me what they are working on for Maya 2009 and he could tell me when it was going to be unvield. He said only that I quote “It will blow your mind”. and that yes we typically make you Maya announcements at Siggraph.

#110 
   You might think that all companies are like that, and marketing is everything they have to offer.
   
   But I think you skipped the part where ICE takes advantage of parallelism and that XSI 7 improved the Gigapolygon core.
   Maybe you just think that "gigapolygon" core was always just a marketing thing too...
   
  but anyway... black wireframe, millions of polys and millions of particles:
   [http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mesh_on_mesh_performance/mesh_on_mesh_performance.html](http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mesh_on_mesh_performance/mesh_on_mesh_performance.html)
   
   At some point in the video, I will reach 1.5 million tris + 1.5 million particles.
   my machine has 2gb of ram and 8 cores. And I still have a lot of room.
   The betas have been reported scenes up to 8 million points in a cloud. I've myself up to 300 million triangles in a single scene in XSI6.5 reading a cached mesh of fluid simulation, where each frame was displaying ~5 million tris in a single mesh of a 32bit system.

That’s it about performance.

#111

I jumped ship from Max to Maya around Max r8 and Maya 8 on the Mac. The transition was incredibly annoying and difficult to make. I’ve found that Maya is an incredible application, but getting things done that should be simple, takes AGES. It’s unstable, buggy, and completely over-complicated. By the same token I love the tools and the node based work flow, and some of the CONCEPTS behind the tools are great (although the tools themselves are completely unpredictable and provide “meh” results at best)

The majority of studios in VFX and Motion Graphics use Maya. (C4D as well in the MoGraph biz). That makes a switch difficult. I’ve also invested so much time, and frustration in learning Maya that switching is a daunting task.

Maya could be great, but its codebase is too old, and its too bloated for that to ever really change. Autodesk does not care about you. Autodesk cares about CAD. The ONLY reason I haven’t switched to XSI from Maya is that XSI isn’t available on the Mac. With that said, if a Mac version ever came out, I’d jump ship in a heartbeat.

#112

dual boot, unless you consider that a cop-out as a Mac user. Trust me… I know many who would rather kill their dog than to ever load Windows on their Mac.

Their loss.

#113

hehe that is the route that we are taking we are buying mac workstations to run windows and linux on them.

#114

Yeah. I’m not afraid to dual boot. I used windows for a long time anyways. I use what works best for me. Mac, overall, works best for me. But I’ll run linux and XSI if need be. Let’s see what Autodesk can pull out for 2009. If no good, I’m gone.

#115

Just something I was thinking about… Someone earlier had mentioned something I hear a lot and that for the most part is true. they called Maya :“the defacto Standard for 3D in films”.

While this is true. I think it begs the question… Is that becasue Maya is so great or is it because Renderman is without question the Defacto Standard when it comes to rendering photo real CGI for films, and Pixar has thus far, has only supported Maya officially?

Think about it…

If for the last decade Pixar had produced Renderman Artist tools and more recently Renderman Pro Studio for all applications, XSI 3ds, and Maya. Would Maya still be the “Defacto Standard”?

#116

That’s an excellent question. Pixar even has a “consumer” level of Renderman (renderman for Maya, non-pro studio, non RAT version).

But given that Pixar makes most of their money from their movie properties, do they have any motivation to devote the resources needed to support their product on more than one 3d software “platform?”

I just saw that 3delight came out for XSI. Do you think Pixar would be tempted to follow suit?

#117

Deleted. I could care less.

#118

If Maya 2009 doesn’t live up to your expectations, then you are uninstalling your current copies and “jumping ship” to something else?

I’m running Maya 2008 currently and have a mixed bag of experiences and opinions, but do you believe there is any reason I should uninstall Maya 2008, and never use it again, if the next version sucks?

A general question, not really directed towards anyone, but I just want to know why on Earth anyone would uninstall something so wonderful.

#119

this happens every time new software comes out. It’s nothing new. Don’t let others sway your opinions on what you should use or not. After all, it is their opinion and you have your own. If Maya works for you… keep truckin’ and let the so-called ship jumpers either crap or get off the pot. Chances are most of them will not jump ship and instead are just ruffling their feathers like they do each time something new and “cool” comes out.

#120

Maya as the defacto standard has nothing to do with Renderman. Maya is used for more than just an out for Renderman. It was used by studios before there were decent hooks between maya and renderman. Maya does have a set of tools and great scripting capabilities that XSI and Max didn’t have for the longest. Now they’ve caught up, but because Maya is so engrained into people’s pipelines, why should they move to something else when Maya just flat out works for them?