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

#141

I find Houdini being probably the best offer right now on the market, cost-wise. The price per seat might be a bit higher, but it also offers more (complete fluids toolset, and a much more advanced and complete tool authoring environment than ICE, output to Renderman built in, HDR compositing etc). Also, very important, they offer unlimited rendering licenses for their renderer, Mantra. So you can populate your renderfarm for free. You don’t need a batch license for any render node, you can generate IFD (their equivalent to RIB) with batch or normal Houdini and then render with the free mantra on the farm.

Dragos

#142

Well seeing how you are not using ICE, none of us are I don’t see how you can actually make that statement first off. that is you perception.

that was not the way it was explained to us. Perhaps the sales persons should be educated.

I looked on the SideFX website and it is not listed in any of the product overviews or selling points but if you do a search you will find it in their FAQ. but still For a company our size a little over 11K ($7995.00 for app + $3095 for maintenance) a seat w/ maintenance is not an acceptable price. and having been a beta tester for them. Maybe I’m just odd but I find their workflow to be tedious at best. A lot of people really love it but I just think that you have to go thru to many steps to do very trivial things.

#143

Calmasacow and Venkman, after reading through your comments, I couldn’t agree any more. (I sounded like a fool in my previous post.:p)

The point is, right now, Maya is not working out for us. It has for many years. I have defended release, after release from people flaming about how the product was going to crap, and how the releases didn’t amount to squat and nothing was being fixed. I still think Maya is a great application with great underlying potential. I think that the development of it has lost its focus though. And I think that the corprate polocies of autodesk are prolly to blame. That is my opinion. But right now Maya is buggy and unstable.

Yeah, I understand what you mean. I’ve not been using maya for very long, I first started using it in production at version 7 (Which in my opinion was more stable than current versions), so not very long at all.

Though, I don’t really see where Autodesk is taking Maya, they just seem to be holding back on something every since they acquired Alias. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see. :confused:

Ok well maybe not Lightwave. Newtek will prolly ride that pony all the way to their own funeral. but still.

LOL!

So, yeah I understand what you guys are trying to say, I guess the Maya fanboy in me is still trying to defend the ship. :smiley:

#144

Well, I didn’t use it (but there are users out there who had, and some of them also are Houdini users which I discussed with and confirmed this) but I watched their site and videos. ICE is a very nice addition to XSI and a wonderful and powerful toolset but that doesn’t change the fact that Houdini had that functionality for many years and it’s available in many contexts (shaders, compositing, animation channels, point clouds, particles).

It is listed in their product pricing page I think.

I do find it tedious sometimes, but I find the same in XSI when I try to do stuff which is trivial in Houdini. Once the initial learning curve passed I find Houdini quite fast in many (not all) areas. And generally much more flexible.
When it comes to price, yes, it’s not small but you also get the functionality of RealFlow and MayaFluids (and some other stuff like Renderman output and shader authoring) and unlimited render licenses.
Five years ago one could also say that Houdini was too expensive, but it already had at that very time the tools and environment that make ICE look so cool today (aka 2008).

Dragos

#145

Wow… this thread has lasted longer than I thought it would. I guess because Autodesk is keeping so quiet about what they’ll have for SIGGRAPH. Anyway, as a Maya “artist” who just under a year ago didn’t get a divorce…but added a second wife…I thought I’d throw a bit of my perspective into the mix.

As I alluded to above, last year I came on board at an all XSi shop and while I’ve been sneaky enough to still use Maya on occasion, the expectation was that I was to switch to Softimage. The interesting part was that they were all still using version 5.0. The story being that 6.0 was such a problem that they couldn’t afford to move. And even though 6.5 had been out forever, nobody would risk trying it out.

They’d also talk about how they though Maya was cool and all but that other than Maya particles they could see no reason to support two packages much less learn it. Softimage pretty much covered all the bases. Then their eyes would glaze over as they regaled me with magical stories of MoonDust(ICE) and how it was going to blow us all away.

So I jumped in head first and opted to try 6.5. My thinking was that I had no other frame of reference so if it crashed all the time and corrupted my scene then I would just think it was a feature and not a bug.

I found XSI wasn’t an “easy” package to pick up due to many UI and workflow idiosyncrasies – but that’s because I’m used to Maya – and I still have a hard time bouncing back and forth. It’s also just as deep as Maya in many ways and that means there’s a lot to learn. But after you spend an hour or so with it you’ll be amazed at how ergonomic XSI can be. I know that’s a stupid term to use but it kind of gets to the issue in that Softimage is very animator friendly.

Things just seem to be right were you need them and not buried under layers of UI mess. The RenderTree is a downright pleasure to use. You don’t have to constantly delete your history – a habit I picked up from my Maya 4.0 days I guess. You can reorder operators in you stack or delete them and your geometry doesn’t explode. I’ll be damned if the XSI particles aren’t more accessible than Maya’s for most of the “scratch the surface” situations that come up in our productions.

The list goes on and on. And up until the XSI v7 announcement I was feeling pretty good about both my wives because they each had their pluses and minuses. But now…yikes! I don’t know. It’s like wife #2 got an extreme makeover. I just hope she stays sweet and loving.

Ok – enough metaphor. The scuttlebutt around here is that the last major upgrade was a bitter pill and while ICE is hotness incarnate, the guys here are adopting a wait and see attitude. Did Softimage learn their lesson on 6.0? Hopefully…probably…I hope so.

My advice would be for anybody that want’s to or can afford to, go ahead and switch. Enjoy it. It’s great. And after a year or six months you’ll be familiar enough with it that you’ll be able to recognize it’s inherent shortcomings as well. You might even fire up Crosswalk and use both like me from time to time. Bu the glow of new love will have worn off. And come SIGGRAPH 2009 when Autodesk announces Maxamaya we can have this conversation all over again.

#146

What do you guys think about this:

Maya looks like linux. It’s powerful and you can do anything with it, but is a little bit tricky and most of the setups you must do manually, creating your own scripts.

XSI looks like OSX. Everything looks cool, great and you can do it easier, and everything seems to work fine.

But in the end, linux is not going to kill OSX and the opposite is true, too.
There is market for both.

It’s just a matter of choosing the right one for each of us.

#147

Great post man! Yeah This thing has sorta turned in to a monster. I have actually had autodesk people contact be regarding this and my consideration of moving to XSI.

when I started the thread I think I was actually hoping some of my fellow maya users would talk me down off the ledge. As you can read that has not been the case. Well Siggraph is only 30 days away. Of course if you think this thread is bad, have your read the one from last year? Holy crap! It was a bitchfest. every one was whining and moaningabout all of the addition sayin that it was crap and should have been a service pack. Which I thought hey there are buffers and they worked on the boolean tool and with being able to edit a skined character, Man this is awesome! but then I got it and after installing and seeing was only marginally more stable that 8.5. The buffers we there but where an incomplete mess. And all they did to the damn boolean tool as ad a precision slider. Well to say the least we were pretty upset. And I have been spending everyday since listen to the other artist bitch and moan about sh!+ not working. and “Why do I have to go through all of this crap to randomize my particle instances” and things of that nature. then of course there is at least once a day that someone stands up in the middle of the office swearing because Maya just randomly crashed on them.

so the company that I work for is spinning my dept off into it’s own company. I have a buget to work with and I can pick whatever software that I want. what ever machines that I want.

It my gut I feel it is time to try something new. Maya has carried me for many years but, I feel that its best days are getting further and further away in the reaview mirror and it saddens me greatly.

But the prospect of learning a new software and trying a new approach fills that emptyness with excitment. I have done a good deal of research on it and I feel pretty comfortable that if we leave maya to XSI we are gonna be just fine. And maybe, just maybe there will be a little less frustration in the long run.

so in 30 days or so we will see what Autodesk has up their sleves and then we can get this party started one way or the other. I’ll eaither be here talking about the wonderful come back of Maya 2009 or We will be celebrating our new journey over in the XSI forums.

#148

There is nothing wrong with that.

At lest you are man enough to admit it.

#149

Gotta agree with you to an extent - someone once said:

“It’s the carpenter, not the tool”.

Of course I do understand the frustration of pulling all nighters setting stuff up just to have the shit hit the fan when the compositors are waiting for their passes.

Hopefully Autodesk will read the writing on the wall and start to bring some of that famed XSI user interface into Maya.

I tried switching to XSI from Maya after five years in 2007 … I couldn’t do it. The psychological habits and concepts were far too ingrained in my mind. It was like trying to draw with my left hand. The component sets in XSI vs groups in Maya, and the node based usability of the hypershade (hooking up one texture to two different materials in XSI was way more complicated than I expected, really discouraged me. Even so, I can appreciate the praise XSI often receives for being more user friendly and having a faster production value … though Maya’s open ended and customizable nature is second to none…

I just wish they would make the native MIDI server / peripheral editor available on os x

#150

Personally, I think this whole argument is ridiculous, but i just have to chime in. I use maya @ home and 3DS @ work. I’ve worked in traditional print design, where they primarily use macs and I’ve worked at multimedia and game studios, where the tool of choice has always been PC. It’s really all about choice. I like knowing that I have options. Maya does some things great. 3DS does some pretty nifty things as well. If either one of them were to go away, we’d all be at a loss. Besides, it’s the artist that makes the art, not the tools.

PS: The scripting thing - it’s something that any good artist should know how to do in this day and age.

#151

i dont think xsi is a maya killer. from the perspective of a generalist who never knows quite what i’m going to have to do… i have to join the chorus that it seems like maya is stagnating and other programs are starting to come out with intriguing features. i went through this same soul searching myself awhile back.

i gave XSI an honest shot in mid 2007, wound up using it on a toon shading gig even, which it was great for in particular. i didnt mind the UI so much but contrary to what i expected, many basic modelling tasks i do a lot in maya were much more convoluted. MR integration was impressive, the toon shader was great, but i wasnt impressed enough over all to actually switch. if anything i’d wind up using maya to model still and being a pretty much one man shop i dont want the overhead of more than one primary 3d app…

and the answers from xsi users to a lot of my questions was “downnload a script” which is the exact thing that i get annoyed with maya so i guess the grass is always greener.

i am praying autodesk will just make a totally new next gen program to replace both maya and max and integrate everything and have sculpting work right and make it all integrated like the features in maya 1.0 were how we all dream of it being again. they seem to be the only people that have the resources to do something so huge.

ps- lol at the comment about lightwave being around. long after we are all dust, lightwave will be around.

pps- although it may be sort of useless for big shops that already have their own tools, maya has made huge improvements in the dynamics in the new versions. not in terms of some super nice node based dynamic do it all system like it seems the competition is rolling out, i would love that also, BUT for what they do ncloth and fluids and hair have all made my life better as a generalist in very real ways and let me do jobs i wouldnt have even bid on before. im also pretty sure these are all the work of duncan brimsmead? maybe they should clone him…

the mac support has also been huge for me personally, because i already had a mac to run final cut and shake, and now i dont need to manage multiple OS systems which makes life much simpler here in my apartment/studio. not to mention i will never have to buy windows vista! yessss.

so i guess the changes may be nothing to some people but what changes there have been since autodesk took over have been great for me personally.

but at the same time i am also feeling that “stuck on version 7” blues, these features are all cool but they are all kinda special case, and even stuff that could have been done before with scripts etc, the basic abilities of the program arent going anywhere. sure i would love comprehensive redoing of physics and animation to make it all properly node based… and let all the nodes talk to eachother, not have different node editor for materials and the rest… and get compositing and render layers in the mix like xsi… and get the particles and physics in there too… AND ONE NODE TO BIND THEM ahh dreamland…

if anybody actually does get houdini i’d love to hear reviews specifically from the pov of a maya user :slight_smile:

#152

Ah stop your moaning and go to XSI, I dont think Autodesk gives 2 hoots. We represent a small minority in the industry and if there is something you cant or dont like doing then that reflects on your resistance to learn rather than something Autodesk needs to change.

#153

Easy there turbo :slight_smile: …It is just a CG forum afterall, heh.

#154

I wonder how many “basic” tasks he’s actually had to use mel for? Sorry… I just think cow needs to quantify that statement considering he’s using using explitives in caps masked with *'s! :slight_smile:

Come on cow, give us some examples of problems YOU’VE had (not heard from a brother’s cousins friend). Maybe you’ve overlooked something in the UI or within your own software useage which has lead you to this assumption that most basic tasks need to be mel coded. If there’s a problem maybe we can solve it here for you.

#155

maybe someone should just get another renderer, if this mr stuff doesnt work out. But exclaiming a divorce if a certain thing doesnt happen is already asking for disappointment. I will not switch Maya even if XSI is the better app on an “objective basis”, because I paid for it , it works and I was able to create functionality that neither XSI nor any other 3D app has that I know. And we all know what they say about winning teams…

Here is a film created by one of the students at the academy where I teach, it was his first 3d project ever, and no dark secret MEL scripts necessary btw . He got help from an experienced renderman guy though, since mr wouldnt efficiently render it: [http://www.bitfilm.com/festival/member.php?page=fd&fid=2098&id=116416&category_token=3D](http://www.bitfilm.com/festival/member.php?page=fd&fid=2098&id=116416&category_token=3D) I dont think that Maya was such a drag to use for this project. The only problem was hammering into Thomer how a Maya workspace should be properly organized : )

#156

I see no reason why you can’t stick with both Maya and XSI.

#157

Haha Buexe, that film was great! Loved it! Good job!

And for not being Off-Topic: Maya is goooood!

Thanks

#158

I think we should all get our lawyers ready.

#159

That was one of the best short films I have seen. really hilarious story. Was there a making of posted somewhere? Also how long did it take to complete out of curiosity?

You can pm me so we dont derail the thread.

It seems a thread like this pops up everytime a new version of XSI gets released. There are many things XSI does right. I personally prefer it to maya in everything but animation because the creative workflow is much better than maya’s in my experience. I still fall back to maya for animation all the time because no other software has the channelbox and graph editor of maya, both of which are the best implementations in any cg package imo.

I have to agree with one of the posts above though. It seems Autodesk is just adding the bare minimum of features on maya and max to justify calling it a “update” while they work on a new app. I would love to see aggresive development from Autodesk like I see from Side fx and Softimage but I think they are too comfortable with their market lead to worry about such things.

#160

Im not saying Maya doesnt need a kick in the balls…hehe…but remember your mating session with XSI could be short.