Should i learn maya or 3ds max

Maya is best to go with for character animation, and 3DS Max has a robust modeling toolset. This has been a useful guide to the top difference between Maya vs 3Ds Max. Here we also discuss the key differences with infographics and comparison table. You may also have a look at the following Maya vs 3Ds Max articles to learn more —. Submit Next Question. By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Forgot Password? This website or its third-party tools use cookies, which are necessary to its functioning and required to achieve the purposes illustrated in the cookie policy.

By closing this banner, scrolling this page, clicking a link or continuing to browse otherwise, you agree to our Privacy Policy. Maya vs 3Ds Max. One of the most common medical uses for animation is for education. Creating a 3d model of any part of the human body is hugely beneficial, but adding the ability to walk through and explore various parts in video format can be even more so. Even without large animations, the ability to move various pieces of a 3d model and introduce transitions or motion graphics can elevate any 3d model and make it more visceral, professional, and useful.

Both 3ds Max and Maya can be used for this purpose and more. Motion in either program can be broken down into two parts: rigging and animation. Rigging is often wrapped up into the larger category of animation as a whole, but both are equally important in adding some movement to any 3d model.

Rigging is the process of attaching points of movement to 3d models where animation can occur. For instance, a pumping heart, a breaking bone, or a moving machine. Any area of a model where movement will occur receives a rigging element or joint. The basics of rigging stay the same across almost any 3d modeling software, but some specific tools available in either Maya or 3ds Max can make the process easier.

Many modern advancements in rigging are meant to automatically find points by detecting the geometry of the model or organize nodes and connections to declutter rigging, as it can quickly get complicated. Animation is the act of making 3d models move. This is done through the use of keyframes; the model is positioned one way using rigging and assigned a keyframe on a timeline. For example, a walking animation is created by starting the person as still, then moving the hip, arms and legs and adding another keyframe.

Good animation requires setting enough rigging, moving the correct parts, and establishing a proper timing of keyframes. This is applicable to every animation. The animation program will detect the changes between keyframes and try to automatically fill the frames in-between with movement.

If there are too few keyframes, this will look unnatural and the program is likely to make mistakes. Likewise, too many keyframes take up a significant amount of time and memory for little to no benefit. Animation in 3ds Max is highly capable of producing beautiful and effective work, but many nice tools are missing or require significant plugins to get working. For basic animation, as is often common for medical technologies, this program is likely to serve more than well enough.

However, those looking for more powerful animation or an easier workflow may wish to turn to Maya. Its features are largely limited to basic timelines and procedural animation tools, but occasionally, they slip in additional features that are worth taking a look at. One such feature is the 3ds Max Fluids technology, which allows for realistic liquid behavior that responds to gravity and collisions.

More about this feature can be found here. Many of the specific animation tools that 3ds Max provides are focused around character animating, which is not always used in medical animation. However, with some ingenuity and a little bit more elbow grease, it will serve any necessary animation functions perfectly.

Motion paths are a feature that let you preview the path of animated objects. For instance, if blood pumping through arteries is being animated, the path of the blood will appear and is editable to achieve the desired result. This is most useful when combined with the aforementioned spline capabilities of 3ds Max, so a path can be built directly into the model.

The majority of the time, a motion path is useful for working out details of motion when it requires a specific path or area to stay in. Animating the movement of a swallowed object through the throat is an example where motion paths may be useful.

More information on motion paths and their use can be found here. Particle flow effects are extremely powerful and can be used in a myriad of situations. The technology behind effective particle flow is fairly complicated, but the basics involve individual objects being defined by shape and speed. Once the thousands of individual objects have been generated and defined, they are moved and interact with each other and other models in the space to create effective movement.

The particles constantly interact with each other and react to the environment, creating a natural look for things such as smoke, liquids, or semi-solid substances. Essentially, anything that can flow can use particle flow effects to achieve a realistic movement animation. Medically, this is applicable to a wide variety of uses, such as showing blood movement, displaying liquid medicine, the filling of the lungs, or other uses. This is most useful for iteration and the editing of animations; simply copy the existing animation into a new layer, hide it, and edit on the original.

This way, if something goes wrong or you are unhappy with the results, you can quickly revert back to the first copy. Merging layers is also highly beneficial for working out any kinks in animation if you have multiple layers that look great at different points. Animation in Maya revolves largely around scripting in either Python or MEL, its proprietary language. Luckily, a deep knowledge of these languages is not required to achieve fantastic results and gain access to the incredible number of tools that Maya provides.

This is largely due to MEL being incredibly easy to customize and learn — a few hours in an afternoon are enough to set up almost anyone with enough knowledge to do most animations they desire. Tutorials covering the various parts of Maya, custom plug-ins for specific types of animations, and additional resources for practice are all easy to find.

In addition to having every basic tool needed for animation, Maya takes the lead for the various tools it has to speed up workflow or introduce advanced techniques in an easy to parse way. Tools such as:. Cached playback is one of the important features of animating in Maya. This allows for you to see changes made to an animation immediately, rather than waiting on Maya to redraw and render everything out. Especially with large animations, this rerendering could take significant time.

It works by saving the animation scene in multiple parts. When edits are made, Maya only needs to reload that specific slice instead of the whole thing. You can read more about it here. Animation bookmarks allow for specific splits of time to be saved on the timeline for various animations for quick revisiting.

These bookmarks are not linked to any specific keyframes, but are instead linked to another function of Maya called the Time Slider, where animations can be scrubbed through like a video. For animation work, Maya is obviously stronger than 3ds Max. Rigging is an essential part of an animation, it will allow skeleton animation, which is basically how the character moves.

It starts with the creation of a mesh, and then the creation of a skeleton. The thing is to create a relation between this mesh and the skeleton. As for animation in general, for rigging, we recommend using Maya, which will be much more complete to create complex rigs. If you are not really experienced, 3ds Max will still be a good option, as the rigging process is quite easier to go through. When it comes to rendering, these 3D programs can both provide you really good results. While choosing a program to work with, you will obviously have to check if it is compatible with your operating system!

So here is what you need to know for Maya and 3ds Max. To sum it up, each of these professional software have their own strengths, and your choice will mainly depend on what you are looking for.

If you work in architecture, 3ds Max will be better for you. If you specifically want to work on animation, Maya will be the best option. Are you already using 3ds Max or Maya? Share your views about these two modeling program with us and tell us more about your project! Forgot your password? Don't have an account? Register now. Connect with Google.