转载：Max vs Maya

转自：http://www.aecmag.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=123

A 3ds Max user for ten years, Chris Hobbs, application specialist
at CADline, recently started using Maya. But which is the right product
for in design visualisation users?

3ds Max is a product that has been under the Autodesk umbrella for
many years, since the acquisition of the original development company,
Kinetix. During the intervening years it has been traded under the
company name of Discreet, which has itself been reabsorbed into
Autodesk as the Design Media and Entertainment department.

Maya has been owned and developed by a company called Alias which
was acquired by Autodesk earlier this year, making Autodesk the market
leader in modelling and animation.



‘Epic Condominium’ created in Maya and courtesy of Alpha-Vision (www.alpha-vision.com)



‘One Time Square’ created in Maya and courtesy of Alpha-Vision (www.alpha-vision.com)



‘Trump Fort Lauderdale’ created in Maya and courtesy of Alpha-Vision (www.alpha-vision.com)

Positioning

I have searched high and low to find a definitive message on how
these two products sit within the Autodesk portfolio and in this
article I will attempt to simplify it, or at very least try and aim you
in the right direction.

With any major software acquisition the same questions reverberate around the industry;
“Why has Autodesk acquired Alias?”

“Surely Max is in direct competition with Maya, don’t they do the
same thing?”, and ultimately, “Has Autodesk bought Alias to shelve
Maya, or even replace Max?”

In the main, they do perform many of the same tasks; they can model,
render, animate and create a headache for most IT departments! They do
have their subtle differences and as with most competitive products,
they have their strengths and weaknesses.

The straight answer to the last question is neither. Those of you
that keep an eye on such things will be well aware of the precedence
set with the purchase by Autodesk of the Revit Corporation five years
ago. For those of you that haven’t heard of Revit, it was a product
that was in direct competition with Architectural Desktop in the
architecture and construction market. Autodesk acquired the software
and has been developing them in parallel, with no intention of shelving
either product. They have taken ideas from each and shared them with
the other, improving both products. The differentiation that has
emerged has been one of mindset rather than feature list. This is
something that I am sure we will see happen to Max and Maya.

After spending the best part of 10 years using Max in various
industries I have now started to use Maya and have found a lot of
similarities in the way the products work. In Max we use the transform
gizmo to move, rotate and scale an object, a function that is mirrored
by a similar tool in Maya. Right clicking an object in both products
will produce intelligent sub-menus that are only relevant to the
selected objects. I find using Maya very familiar, with some features
in which I still prefer the Max approach, whilst in others I find the
Maya approach a refreshing improvement. Both products are now using
Mental Ray as the secondary rendering engine.

Technical

comparison summary

Max has become extremely popular in both the architectural and
visualisation industries, an approximate sales split in these
industries compared to Maya is around 80/20. In the games and
TV/Broadcast industry it’s about 50/50 and in the Film industry it’s
about 80/20 in Maya’s favour.

Max has advantages over Maya with regards to the architectural and
visualisation markets in terms of conceptual modelling tools, low-level
polygonal modelling (vital for real-time applications), large scale
environment creation (level edits, AEC scene visualisation), as well as
interoperability with other Autodesk product lines. In the gaming,
TV/Broadcasting areas Max has strengths that include ‘out of the box’
character rigging, motion capture handling, and animation layering.

So what are the strong points of Maya? Well, after a relatively
short period of becoming acquainted with Maya, I would be inclined to
say that its main strength lies in NURBS modelling. Although Max can
adequately model NURB surfaces, it is quite hard to use and so most MAX
users rely on 3rd party products for surfacing. Maya has a different
approach to NURBS modelling which seems to flow much easier than Max,
and if asked to make a comparison with anything, then I would say it is
closer to the tools and approach of Rhino. For those of you unfamiliar
with NURBS, they are potentially complex surfaces that have a very low
face count. For example, create a sphere using polygons and in making
it smooth you might end up with over 100 faces. By using a Nurb Surface
to create the same shape you are only dealing with a single face.

Maya is also known for its fluid effects. This element of the
software will allow the user to realistically simulate how fluids and
gasses would react in real world environmental conditions. The type of
effects that can be achieved are pyrotechnics such as fire, explosions
and nuclear blasts; space including clouds, steam, mist, fog, smoke;
and viscous effects which include molten lava and mud. The fluid
effects also include an Ocean Shader for creating realistic open water
and we can see how objects would look and react when floating or
sinking. The closest weapon in the Max arsenal is the Reactor tool,
which is good in some areas of object interaction but not as effective
at fluid dynamics.
Ancillary advantages include the advanced character rigging in Maya
which will allow the user to totally customise the rig in a much easier
way than achieving the same result in Max.

Maya has a great tool called Paint Effects which will allow the user
to draw free-hand on a surface; the software will add a 3D paint effect
and there are plenty of effects that come standard with the software
ranging from grass through to neon strobe lighting. The tool makes
seemingly complex and impressive after-effects very quick to achieve.

Maya will also run on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms whereas Max
is only available for Windows based systems. Maya’s latest incarnation
- release 9 - is 32- and 64-bit, as is 3ds Max Release 9.

Conclusion

So getting back to the original question, ‘Which product is right
for me?’ If you are in the Architectural and Visualisation industries
then I would still say Max is the right tool. However, if your software
budget can stretch far enough, then I would also suggest purchasing a
seat of Maya. Maya has some great tools that will propel your visuals
to a cut above the rest. Using the paint tools, and fluid effects, your
walkthrough can become hugely more realistic. Imagine creating an
animation with a pond in the background that is rippling around a
floating object, or water trickling down rocks, these are the kind of
things that can be achieved using Maya.