I see max like a really old cow that autodesk doesn’t kill because it still has some milk left… it’s big user base that is day by day shrinking… I think it is time for them to consider creating the next generation version of max and not only introducing minor changes or changes they should have made years now(yes i am talking for 64bit and gods know when we will see multithreading all over max). there are tools that haven’t changed a bit since version 3 or maybe prior… a rewrite of the core is a must i think… max has at least 5 more years of development ( believe me i have the right info )… don’t get me wrong i love max for the most part of it, but some parts of it are so old… i am already in the process of learning maya (damn hard) just in case autodesk kills the max boat… many max customers are starting to go to other softwares or considering doing so because it is all about staying competitive …
Max user base will go down to 1/2 or 1/4 in the next 5 years if they don’t see the real industry requirements and future needs… can you believe that it still doesn’t has a node based material editor in version 9 ? the bones and skin have to get a complete rewrite also… but i think maxscript is godsend…
I don’t want this to become a Max Maya war but it is funny that you say that Max is getting old and therefore Maya is going to take over, I know you didn’t say that directly but it is implied. Funny thing is the two examples that you make, Skin and Bones are even older in Maya and in much greater need of an over haul in many ways. The same person that wrote the bones in Maya 1 wrote them for Max in Max 4. Skin in Maya was introduced in Maya 1, has seen some updates but not in many releases. In Max Skin was introduced first as a free plugin (if my memory serves me) from Peter in about Max 2 and then was included around Max 3 or 4 and has seen many updates in recent years with all kinds of new tools. This is not to say they couldn’t use some updates, I would love to see all kinds of changes but when I work in Maya I want to see just as many if not more changes to their aging tool set. Would I like to see a next gen app written then blows them all away, sure, would I want to pay the price that it would have to be to make back the innitial development of it…no. I think that we are going to see both Max and Maya around for some time to come.
First of all i am not favoring maya. I have a deeper understanding of the inner workings of max, much more than i have for maya. I think maya is more geared towards animation. This is a conversation i was trying to avoid but my findings tell me that max is a little cumbersome working for animation and it’s core is really outdated, like it or not. i know the incredible work you have done in max and i respect you for that. You have pushed the limits of the max and you would know better than any of us. But let me ask you a question that would seem rather stupid but i think it holds a part of why, i believe things as i do. Why most people of the arch/viz world works with max and most (if not all) of 3d animation/ film works with maya ( i say not all because xsi has a portion of the market). Can you tell me the last 3d animated film you saw that was done mostly in max? i can tell you a dozen in maya and the rest of them were on xsi. If this doesn’t tell you anything then how could we compare each software if not from the type of work that comes out from each userbase. Many people that many people that took crucial decisions after kinetix where from the arch/viz world. Althought they are all highly respected hard working men their ideas where geared more towards how to make a better software for the architects. If ( for exampe ) you could ask anything from autodesk wouldn’t that be better animation tools, better bones and skin, better schematic views, node based material editor etc or you wouldn’t ask for anything because you think max is so good as you say? Most good character/animation/film tools in max are even not coded by autodesk/former discreet like cs, clothfx, hair, reactor, per camera pixel map, pro booleans (just to name a few). I think max is a great piece of software but it doesn’t get the attention it needs and it doesn’t get the features it needs to stay competitive, so although i would REALLY love max and like very much to stay with max for the rest of my life, i am after a good job in animation so i am jumping to another ship. Mainly for two reasons competition and future employment. I hope you could make me see that i am wrong and i should stay with max and never look back in maya but i think this is not possible simply because even both softwares have huge holes (lacking of crucial features) that need filling to come even close to perfection max has more. max is covering most of thing it is lacking with plugins coded outside autodesk. i would like to see more solution come from autodesk itself rather than buying of the shelf plugins and incorporating them in a latter version. I didn’t want to be offensive in any way, or start any kind of war… i was just expressing my humble opinion… that can not be written well in some lines in a forum but should be more manageable in a person to person conversation…
Oh by the way your dvds are more than great… keep up the good work…
i will never use max and maya in the same text/paragraph/line in my life it you think that would avoid the flame wars but i think someone must compare some piece of software to another with logical assumptions from time to time…
have a nice day…
happy maxing…
I agree that Maya is used in film way over Max. Max was largly used by iloura for charlottes web to do all the CG animals as well as I know shops that are moving more toward Max over Maya. This isn’t to say Max has a strong foot hold in the film market at all but it is there. Max still have double the amount of seats and in 2005, last investors annual report Max had a banner year with a 25% increase in sales.
I just cringe when I hear people speculating which software is taking over when I see real numbers that say different. I just don’t see Max going away any time soon. Is it going to take over the film market…no.
From your perspective learning Maya makes sense if you want to be working in the film market. Don’t get me wrong, there are many things that I like Maya for, it is just that I have just as many compaints about it. I worked on the film Happily Never After that released a couple of weeks ago and that was all Maya, we did much of our work in Max for the modeling as it was faster and posted to Maya. The rigging was all Maya of course and I have to say that I could have done much of it better in Max and much faster. That isn’t because I know Max better I’m basing that on the speed and final solutions that were done buy the best Maya TD from other shops that were on the project. We had to jump through hoops, fight with bugs work around limits with MEL and everything else that people complain about Max for just in different areas. Wait till you have to deal with all the animation issues in Maya, skin and bones there are some of the weakest that I have used and I konw that the film markets has many large complaints about Maya.
Two things that Keep Max out of large films houses are not having a fully implimented ascii in and out and not running on linux.
I guess I should stop hijacking this thread how ever.
i am sorry that i got away from the original subject of the thread. But i just wanted to clear out my opinion. I also think max polygons modeling tools are top class…
i just think a mixed max maya pipeline will have more benefits that going for a single package… i didn’t want to sound like whining or cursing max from what it is but when you work everyday with a tool you always wish it could do better and you are jealous of what other tools have already implemented. maybe maya is used more in films/ 3d anim because of its superb connection with pixar prman… anyway… have a nice day…