Should I learn Blender 3D or Maya?

what do you want what do you want it's not that simple what do you want what do you want i have to go ever since the release of blender 2.8 we've been watching its ascendancy from a piece of freeware mostly used by hobbyists to a tool powerful enough to compete with the likes of maya has it reached such a point yet is it at the stage where it's viable for mass industry adoption is it something that you should use or is it still lacking some major features beneath the hood let's take a look if we're going to compare these two softwares the first thing we should examine is use cases what is it that you need to get out of a 3d package though blender and maya may seem very similar at first glance they don't necessarily fill the same niche blender is very clearly trying to be the swiss army knife of 3d software you can start with the default cube and end with the cinematic featuring fully rigged 3d characters complete with particle effects hair and cloth simulations it does everything from the modeling and sculpting to animation and rendering and it does it all pretty well on the other hand maya isn't trying to be the jack of all trades rather it is trying to be the absolute best when it comes to things like modeling and writ apology building character rigs and animation maya does not want to be sculpting software or to be where you do your texture work it rather it was built to fit into an industry pipeline that consists of zbrush substance painter and houdini all of which are pieces of software that are the absolute best at what they do and good for little else maya is no exception to this rule naturally this leads to the next question if i want the best results does that mean i need to use maya and z brush over blender the reason major studios have had this pipeline for so long is that it's assumed the artists are as good as they can be in production the final quality of the result is all that matters so it would make sense that these companies would be willing to drop money on expensive software suites to them it's an investment even if that investment only makes a five percent difference in the final quality of the product if you're a hobbyist however or someone new to the world of 3d this isn't necessary and it might even be a crutch while blender may not be as good as the brush for sculpting or as good as maya for building character rigs it shares all the same foundational pillars it's similar enough that smaller studios with tighter budgets are opting to use blender anyway if you are a current blender user and you're thinking of switching to maya or these other tools ask yourself why [Music] if the reason is you want slightly better results the simple truth is you're probably better off improving your craft first maya has been the industry standard for decades so most professional level art we see is made using it blender is free and serves as an entry point for lots of aspiring 3d artists so it stands to reason that most of the blender art we see online isn't of the same caliber but this is like the rookie artist trying to figure out what pencil the professional uses and completely missing the fact that the professional could still produce a beautiful portrait with crayons blender is still an extraordinarily powerful piece of software and there is a reason it's starting to see industry adoption so what's the case for maya then well the first and most obvious is the fact that it's the industry standard if you want to do this professionally you should have at least a basic understanding of industry standard software it's that simple with that aside maya also has a couple of things that blender doesn't which are critical for large productions it's a very mature piece of software and with that comes stability in addition major studios usually have a dedicated helpline right to the engineers that build the software and finally its closed source as it turns out in a world where competitive advantage is directly tied to profits lots of major studios aren't interested in the source code of their proprietary tools being freely available to the rest of the world and it is in these tools where maya shines maya has had over two decades of use and plugin development plugins built by professionals to solve specific problems for large-scale productions that's a major distinction here while blender and maya may look similar on the surface mayas has been built with a large scale production pipeline in mind it has better collaborative project management it's better optimized so it can handle heavier scenes and its features are more stable it's the little things like pressing undo in a large scene and not freezing the software up for 10 seconds that was a long-winded way of saying that maya is built with production in mind and if that's where you plan to head you should learn it but if you're a maya user is there a reason to pick up lender instead as alluded to earlier blender does everything this makes it great for education and practice and having no price tag is a massive draw especially when the licensing costs for maya are in the thousands in a professional context blender is great for concept art and look development with all the tools bundled up in one place it's incredibly easy to build up sketch pieces quickly there's no need to use zbrush to do basic sculpting if you're not going above a million polygons and if you're just posing a character up quickly blender's rigging add-on can get this done in a matter of moments blender's add-ons shouldn't be overlooked either there has been a lot of work done in the blender community developing add-ons that vastly enhance the user experience for specific tasks hard ops and box cutter come to mind for hard surface modeling and ratapa flow forward topology finally the community surrounding blender is by far one of the most helpful around there are a ton of free tutorials all over the internet for everything from sculpting to scripting and quite often people are more than willing to share the process they took to create such a piece of art with hundreds of breakdowns available for free on this channel alone i don't think anyone would deny that statement so what should i learn well it depends on what your goals are if you're looking to go pro knowledge of the industry pipeline is a must while some productions are switching to blender in light of the 2.8 release the vast majority of studios still do a lot of their work in maya because the tool is incredibly mature and it integrates into the greater pipeline of more specialized tools when you're being paid to do work by a studio they'll also be paying for you to use the best tool for the job and they'll expect you to know your way around it however if you're a hobbyist or an indie studio blender is legitimately a good choice maya may be great but it is also expensive what if you're developing assets for a mobile game you won't be going over a couple of thousand polygons and you don't need maya's optimization or sophisticated rigging tools and finally if you just want to iterate on an idea quickly blender is king at the end of the day don't stress about the tool too much it's the artist holding the pencil that matters not the pencil itself but if you want to be a professional it's expected you have the right tools you can learn to sculpt in blender but you will need to nosy brush you can learn rigging in blender but maya leads the pack but if you need to do everything and you need to do it quickly blender is the way to go thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Stylized Station

Views: 549,790

Keywords: best 3d software, blender vs maya which is better, autodesk maya, blender, maya, 3d, what should i learn, vfx industry, how to get a job, visual effects, vfx, maya vs blender, motion graphics, maya vs 3dsmax vs cinema 4d vs houdini vs blender, best 3d animation programs for beginners, which 3d animation software is best for beginners, what is the best 3d modeling software, 3d modeling and animation programs, is blender better than maya, maya or blender, what can you do with blender

Id: Tl-zy51aM9k

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/notbmarshall]

Unless I’m mistaken, Maya costs some amount of money - maybe steeply discounted if you meet the student criteria. Why not start with Blender - for free - and see how you like it. Then move to Maya if it turns out the cost would be worth it?

Blender is extremely powerful and capable. If you find you’ve mastered every part of it and still need something more it can’t do, you’re probably in the top 1% of 3D artists.

Edit: Looks like maybe there’s a free version of Maya but I believe you would need to prove you’re actually enrolled in a qualified academic institution.

[u/hayojayogames]

Blender imo. I found Maya too expensive for a solo game dev