What is the BEST 3D Software? Maya vs 3dsMax vs Cinema 4D vs Houdini vs Blender

hey guys and welcome to another very exciting video one of the questions that I get asked the most on my channel is what is the best 3d application what should I learn cinema 4d maiya 3d studio max Houdini what about blender now there is no simple answer but I want to talk a little bit about the different 3d applications talk about the strengths and the weaknesses to hopefully help you figure out what might be best for you first off and I've talked about this quite a bit before there is no such thing as the best 3d program they all have different strengths and weaknesses and it depends on what you want to do so it's a very personal thing the reason I use best in the title for these videos is because that's usually what people search for and I really just want to help you guys figure out what might be best for you for that and want to talk about all of the big 3d problems that people usually look at when they're thinking about getting into 3d or filmmaking of visual effects or motion graphics and the first thing I want to talk about is 3d studio max versus maiya it's actually quite an interesting story because 3d studio max was released in the early 90s developer Autodesk and maiya came out in the late 90s developed by Ilyas systems but in 2005 Autodesk actually bought over maiya and what happened is that suddenly Autodesk had two 3d application 3d studio Max and Maya that kind of did the same thing but it's kind of hard to market to products that do the same thing and so all that started moving them into different directions 3d studio max became much more known for architecture engineering product design more static energy but also engineering because it integrates well with AutoCAD where's maiya has kind of become the weapon of choice in the filmmaking visual effects industry because it's got really powerful animation capabilities it's very popular very widespread it's very customizable it's got an extensible language that can be used to build lots of tools and pipeline things around it and so Maia's really the tool if you want to get into filmmaking visual sects do learn mega that's kind of where most things are headed at the moment if you more into the architecture side of things or product design or engineering a human built cars 3d studio max is probably where I'd go now while Mayer certainly the dominant player when it comes to filmmaking and visual effects a new player within that space modern general has been around for a while as well is Houdini Houdini has gotten popular because of the demand for a lot of organic effects like destruction fluids fires explosions fumes disintegration a lot of those style of effects have you seen like Avengers movies for example a lot of that is done with Houdini because Houdini as opposed to 3d studio max may and cinema4d Houdini is a procedural 3d applications a very different workflow and allows you to kind of mesh and mash and flow data it comes like a data pipeline but you can transform things in ways that isn't possible in traditional 3d software tools and that's why it's starting to get really popular obviously procedural programs require a lot of computing power but with computers getting more powerful that now becomes more accessible and therefore I think Houdini is really taking off so Houdini is definitely also a great tool to start learning if you want to get into visual effects the cool thing about Houdini is it's got a free apprentice version has all of the features of the pro versions except that you know the rendering is a little bit limited and you do get a watermark but other than that great to get started learning it I've got some beginner to taught on my channel as well if you want to check it out it's difficult though it's a very different workflow you need a very different mindset it's a very data-driven as well so that can take a long time to get into it people joke about the learning wall of Houdini another very clever learning wall once you unlock it that's amazing things you can do with it so mayor and Houdini are definitely the two tools that I'd look at if I want to get into filmmaking in visual effects now the other side when you're talking about video obviously is motion graphics and for clean motion graphics abstract art and animation and also product design cinema 4d is really the place to go the renders come out really nice and clean it's a very powerful tool is really easy to get into cinema4d out of the whole lot is probably the easiest one to just open it up the interface is much more huge different fluid it's easy to create things that put things together and make the stuff that looks really nice it's got a lot of plugins like mograph is a very powerful set of tools that you have within cinema 4d to create really cool abstract animations and motion graphics so motion graphics are definitely go into cinema 4d filmmaking visual effects mayor and Houdini and then architecture design more product stuff and go into 3d studio max now the elephant in the room is well what about blender blend us a 3d program that's cool it's open source anyone can use it personally I actually like blender I think blenders a great program is really powerful you can do destruction in it that's got full dynamic capabilities volume rendering fluid simulations it's got powerful animation rigging capabilities so why isn't everyone using it why should I learn cinema for these 3d studio max may and all these other tools if blenders fariña can just use it now there are two main reasons why blender is not more extensively used in the industry the first one is simply history when a lot of these filmmaking will affect Studios first came up the main tools that were available was 3d studio max maiya and cinema 4d so all of the pipelines their skills that people have been built around those tools if you're now trying to introduce a new tool means you have to change all of your pipelines you have to retrain all of these people and then if you're just one of many studios near the old man changing to a new tool and nobody else is using it you can't interchange files like those those whole workflows the pipe and everything breaks and it's a huge amount of cost to to switch over introduce something new therefore in all of the filmmaking visual effects studios most of the traditional tools are used maiya Houdini is a new player on the market but again it's kind of been built on top of the pipeline rather than you know shifting anything else out 3d studio max cinema for these so those are really the tools that are widely spread they used everywhere and you're not gonna start by learning one of those the second reason is simply lack of support if you are a film studio or a visual effects studio and you've got a work do in their monthly million-dollar contract and suddenly there's a bug in the program or something doesn't work with blending there's no support it's open source it's free where you're not paying anyone for lights and so there is no team liable for that product there's nobody you can just call up and say hey this doesn't work send your engineers over now we need this fix because we need to get this done so big movie studios need big teams like all the desk behind 3d studio max and Mayer just provide support if anything goes wrong they're there they're liable they've got contracts in place deal with all of that because blender is open source and free you know if something goes wrong it's like just wait for the next release so I don't see it changing an existing movie studios if new movie studios come up it might start being introduced but I think that still struggles to then integrate with all of the existing studios because they still have pipelines set up around through these 2d max Mayer cinema for the Houdini all the big problems that are already out there personally I actually really love blender I mainly do videos for YouTube and if you are just doing it for hobby and fun and you just want to get into it just learn blender it's an amazing tool is really easy to use and really powerful also do not file obviously learning blender isn't the same as learning cinema for these 3d studio max amia the concept of working with 3d with the concept of modeling animation rigging and materials physics all that they're very transferable so what you learn by learning blender you like it can transfer quite easily into one of the other 3d programs so you know there's still value in learning it and obviously if like me you're just doing it for fun for hobby do get yourself plenty you're not paying for anything and a vacuum really excited about blender 2.8 coming out this year there's some massive changes that I'm really excited for but you know topic for another video finally just very quickly and I did touch on this a little bit in terms of complexity to learn the easiest out of those programs to learn it's probably cinema 4d just because the interface is much more intuitive it's much easier get into the next one up is probably 3d studio max as long as you kind of doing more basic stuff but three studio max actually found quite intuitive as well maiya again kind of a notch up from that gets a little bit more complex but also because it is quite a bit more powerful especially when you get into animation and rigging and a little bit more of the complexities around there and again I'm not a 3d artist so all of that to me is kind of magic anyways then the one definitely on top probably with a little bit of a distance is Houdini because Houdini is really complex because it's a procedural workflow it works very different you need a very different mindset but again Houdini is just even create some amazing stuff in it so it's definitely worth learning get yourself the apprentice version it's free fully powerful has all of the feature of the pro version except for watermark and a smaller render frame but yeah just learn what makes sense to you it depends so much on what you want to do if you want to get into filmmaking and visual effects I would recommend get into mayor mayor is the weapon of choice for the filmmaking visual effects industry or if you want to specialize on visual effects when you love explosions and fluids and blood splatters and smoke and that sort of stuff learn Houdini Houdini is also a really great tool for that if you want to create top-notch motion graphics abstract and title animation stuff like that look at cinema 4d it's also nice easy to learn but it is really powerful increase and amazing stuff in it if you more architecture design engineering focus three studio max probably makes the most sense and again if you just doing it for hoppy and for fun I can highly recommend blender I've been using it for quite a little while there's still a lot for me to learn and a lot of tutorials for you guys to make but you know just you have to figure out what do you want to do how much complexity do you want to deal with and then figure out what's best for you but as I already said there just is no simple answer to what is the best 3d program it depends so much on what you want to do with it where you want to go what level of complexity you are happy with but hopefully this video gave you a little bit of an overview of the different 3d programs so then you can hopefully figure out what may be best for you and that is all this to it if you enjoyed this video please hit that like button if he new here hit that subscribe button and if you watch mortars click these things over on the right-hand side if you want to support me what I do in this channel be sure to check out my patreon page and as always thank you very much for watching and until next time I will see you later

Channel: Surfaced Studio

Views: 1,275,668

Keywords: Best 3d software, What to Learn, 3dsMax vs Maya, vs, 3dsMax, Houdini, Blender, Maya, Cinema 4D, 3D, What should I learn, VFX Industry, How to get a job, Visual Effects, VFX, Hollywood, Special Effects, Surfaced Studio, CUDA, OpenCL, NVIDIA vs ATI, Destruction, Architecture Design, Motion Graphics, Title Animation, Disintegration

Id: 8BT4YSOjTas

Length: 10min 38sec (638 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 17 2018