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Learn Lightwave or Maya?

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sirris

Member
I'd like to start learning 3-D design and I want to get a program to do so. I just don't know if I should tackle Maya or Lightwave (or another if suggested). I don't have alot of resources available with regards to people I know I can ask for reference regarding the matter. Anyone here have any skills or idea about 3-D design? I need something basic. I have 10 years in 2-D vector design (not illustrator) and about 3 in photoshop but I've never tackled 3-D space before. I need something with easy concepts that don't assume you already know the tools.

Of course it would help if I put this in the proper forum although I supose its sorta game related.
 
Lightwave is easier to learn, IMO...but Maya/Max will be more pertinent in games development since those are far more common. Learning an editor, like UE is good, too.
 
Maya. Without question. It does MORE, is used by MORE, and will relavent to future job prospects.


It's tough, and there is a BILLION+1 Things to learn, but the reward is very, very great.


SOB is a bitch to learn, becuase there really is so much you can do with the program. I learned on Maya unlimited, and man, it was NOT easy. All I had were books. Books on 3-D programs SUCK HUGE SALTY BALLS.
 
Maya and Max are used a lot because they have a more robust subdivision modeling system compared to Lightwave 3D. There's also SoftImage XSI. Still boils down to talen though as i've seen people do some amazing work using Animation Master (patch modeling program that's under $300)

If all you want to do is model then try Zbrush (www.pixologic.com) or Modo (www.luxology.net). Both fully functional trial downloads
 
Yea but can't you apply knowledge from lightwave to Maya? Isn't it like what Corel is Illustrator/Photoshop? If you learn one the other is attainable.
 
Yeah, as long as you know one of them well, it's not that hard to go into one of the others. Just get good with the one you like and feel most comfortable with. The important thing is to get comfortable with the basics and it's all (mostly) gravy from there. Lightwave was what I learned on a long time ago, so I was most used to that interface. Blender is nice (and free), too.
 
Ehhh... I've been learning Max for ages, and it just isn't easy to dive into Maya from it. I'm trying, but it's such a different beast.
 
I would say Maya, but if you have the ability to get Max. Both are industry standards, but I just enjoy Max UI over Maya.
 
The modo - zbrush combo punch is formidable.

I like the newest poly tools in Maya 7 though. Zbrush is also useful for more than just organics, but organics are definitely its forte.

3DS Max is probably the most widely used app in the games industry, and the most valuable to learn for potential job seekers.
 
Well I actually have Maya. (A friend bought it and lost his mind trying to learn it so its on loan to me). And I have a fundamentals book but its all over the map. They cover very complex issues in a matter of a few pages. Very daunting. I'd just like to tackle basic 3-D construction, scaling and perspective first but the book seems to throw everything into the pot.
 
i have taught myself lightwave over the last few years, but from what i've seen Maya is far ahead in most areas. i'm being forced to switch over to it for a course im starting in march :(

from what i understand maya has far better options for fibres (hair, grass etc) and a better particle system.
 
Entirely depends on the dev team and content. Pre-rendered tends to be more Maya, XSI based. Sometimes the pipeline is even mixed due to the more unusual plugins for these products and artist look of a rendered layer, one over the other.

Max is used a lot of in-game content and I've seen Lightwave used for the middle ground depending on in-house budgets so it's clearly not an easy one to answer.

I'd start by considering the type of content you want to work on and then work back from there. 3D principles remain through-out but it can take years for example to become fluent in XSI so you know all the tricks to efficiency and rapid scene creation.

Lightwave irks me at the moment due to the tie-in with Microsoft and pushing Windows XP 64. The claims made in increased performance in Lightwave render speeds boil down to crappy code and a need to break 2GBs of main memory to stop it thrashing.
 
I'm going to have to say max dude...

Maya is died... or they will be soon.... and lightwave.... IT's cool, but it has nothing on max....

That and max has a much bigger comunity... There are tuns of places to get tutorials and stuff... and it's the easyiest to learn...
 
Zilch said:
Maya isn't going to die.
Click to expand...


You sure about that.... Autodesk is buying alias.... Wouldn't be surprisded in my max 10... maya and max were put into 1 package...

MAYA IS DIED.
 
I like modeling in Modo, as a former lightwave user i find it so much easier and a lot more fun. That's part of what contributes to the quality of your art, if the program is actually fun to use then it helps keep your creativity flowing.

Can't wait until i can afford to buy Zbrush....seems like an amazing tool (coupled with Modo 201 of course)
 
TRU said:
You sure about that.... Autodesk is buying alias.... Wouldn't be surprisded in my max 10... maya and max were put into 1 package...

MAYA IS DIED.
Click to expand...

Autodesk already bought Alias. Maya and Max are going to remain separate packages. Nice try, though.
 
Yeah, Maya's far from dead. Both packages will probably end up stronger than they would've as a result of the buyout.
 
MAYA, MAX and Zbrush are the big three right now. Though Zbrush admittedly is more of something to combine with either MAX or MAYA. So, either way you should be fine, its just a matter of learning the interfaces. I know, easier said than done, but thats all it is, really.
 
I've never used ZBrush, but I thought it was more specialized than Max or Maya, which are general 3D suites. Is ZBrush used for rendering, lighting, rigging/animation too? I thought it was mostly for organic modeling (high-poly normal maps and such).
 
I guess its still mainly for modeling. I meant to say it was more of an attachment to either MAYA or MAX, definately not a replacement or equal to their abilities.
 
Zilch said:
I've never used ZBrush, but I thought it was more specialized than Max or Maya, which are general 3D suites. Is ZBrush used for rendering, lighting, rigging/animation too? I thought it was mostly for organic modeling (high-poly normal maps and such).
Click to expand...

Zbrush... It's is a very amazing program... Version 2.0 currently out... It can be used for 2d renders, or 3d modelling.

In 2d, it acts a lot like photoshop, but in 2.5d. It really takes painting to the next level.

In 3d, you can import your own mesh, or start modeling in zbrush using zspheres.. Both options work amazingly well. Currently i'm working on a 3d character for a game.. In high poly, it's about 6.5 million polys... And the program is running smooth on my machine right now. And if you know 3d, you know that's amazing. (Version 2.5 soon to be released.. is said to support up to 14 million polys on current hardware) And after you have it modeled, you can texture it right on the mesh.. WITH AMAZING RESULTS.

Zbrush is an amazing package. It can be bought for $550. And you can have some amazing results in a very short period of time.


It's not a complete package, It has no rigging, skinning, or any animation function whatsoever. But for what it does... It's the best..

PS. Dont kid yourself if you think max and maya wont be in one package soon enough.
 
I started off learning Max and thought it was great, untill i started my first job at a games company that used Maya. I jumped in the deep end and i'm completley in love with maya.
It's so much more powerful than Max and you can dig around in it's scripting etc easier.
And it's far better for animation as far as i'm concerned.

Go for Maya it'll set you up better if you ever have to move onto other packages like XSI or highlevel specialist stuff like houdini.
 
Miroku said:
3DS Max is probably the most widely used app in the games industry, and the most valuable to learn for potential job seekers.
Click to expand...

Definitely untrue. Maya is much more widely used within the games industry, as well as other industries such as film and television that use 3D graphics and animation for their work. Currently studying a course in this field, as well as being a journalists in the video-game industry, feedback from my teachers and developers I've had the opportunity to talk to about their artist programs, Maya is the main tool. There had been a lot of talk about a lot more developers making the turnover from Max to Maya also. Just check out developer websites and see what they require. They usually say 'Knowledge in Maya is important but not necessary. Need knowledge from other 3D programs such as Max etc.".

3D Studio Max is definitely your best bet though. It has a very easy interface to use and learning first from that, it makes the transition from Max to Maya a lot easier than from Maya to Max.

If you, or anyone else, wants to check out what 3D Studio Max is like, you should look into downloading GMAX. It has a lot of limitations compared to 3D Studio Max, obviously since it is a free download, but the interface and options are virtually the same.
 
No.1 said:
Definitely untrue. Maya is much more widely used within the games industry, as well as other industries such as film and television that use 3D graphics and animation for their work. Currently studying a course in this field, as well as being a journalists in the video-game industry, feedback from my teachers and developers I've had the opportunity to talk to about their artist programs, Maya is the main tool. There had been a lot of talk about a lot more developers making the turnover from Max to Maya also. Just check out developer websites and see what they require. They usually say 'Knowledge in Maya is important but not necessary. Need knowledge from other 3D programs such as Max etc.".

3D Studio Max is definitely your best bet though. It has a very easy interface to use and learning first from that, it makes the transition from Max to Maya a lot easier than from Maya to Max.

If you, or anyone else, wants to check out what 3D Studio Max is like, you should look into downloading GMAX. It has a lot of limitations compared to 3D Studio Max, obviously since it is a free download, but the interface and options are virtually the same.
Click to expand...




FYI, Max has dominated the games industry for years, and still has a very strong foothold in plenty studios. When I was out lookin for jobs 4 years ago there were very few maya jobs to be found. One year ago, there were tons more, and today a quick perusal of Gamasutra's job boards shows a fairly even split between MAX and Maya.

Lots of western dev houses are still primarily using MAX. Places like Blizzard, Mythic, Gas Powered Games, Firaxis, Monolith, Relic, Flagship Studios, Crystal Dynamics, Neversoft, Id Software, Irrational Games, Epic Games, Rainbow Studios... the list goes on. Some of the best jobs in the industry are MAX jobs.

I am fully aware of the industry shift towards Maya, which seems to be a good thing for the most part, but to think that MAX is somehow irrelevant now that Maya is in vogue is not so smart.
 
Modo for speed and lowpoly. Also very easy to learn.

Head to Zbrush for organics and normal maps.

Then go to Maya for rigging, skinning and animations. You can do it ALL in Maya (or Max), of course, but imo it's better to split it up.
 
3D Studio Max is mainly used because companies still had exporters lying around and their staff had experience with Max, but there's clearly a transition to Maya and I wouldn't be surprised if 70% of all game companies would work with Maya this gen (next-gen already started hehe). I've written exporters for both Max and Maya and my conclusion is that Max looks like a hackjob with a terrible SDK (I only worked with Max up to version 7 btw). Maya is much more coder-friendly when it comes to writing plugins.
 
sirris said:
Well I actually have Maya. (A friend bought it and lost his mind trying to learn it so its on loan to me). And I have a fundamentals book but its all over the map. They cover very complex issues in a matter of a few pages. Very daunting. I'd just like to tackle basic 3-D construction, scaling and perspective first but the book seems to throw everything into the pot.
Click to expand...
:lol I remember the first time I opened Maya, and the "guide" book I bought(First one. I have 9 books on Maya) I just flipped it open,went to town. Well, that lasted about 15minutes becuase I kept searching for certian tabs, and they were all different looking in the book, and in different locations.

Frustration set it, and swearing ensued.
 
Real versions of Maya have help files and tutorials built in (though admittedly Max tutorials >>>> maya tutorials).


I tought myself Lightwave in HS, used Maya in college and use Max at work, they're all the same, just different workflows.

Max is the easiest to learn, and a good place to start. Its sort of the 'fisher price' of modeling packages, Not in power, just in presentation. You can do just as much stuff with it as maya, but the UI is a lot friendlier. Lots of big buttons.

Maya its *very* easy to get confused and bogged down with the attribute menus when you're just starting to learn. Of course its perk is the MEL engine. Its standard workflow is okay but to really get the most out of it you're going to want to use a lot of plug-ins and eventually write your own (you don't have to but you'll work 3x faster).

So i'd suggest this:

1. Get Max, go through all the help files. Learn the basics of 3d modeling
2. Model, model, model, model, model, model
3. Once you've got the core ideas down, go ahead and try out some other programs, and learn how they do things.

Really if you're doing it for personal work, it makes sense to use a 3d package you like, and not one you're required to. You should know the basics of all of them but don't worry about getting down and dirty until you're working for a company thats forcing it on you. If you have the basics you can carry that over to whatever package you like.
 
Nothing much to add just wanted to chime in with another student opinion.

I started off with Max and studied the HELL out of the built in help tutorials. While doing so I watched quite a few tutorial DVDs and read a few books. ItÂ’s amazing how helpful it is to sit down and just do tutorial after tutorial, sped up my learning progress exponentially. I then moved on to Maya and started tooling around and followed the same procedure as before, studied like hell. I strongly recommend you guys to do the same, the workflow and shift from Max to Maya is much better than in reverse, I can't stress that enough. As you might have guessed by now I do recommend learning both of these programs but be proficient in one. Lightwave I haven't really fiddled with (although I have a friend who is crazy about it) since the Western game development world is dominated by Autodesk (they own both Max and Maya now). I've been told and noticed that many Japanese and other Asian devs use Lightwave so you might want to look into that if you plan in working on that side of the globe. While I'm rambling I also want to point out the incredibly awesome modeling program called Zbrush. ItÂ’s been catching on like wildfire here in the US and its presence only grows as next-gen development begins to encompass the entire industry. Learn this program along with any 3D package of your choice and your modeling skills will easily double in quality.

This is of course just a viewpoint of a student so I don't pretend to be an expert on the matter. However this is what I've been noticing during my interactions with several industry professionals and keeping up with development at several companies.
 
As someone who has used all 3 major packages in a professional game development environment I have to say that it all depends on what you want to be doing. Most large scale environment games (like GTA, and NFS) use Max because the program is excellent for merging multiple files together as well as handling thousands of instanced objects. Its material editor is also more suited to environment design but more clumsy for anything else. The other benefits are a very easy and fast polygon modeller and the amazing 3d snap feature that allows you to snap edges vertexs, faces, elements, and objects together from any single point in space to any other point im space with a single click drag. The scanline renderer is also very high quality and the direct X viewport effects are especially well implemented.

Character modellers seem to love Maya and it more than likely has to do with the lattice modifier that allows you to deform the mesh with control points. It is also a better animator in a few differnent areas with their proper f-curve editor but the overall flexibility with copying poses and merging animations together like Max's character studio has. Maya does however have an awful and time consuming character weighting component. Maya's very visual connection based material editor is quite cool but can get disorganized if you don't reign it in.

They both crash equally bad from time to time. Max will actually pretty well say..."I'm about to crash, would you like to save a backup?"

Zbrush is used by everyone in the industry in tandem with Max and Maya. Most people build in either and then export to Zbrush to paint the super high res character or asset and then source the normal map from it.

Lightwave is great for visual FX work but it is simply not designed to make games.

In the end, they all do certain things really well. Don't really let anyone say that one is better than the other 100% of the time. I've used each for about 3 years a piece and all of them have benefits and features the others do not. Also, any time you switch from one to another you hate the new one for about a month. Some people give up at this stage and switch back. They are the ones who yap about complete superiority.
 
Well I'm a 3-D moron and I really just want to start with strictly modeling at first. Not texturing or animation. I need simple approachable modeling lessons.
 
Maya. I don't know much, but I know that Maya is much more common in the industry - not just in game development, but in general TV and motion picture industry as well..
 
Apex said:
http://www.newtek-europe.com/uk/community/lightwave/lake/1.html
Click to expand...

No shit. I've worked on a game where Lightwave was the primary modelling package. Out of the box the program simply isn't great for game production. Especially for tagging objects with user data that works its way into an engine. It however is great for doing large scale environments like in BO because it is mostly based on instancing multiple objects throughout the scene saving memory and allowing for streaming. It had the single best material editor for creating surfaces but the worst material editor for organization back when I used it which was V 5.5 and later version 6 which I believe is when they did the big rewrite.

BO is the only mainstream game I know of that used Lightwave for production in recent years. The Homeworld series was the one previous big group of games to have used it. Midway used it to make MK Special Forces as well.

You'd have to actually go through a game's production to understand where your hands get tied with something like Lightwave at least the way it was when I used it. You need massive amounts of inhouse tools to pull it together. Criterion has gone through enough iterations of Burnout to have a pretty sweet set of tools by now.
 
Sirris,

1st things 1st... make sure you practice your art.

Theres a good chance a company will be far more interested in your talent than they are your tool knowlegde. You can always be trained in a specific tool, & best yet ... they pay for it!

TBH either Max or Maya will suit you well.

They both have thier pains and sweet spots ... @ this point in your early stage there are a ton of fundamentals to pick up, either one will do the job.

go here Sirris & check out the tool specific forums.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/

And yes Z brush is an awsome tool. ... easier to pick up than I thougt it would be.
My Maya models Import in seamless (i was worried tho the model is fully quaded). I've been modeling in Maya Sub D's and getting really high res detail that way before i picked up Z Brush ... I can get the same level of detail In Z in half the time it takes in Maya Sub D.
Z Brush is not a fad, it has become a nesseary tool to learn now.
 
Blacklion said:
And yes Z brush is an awsome tool. ... easier to pick up than I thougt it would be.
My Maya models Import in seamless (i was worried tho the model is fully quaded). I've been modeling in Maya Sub D's and getting really high res detail that way before i picked up Z Brush ... I can get the same level of detail In Z in half the time it takes in Maya Sub D.
Z Brush is not a fad, it has become a nesseary tool to learn now.
Click to expand...


ZBrush prefers models in quads, as evenly distributed as possible :) It will also accept tris, but I heard Ngons are a no-no. I havent bothered testing that though, since I am a bit of a quad nazi myself.
 
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