We use 3DS Max for our development, but I have used Alias PowerAnimator, Nichimen, and several proprietary packages of questionable quality.

That said, it appears the playing field between the two has flattened considerably. My experience with Maya proper is admittedly minor, but when it was first released the polygonal modeling tools were sad at best. From what I have seen and what I have been told, they have addressed this in the latest versions. It’s funny the lengths the two packages have copied each other (mostly for the best). It’s come to the point that I have to squint at screen shots to tell what program is on the screen. (Tip: Maya’s icons are a brighter blue. Good old “default shader blue”… 0,150,255 oh yeah…

We’ve had a fair number of applicants who use Maya. Some have stated they wouldn’t want to work somewhere where they had to use something else. The odd religious following both of these packages have saddens me. I can only assume it comes from a fear that their talent is somehow tied to a program and/or their differing origins. Maya of course coming from the SGI workstation dominated movie industry, and Max from the AutoCADie industrial visualization side of the tracks. While Maya used to be crazy expensive, they have relatively low-balled Discreet to be a great deal. Discreet claims to have an announcement later this month that will “revolutionize the 3D industry.” HA! I’m guessing they’re lowering the price now that they are not the lower of the two.

We did recently hire a Maya user who was a little nervous about having to learn Max. He claimed to be surprised at how similar it was to working in Maya. It was mainly the differences in terminology that was confusing. When asked if there were any tools in Maya he was missing in Max, he just shrugged. He claimed the only real difference was “Maya crashed for different reasons than Max did.”

I guess my point is, if you want to learn 3D modeling, focus on the techniques, not the package specifics. A good artist will be able create in either program. I understand how some don’t like to learn new ways to do things that they learned to be second nature in one package. If you focus on the methodology you can easily translate your skills to any platform. They’re really pretty much the same.