I’m reacting a bit to a few rumblings of that Max may be on the chopping block (true or not, it got me thinking) and noticing what seems to be a bit more emphasis on getting plugins out and updated faster for Maya than Max. I’m getting that feeling that it might be time to look at Maya again…
In that light then: I am curious about the pace of development for Vray for Maya vs Max. Is it on par? Is Maya and RT better integrated than Max and RT? Should I be considering a switch?
Anyone working with both have any insights, or perhaps someone from Chaos could comment?
3ds Max is certainly being developed; I think that what you see is Autodesk trying to differentiate the products a bit - Maya as a deep tool for VFX, 3ds Max for archvis and as a generic and relatively easy multipurpose tool, Softimage as an animation and particle effects system (apologies to Softimage users - I know that’s not true, but it was presented as such by Autodesk).
As for V-Ray, while the renderer is the same and with the same capabilities, the workflow is somewhat different in Maya, since it has its own logic where things happen differently than in 3ds Max. They are mostly equal in features, though some specific things are only present in one of the applications.
What Vlado said about the positioning of the 3 products was quite clear in how they were presented at siggraph this year. I watched the live feed from the autodesk booth and max was relegated to things like making ipod games and such. I was very disappointed to see this as I use max in vfx production on a daily basis.
