My studio is in the process of considering a switch from 3DS Max to Maya for our rigging and animation departments across various project teams. I know that many of you have made similar transitions in the past and probably others have done the math and decided against such a transition.
For us, the reasons for the switch center around Maya’s apparent ascent to become the game industry standard for rigging and animation applications (If any one has real data on this, please share it). This presents the following disadvantages for us as a 3DS Max house.
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It’s difficult for us to find experienced (and even relatively inexperienced) candidates that have a good level of familiarity with 3DS Max (Part of this I think is due to the geography as we’re located in relatively small and somewhat isolated pocket of the industry.).
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As a result of the above point, we often end up hiring candidates that have strong Maya backgrounds, but little experience with 3DS Max. This of course increases our onboarding costs significantly.
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Similarly, many of the outsourcers that we work with are not well equipped to efficiently interact with a studio that principally relies on 3DS Max for its rigging and animation pipeline.
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Because 3DS Max’s python implementation lags behind Maya’s, our existing tools and current tools development is based on MAXScript and DotNet. Neither of which is terrible, but a move to a Python development would offer some compelling advantage to us.
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We miss out on a lot of really cool, non-Autodesk tools that are either Maya exclusive or just better supported on Maya (Red9’s tools, Epic’s A.R.T tool set and Fabric Engine come to mind).
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There’s also a perception at the studio that the skills and knowledge sets of our TAs and animators are falling behind industry trends, leaving our team members out of sync with the current and future needs of the broader industry. Admittedly this last point is a bit self-serving. However ultimately, I do believe that the transition to Maya represents a “rising tide lifts all boats” scenario in that these sorts investments in personnel generally provide a favorable a ROI for companies.
Regarding cons, the switch would obviously be very expensive short-term, both in terms of direct costs and in terms of indirect cost such as reduced productivity during the transition (and the time afterwards while the new tool set and pipeline mature). While there’s a lot that needs to improve with our current 3DS Max-based pipeline, it is very functional and has the benefit of (already being built and) having been thoroughly production tested.
If the Studio decides to commit to a Maya transition, the switch would likely be executed in one of three basic ways (listed in the order of increasing anticipated cost):
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By Project - some games are fully transitioned to Maya and other projects remain exclusively 3DS Max-based (my personal favorite)
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By Project Hybrid - on a per project basis, projects are either fully transitioned to Maya, remain exclusively 3DS Max-based, or are partially transition to Maya to one extent or another
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Studio Wide - all projects are fully transition to Maya
So with all of that said, I’d very much appreciate any thoughts that you gals and guys have on the notion of such a switch. Specifically, I’d love to know whether you believe Maya to be worth the transition cost, and if so, does it make sense to pay additional costs to port old rigs and animations (or whole projects for that matter) to the new pipeline? Advice or input of any kind would be greatly appreciated.