The Future of Maya
While I'd like to keep this blog more informative than opinionated, this topic is worthy of a post. There's a lot of speculation in the industry as to what may or may not happen to Maya and 3D Studio Max now that AutoDesk has bought both packages.
I believe that both packages will continue to be developed, since Max dominates the games market, and Maya dominates the television and film market. Both have their devoted followings, for instance animators often prefering the speed and response of Maya, while modellers prefer the robust modelling tools found in Max.
Obviously, there is the possibility that the two packages could be combined into a single uber-package. Who knows, this may eventually happen, although carful attention would need to be paid to ensure that it wasn't just two seperate pieces of software slammed together with the developers blindly hoping for the best. This sort of thing would require the development of a totally new paradigm for how the software is organized, going beyond both the Stack system in Max and the Node system in Maya.
This sort of undertaking would go far beyond the deadlines of the usual release cycles for Maya and Max, and would therefore not be a blanket replacement for either package. It would be many years in development before we ever see it come to fruition, assuming its even in the works. So until that time, if it ever comes, Maya and Max will probably still be developed as seperate packages, but I expect to see a lot more feature sharing in the coming releases. Take, for example, the full body IK systems in Maya 7 which were incorporated from MotionBuilder when Alias bought it out. Hopfully we'll see some of the modelling tools from Max make there way into Maya, and some of the speed and efficiency we see in Maya make its way into Max.
This is what I believe anyways.
I believe that both packages will continue to be developed, since Max dominates the games market, and Maya dominates the television and film market. Both have their devoted followings, for instance animators often prefering the speed and response of Maya, while modellers prefer the robust modelling tools found in Max.
Obviously, there is the possibility that the two packages could be combined into a single uber-package. Who knows, this may eventually happen, although carful attention would need to be paid to ensure that it wasn't just two seperate pieces of software slammed together with the developers blindly hoping for the best. This sort of thing would require the development of a totally new paradigm for how the software is organized, going beyond both the Stack system in Max and the Node system in Maya.
This sort of undertaking would go far beyond the deadlines of the usual release cycles for Maya and Max, and would therefore not be a blanket replacement for either package. It would be many years in development before we ever see it come to fruition, assuming its even in the works. So until that time, if it ever comes, Maya and Max will probably still be developed as seperate packages, but I expect to see a lot more feature sharing in the coming releases. Take, for example, the full body IK systems in Maya 7 which were incorporated from MotionBuilder when Alias bought it out. Hopfully we'll see some of the modelling tools from Max make there way into Maya, and some of the speed and efficiency we see in Maya make its way into Max.
This is what I believe anyways.
posted by Soviut at 2:03 PM
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