"Continuing to struggle with this "software" will gradually pull you away from your goal and you too will eventually realize that it was a mistake to stick with it. "
I am not worrying about sticking to Maya for one simple reason - because i am experienced Blender3D user with over two years successfully using Blender and made some animated films and few complex environment animations that i am proud about...like this for example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlOO7am8qHI. This is my best work that i spent one month on (everything done from scratch) and RENDERED FOR FREE!!! with a free Blender render farm called SheepIT. Also there are another Blender render farm that offers unlimited one-month rendering for only 50 dollars. When i talk about such a cheap or free rendering opportunities to Maya users its causing jaw-dropping effect on them. Why i am mentioning about this excellent rendering abilities with Blender because there are no free or such a cheep render farms for Maya at all which means my hard work in Maya will never gonna be rendered or i will have to pay at least 800 pounds to render the animation that i just showed you above (so why i would stick to Maya?).
Now you probably think that i am crazy then and why with all of this drawbacks i decided to learn Maya? Because Blender is not yet industry software but its growing and becomes more and more popular with a very fast pace and with a newest versions of Blender its offering amazing opportunities, also in Blender you can do advanced compositing and texturing and video editing, but with Maya you have to use external applications. Also in Blender very rarely you need to do problem solving, debugging because if there is a bug or problem, its often windows pops up that offers you instant solution from a range and you just need to click on one of them and it solved without need to go on forums (though still sometimes i do go but not as often at all). Probably BLENDER developers care more about their customers ?
Also you have mostly one render engine ( called Cycles, last year was new render engine called Eevee implemented in Blender, which is already becomed very popular but i didnt try it yet so dont know too much about it) and so you never deal with that situation when you open your file in different computer and OPPA! there are no shaders, no materials, everything is green because either Arnold not downloaded on that computer or VRAY or renderman or mental ray or whatever!) Everybody using mostly one render engine and its great and it has so many nodes and its interactive as well and you can build complicated shaders and everything and use GPU for fast rendering and also use DUAL GPU which Maya doesnt support i believe (though i may be wrong). Also you dont have that story that some renderers dont support some Maya shaders and you need to remember those shaders all the time. For example even yesterday i was going to apply cartoonish Maya toon shader in Arnold but then i discovered that Arnold doesnt supports it, ok i thought then maybe Arnold has its own toon shader, but then i discovered that Arnold doesnt have it, so every minute is disappointment!
Also Maya doesnt have "Mirror animation tool" so in case of walk or run cycle to copy animation from left to right side and it takes so much time to do it manually. Such a simple tool and necessary and Maya doesnt have it! Or pose library... Also i was very disappointed with Maya soft select tool, in compare with alternative tool in Blender called "Proportional editing tool" its a complete disaster (in Blender it works interactively when you scroll middle mouse button and changes are instantly reflecting on the mesh)
Also modelling is much faster in Blender and more intuitive and all of the shortcuts created already so you dont need create your own shortcuts like in Maya for many often used commands that dont have hotkeys. Also Maya didnt have its own Circularize tool up until now (Maya 2018 it has now) to create a circle from selected vertices which is a shame. Also in Maya its impossible to extrude vertices and connect one vertice with another vertice by bridging it (it would be very useful to start modelling the car for example from simply tracing over the top of the car blueprint by extruding single vertices and then instantly fill all of them by creating faces from those single grids of vertices that you extruded). And many other things...
But each software has pros and cons. In Maya i found very excellent new Time Editor and i am fall in love with that, also i will be using Maya for simulations, smokes,fire, fluids...Also Paint FX to create trees and animated environment. Some useful deformers. Also Maya has some plugins to link with another software like GOZ that i found useful but sometimes it cannot link my model if i have some non square polygons on it or something like that dont remember exactly. Also the same problem with maya uv unwrapping sometimes when i click unfold it will not unfold objects with non-manifold UVS or something like that (in Blender its never the case it can unfold no matter what topology is without errors)
Also another reason why i learn Maya currently is because i am student in the university and we use there Maya and i need to do few projects in Maya to pass my exams.
But other than that i will stick with Blender of course mostly for the reason of their famous fast modelling and free or cheap fast render farms opportunities, so everybody can afford it, also compositing and texturing abilities, for the Dynamic paint effects and much much less crashing, problem solving and bug reporting.
But i still love Maya for the awesome Time Editor and for its creating visual effects, particle, fluids, simulations abilities that i am eager to learn more about. Also i will be learning Maya anyways to expand my horizons and knowledge and staffs like that and probably if i will learn Maya i will find the work faster because its industry software. Sorry for the mistakes, i am not native english speaker and i was writing fast so probably also skipped something important and didnt mention other pros and cons of one or another software.
