Maya Future

[rvitoratti]

Hey, I was thinking... How about Autodesk start to put some effort into Maya ? I know you have many other tools... and certainly many engineers and creative minds in the "house"... So how about allocating all that brain power and start doing something here ? Alias Wavefront / Alias were incredible companies... And they had far fewer employees and resources than Autodesk and yet they did a way much better job than Autodesk. You should feel ashamed of what has been done with this tool ever since you put your hands in it, honestly. And I'm a hardcore Maya user... I loved working on this software since 2004/2005... And I came from Softimage btw. I always try to defend the tool but the desire to completely distance myself and turn entirely to Houdini is making more and more sense.

Thanks

[sean]

I also come from Softimage (RIP one of the best 3D packages of all time, what a mistake it was to cancel it), and it seems like Maya is becoming more and more of an afterthought for Autodesk. Similar to the way Autodesk treated Softimage before cancelling it. 3DSMax is not doing much better, as far as progress.

Everyone I know, including most of my Studio, is switching/switched to Blender, which pains me, as I don't like Blender's way of doing things... UI, hotkeys, and on and on etc..., and MUCH prefer Maya. But the writing is on the wall, and I will probably end up switching to Blender at some point. Autodesk has lost the plot on Maya, and 3DSMax.

Actually 3DStudio R4 (yes the ancient DOS program), and then 3DSMax, is what I started my career with. 3DSMax was my only package from Release 1 to about Release 9, until I fully switched to Softimage in 2005, Then switched to Maya when Softimage was cancelled, thankfully they added a lot from Softimage to Maya at that time. But I will never go back to 3DSMax, if I can help it, as it is my least favorite package at this point, and also has stagnated, but not quite as bad as Maya has.  

I absolutely love Maya, but like I said... the writing is on the wall. Unless Autodesk starts massively caring about Maya again, and competing with Blender, I am probably going to end up switching to Blender at some point. 

[zalnabki]

Bro, I came here today to write the same thing and found your post. You're 100% correct. I'm a Maya user since Maya 3.1, and it was a big surprise for me after using 3ds Max. It was an amazing tool, and I kept using it until the last version of Maya 7, because after that Autodesk bought it, and I felt sad because I didn't see anything new. I was forced to use their version due to the very minor changes they made. So I started using their product — I believe Maya 2011 was my first attempt to use Autodesk products. For me, Maya 7 was more stable and reliable. Let me summarize a few points, please:

1. Maya's Hypershade had amazing nodes, which at the time were unique, but unfortunately, they still use the same nodes. No change, no improvements, and even some renderers can't implement them, so they became completely useless — understood only by the software render, the only renderer Autodesk created since then.

2. Paint Effects was also an amazing tool, but it has the same tools and parameters since it was created. They just added 'Collide with Polygon' after a long time, and that's it. Yet, it still can't be rendered by many renderers (except the software renderer). Of course, you can convert it to polygons and use it, but once you do that, you have to handle a huge polygon count, and you also have to modify the shaders significantly to prevent issues like unwanted reflections.

3. Skeleton tools (joints, IK, muscles) are still the same as Alias Wavefront made them. Nothing new at all. Still the old methods, nothing new. They added Human IK later, but it was a joke in my opinion — completely useless unless you have a motion capture device at home.

4. All other software has created their own render engines (e.g., Houdini). They have both CPU and GPU renderers, yet Autodesk still depends on third parties, and over that, you still have to buy their Arnold license to use it for batch rendering.

5. I know they are concentrating more on Bifrost, but they've neglected all the other VFX tools they had (cloth, hair, rigid body). It's still the same, and even the old particle system is much, much better than nParticles. Personally, in 2018, I had to move to Houdini and use it extensively for VFX as I started to lose hope that Autodesk would do anything new in this regard.

I haven't used Blender, but I think if Autodesk doesn't do something about Maya, Blender will take over, and Maya will die. I hope this doesn't happen because old Maya users love this software — it's more of a passionate relationship rather than a practical one.