

The longer answer is anything 3D is hard to learn, especially if you have no prior experience. Or having the ability to grab a curve, to isolate a curve with one click so as to not mess up with other curves, select and deselect curves with a click, slide curves up and down without the need to be too precise with your mouse movement in Graph Editor – stuff like these let you save energy and time to focus on the actual animation and minimize mistakes.

Or having keyboard shortcuts for often-used commands that are laid out sensibly with regards to hand positioning, for instance, letting you add a new keyframe without taking your eyes off the screen to look for the right button because the shortcut is already there where your hand normally is. Things like being able to import a character rig in just 3 clicks (compared to at least 7 in Blender). When working on something so complex and laborious such as animating 3D objects, the little things matter a lot. We can’t possibly list here all the things that make Maya superior for animation but let’s name one key feature: its sensible and seamless UI that leads to an efficient workflow. And in all that time, its engineers have crafted plugins and fine-tuned the software to overcome any and all challenges when it comes to animation. Its animation tools are among the most powerful and most mature in the industry, being over 20 years old. You can do all these and more in Maya but as mentioned above, animation is where Maya lives and breathes. (Already got a project in Maya that you need to render? Give our Maya render farm a look.)Īrnold Renderer in Maya. And you can give your scenes a photorealistic finish using the powerful Arnold render engine. You can automate the animation of fire, liquids, smoke or cloth using built-in simulations.

In Maya, you can do pretty much everything in the 3D pipeline. If you are now hyped to learn how to craft scenes of giant robot fistfights or bring the Jurassic era back to life or fold whole cities onto themselves, let’s answer some basic questions to determine whether you and Maya are a fit. (If you’re already familiar with Maya and want to read about recent developments, read our article about Maya updates.) Simply put, Maya is synonymous with world-class 3D animation. VentureBeat Magazine also stated that every winner of the Academy Award for Technical Achievement since 1997 used Maya. In fact, Animation Mentor, the original online animation school, teaches 3D animation in Maya. Well, not just “known” Maya is considered the industry standard animation software. Maya is a fully featured 3D software, but it is most known for animation. A behind the CGI look at Marvel’s The Avengers from 3D studio Industrial Light & Magic
