3ds max popularity?

#1 For me it was quantity over quality. When I first got into modeling I looked at which was the most supported program and had the broadest market share. I did this to optimize my own marketable skills. Max of coarse was number one in that department but not necessarily the best of what's out there.

Max's interface is a bitch to learn mainly because many of the features you need for game content are buried in a maze of layered panels. But once you've got it the workflow smooths out. I personally like Lightwave's interface the most but dread having to go through the learning curve again. And right now there's not much incentive to switch over.

The claim of 'bloatware' for Max, Ligthwave and Maya are true, unfortunately. If you are agonizing over whether to purchase it... don't. There are plenty of freeware or low-cost alternatives that are maturing now that are geared specifically for game content. We are entering an era where game development is gaining more exposure from behind its big brother movie animation. In time we will have affordable tools to service our industry that won't require the left nut sacrifice.

#2 I'm a max fan to be honest...
I actually found its interface logical.. though maybe that justs me..
i really like the amount blender can do for free i have to say tho..

i find max has lil' things that just speed you along here and there
it seems to be the most supported in my opinion.. with the biggest community... hence biggest learning pool.. thats a big factor..

there are tonnes of people that will disagree with me though..

there are only a few apps that do it all subdivision,renderer,animation etc..
and having an app that does it all is more ideal if possible..

i havent ventured to far beyond max though so there are better informed then me.. i found blender completely unusable my first time though.. but ive been informed its a case of RTFM

#3 I use Lightwave 3d.

I don't like Max, so i'll offer my opinion. Max has very good Character animation built in with... uhm character studio, or whatever it's called. There's a large amount of prerigged biped available as well.

Lightwave have very good character animation abilities as well. Is it better? who knows. Most 3d programs can do the same stuff.... Maya, Max, and LW being the top 3.... i'd say they're pretty close.. But one reason Max became popular, i believe, was it's price tag. LW and Maya used to be much more expensive, so game studio's in the past had to consider the costs...

#4 I for one am really happy to see Garage Games developing Constructor. I think that above all the other products they have available will do alot to iron out the problems associated with the art pipeline. Once Constructor is out I think GG should back the development of a modeling program. If we could get that then I think the pipeline won't have to rely on the big three anymore.

In fact, there was a program called Shaper in development earliler this year that might be a good choice for backing.

#5 Max was the first decent realtime WYSIWYG 3D app. And also the first to have 3D objects snaps and still the best in this area. THese had a huge impact earlly on as Softimage, lightwave and alias were all clunky dos like and mostly 2D editors.

The popularity of 3d studio in achitecture and 3D design and as a sister app to autocad meant it had a lot of really useful tools for engineering etc that lend themselves well to interiors, level design and environments. One of the things that it is still the best and most often used for today.

#6 Max was king, now in my oppinion, XSI looks down on it.

#7 Max is secure.. you don't want to use something like milkshape say, and be using it for a while, then finally work out that the exporter doesn't even support transparency sorting or lod... i mean, how annoying... but if you know something is a solid product, then i'd use it any day over something "still in the making."

#8 Just look at the jobs on gamasutra. In 3D, animation and level design you will find the majority want Max or Maya, with Max having a slight edge mostly in level design positions. And Maya with animator positions.

XSI and Lightwave and popular CSG editors like unrealed etc have a pretty tiny portion, less than 10% in the last couple of months.

#9 To be honest the answer to why a 3D application like Max, Maya, XSI or Lightwave is so popular really comes from the history of the application itself and as such you are looking at over 10 years worth of notes, evolutions and market shifts to really outline and understand why a particular application is the way that it is today...

Max for example can have its history traced way back to the Atari ST and a program called Degas 3D and a magazine called Antic (which was basicly a magazine full of demos, apps and tools). The magazines editor, Gary Yost, saw a whole bunch of great applications and got the developers together and formed the "Yost Group", whose purpose it was to take all these smaller apps and build something newer and better. The first release of this 3D application was called "3D Studio" and it was bundled with every version of AutoCad for a while. This is one of the main reasons why Max is used so much for architectural, AutoCad being the defacto CAD tool (even back then) coupled with a 3D application that could import your CAD work and make it look real was pretty amazing at the time. Soon 3D studio was sold on its own and coming in at about $3500 (USD) compared to $15,000 competitors it made it a pretty popular application at the time for developers to adopt. At this time it was used in a wide range of markets from Film VFX (including some shots in Terminator 2), TV VFX, Architectural and Games. Max soon found its niche though in Games and Architectural and focused in on it while Alias|Wavefront (Maya) and Microsoft (SoftImage) poured their R&D into Film VFX features. When Windows NT came out Autodesk and the Yost Group rebuilt 3D Studio into a new application, 3D Studio Max which introduced a lot of firsts to the industry such as non-destructive modeling, the animate anything mentality and scripting to name but a few. From there Max continued to focus in on and dominate the neglected Games and Architectural markets while slowly adding in more and more features to allow it to be used in VFX in a significant number of films for today. It is also important to note that Autodesk is currently the only 3D developer doing signifcant funding for their application to the tune of 300 Million and is currently in negotiation to purchase its competitor Alias (formerly known as Alias|Wavefront) later this year (primarily for its Studio Tools application which dominates the manufacturing industry and not for Maya as most people here will think and believe).

#10 The other applications I know less of so I will just briefly outline their history...

Lightwave - Started out as a 3D tool for "The Video Toaster" which was one of the first commercial non-linear editing and VFX systems released (first on the Amiga). I believe it was a roughly $10,000 application that came with both the video digitizing hardware, video editing software and 3D software all in one bundle. "The Video Toaster" got a lot of early popularity since it was a one stop suite for providing editing and VFX for TV shows such as SeaQuest and Babylon 5 and has heavily dominated this market since then. Lightwave was spun off as its own application a few years after Video Toastaer due to its immense popularity. An interesting hold over from the early Amiga days with Lightwave is the division in the application for Modeling and Rendering where they look and feel like two different apps. This is due much in part to the memory restrications at the time when Video Toaster was first made and the work flow has remained so popular and an integral part to workflow with Lightwave users that its remained.

Maya - Maya's roots come from the merger of two companies Alias (Power Animator) and Wavefront (Wavefront) by SGI. Each of these companies were pioneers of the 3D industry way back in the early days when everyone used IRIX and super computers to do this sort of stuff. When it was first released Maya merged in a lot of the pros of both PA and Wavefront and provided a very powerful and versatile tool that was designed from the ground up to work in a massive production environment such as in feature films and at the very beginning Alias|Wavefront (now known as just Alias) invested a lot of money on R&D and came up with a lot of amazing tools and functions to meet the needs of the Film VFX market (unfortunately as time has gone on their much fabled R&D and innovation has slipped to the way side). One interesting thing with Maya was that initially its massive price of $10,000 was offset by the fact that you could buy modules or parts of the application (ie. modeling, rendering, etc.) for smaller chunks of cash. As the VFX market for films dried up (simply because everyone already had Maya or XSI and simply needed upgrades or support contracts from there) Maya was slowly pushed as a solution for the games industry to adopt, this combined with the historicly agressive business tactics of Maya, some of which were very dirty (ie. we give you maya for free and in return you say that everything you do uses Maya, such as what they did with ILM) while others were pretty good (they are always eager for a sale or a potential lead into a particular market as well as a willingness to make a sale or offer trade-ins from other applications). One particular problem with Maya and its massive growth was that it took massive amounts of capital to fund the tools continued development, as such while the Film VFX contracts slowly dried up the company began to cost SGI up to 80 million a year in operation expenses. SGI, who makes their money selling super computers (and sold many to power companys that used Maya), a market that was also drying up, could soon no longer afford to keep Alias|Wavefront around. A couple of years ago SGI sold Alias|Wavefront to a private equity firm who is, as mentioned above, now selling the company to Autodesk (makers of 3DS Max).

#11 XSI - This applications roots come from SoftImage which was another early pioneer of this undustry using IRIX systems and has been in direct competition with Alias|Wavefront for a long long time since they both were after the same Film VFX market. XSI is essentially the evoltion of SoftImage and had a significant amount of its work done while they were owned by Microsoft, who bought SoftImage for its Video Editing system SoftImage|DS as a tool that would complement their WebTV iniative (back in the early 90s). While owned by Microsoft XSI was complete, albiet late, and challenged the recently released Maya for the Film VFX market for many years. When Microsoft grew tired of their failing WebTV iniative, they sold SoftImage to a video editing company called AVID (which is the king of non-linear video editing systems). Unfortunately AVIDs real interest in the company was in SoftImage|DS, which was one of the first tools that could edit HD, the tool was soon rebranded as AVID|DS and XSI became the red-headed step child of the company. A great tool that pulls its own weight finacially but doesn't get any love or attention from a management group that has no interest in the 3D market.



As for which application is the best, well to be honest any answer you get is personal opinion or bias based on preference. Any 3D artist will tell you that their favorite application is the one they have the most experiance with and will give you more than enough reasons to illustrate their point.

In all honesty though there is no one single 3D application that is the best when you are looking at Max, Maya, XSI or Lightwave, they all have their own sets of strengths and weaknesses that balances them out on the playing field.

#12 I've been in the industry for 15+ years, that's one of the best boiled-down, non-biased (and accurate)histories I've ever read. Great summation Logan. Thanks.

#13 I want Max but can't afford it. Everyone tells me used haxxed version etc. Which I refuse to do. I came to the conclusion
that being a 3d character artist is really a full time job if your gonna pay bills with it. So moved on from that. But I did try the demo.

#14 Very informative, Logan. :)

#15 Heh well done Foster, I wasn't even going to try and go there, lol. As far as which one is really best. Most artists just use what suits their way of working. Kind of like traditional art where you have wet or dry media, and those get further divided into things like acrylics, water colour, oil paints, egg tempera etc. All who have different physical properties and similar but different techniques. Most artists find a media that just works for them. The same with 3D tools.

#16 @Randy

The best suggestion anyone will give you is to make the resellers play against the pricing of another competitive application (ie. Max, Maya, XSI, Lightwave). You will probably be surprised to see that they can and will price match (as they are allowed wiggle room as resellers to do this), if they don't they can get in some serious trouble.

ie) Go to your Max reseller and say, I can get Maya Complete for $2000 but i really want to use Max, what can you do?

#17 @Adrian: I don't quite agree a hundred percent with your statements, not any more anyway. All the major 3d tools are similar enough these days so anyone who have used one of them for a long enough time can most likely move quite seamlessly between them if needed. On the other hand I suppose the same could be said for traditional art medias too though, but... well... =)

The pieces of software are only tools after all... There are more difficult things to learn than a new tool....

#18 Yeah, but some tools suit some people better and you develop a preference. I used Lightwave for 2 years and thought it ok, but much prefer max. I also used Maya on and off for a year alongside 3dsmax, and max just feels more natural to me, this was before the other apps got Snaps. I usualy get hired as a level designer and environment artist, and for me 3D objecta dn subobject snaps are a vital part of the tool sets, which didn't really arrive till quite late on the other applications.

And today, I just really enjoy the freedom that max offers, another bonus being portability of your assets. Almost every game engine has some kind of native 3dsmax support. And I typicaly use 3 or 4 engines regularly with my contract work. It's nice to have something thats well supported by third parties in that way. So for me its partly the tool, but also the ease of exporting, and support for my tools. Plus in game development, it can be hard to hold a position from one game to the next, since most games start off with a small core team, and I don't like working in large corporate environments. It makes sense to pick the application that most people use.

#19 Yeah, that I can agree with Adrian. I use max too (same here, I work with several different engines and max support is always there), but my point was that if I was required to use Maya or XSI (not so sure about lightwave, I have a personal grudge against it. Have they managed to make it possible to select vertices in the 3d view now? Was quite a while since I used it I suppose... but anyway) it really wouldn't be much of an issue. It might take a week to get things set up the way I want it to be but then after that there wouldn't be that much of a difference in either time taken to do things or the end results.

#20 Max SUCKS! Its interface makes about as much sense as foreign policy.

Lightwave is "simply the best"...ok simply the easiest to use, and fastest for work flow.

BUT, Max wins thanks to marketing, or lack there of and behalf of Newtek (the makers of LightWave)

Oh' and Maya is pretty nice.

(the preceding has been my extremely shot rant..not sure it counts as a rant actually, but there it is. L Foster has much more relevant info above, as do most of the post for that matter).