Shall I start learning 3ds max or all newcomers shall learn Maya? I wanted someone to reply to this question really direct to the point, It would have saved me a lot of research, here is what I have found useful… I am using 3ds Max (or 3d studio max) since version three, at that time it was natural inclination for who want to work in that industry to use this package. After some time and when people are attracted to 3D animation feature films like the movies that Pixar animation studios create, many studios stood behind Maya and because these studios are the industry leaders, of course they have their opinion based on a solid ground. After the Movies industry started to add visual effects using Computer Graphics (CG) to save expended money on the fire and explosions and create real life mass destruction and mutation…etc. This was a breakthrough that let people discover that CG can be used in very wide range of applications and many applications were doing pretty good job, but 3ds max and Maya remained the leaders for whoever want to Animate, enough said let me explore the answer of the question. Note that my answer is for who made some studies and frustrated to find a short answer, for totally newbies that don’t even know that there are many programs exist, my advice is to jump and learn what you have in your hands and let the limitation into your tool drive you, the most important part now is to create something. The first part of the answer is “Why are you asking this anyway?” Well let me tell you something usually who are asking this question and before they even dig to reach this article already know the basic answer of it which is “We are not starting Maya vs Max war here, however Maya is the industry standard for Animation like you see in feature film while 3Ds Max is widely used in Games, visual effects, and architecture so if you are planning to find a job in an animation studio It is preferable to use Maya, else 3ds Max will be better because of the availability of loads of tutorials and easier Interface so find what works for you the best” Still after getting this answer you are digging, then you are probably learning or using 3ds max and you are searching for another justification. Or you are quite happy with max but you are annoyed from the rumors here and there about Autodesk who may unalarmed kill 3ds Max (this rumor is not true till now but if one of them will be killed it won’t be Maya because it is sold by Autodesk to the biggest studios in the world) In Both cases the answer will be quite simple: 1- For new Comers

• Be opened for learning and the most valuable thing to learn, is to learn that either is a tool, they cannot enslave you nor your abilities, make use of them according to their strength and weakness and always be opened to learn new things and switch tools
• If you are on tight budget Usually 3ds Max will do the trick because there will be no tight budget project can pay for high quality animation that Maya can make better than 3ds Max
• “Think techniques and not values and slider” Many tutorials these days are project based which is good in letting you do things in minimal time, but not good enough to teach you concepts, Concepts will be built by reading books, articles and talking with experts on the forums, a good thing I learnt to even learn techniques from these project based tutorials is to take a tutorial but make it with another application (using for example Maya to model a car following a tutorial using 3ds max) The buttons and slider will not be ported with you from software to another, however Techniques are usually easily ported

2- For users that were using 3ds for many years (like me)

• First of all kill your long term relationship with 3ds max (its tools its modifier stack and its simple and effective UI), just to be ready and familiarize yourself with other packages
• Usually we people are reluctant to change, so your problem is rooted in the fear of change, Usually these kind of people including myself do not change in the end unless they are forced(we were forced to use slate material editor and stop using reactor and all went fine because there was no other options), so don’t panic you will find your way if 3ds max has been ended, and in that time there will be tons of tutorials to teach how to port your techniques from…. to….)

For who will start learning and to be as honest as possible, 3ds Max had an edge in the following:

• Easier
• Has bigger amount of tutorials
• Very creative UI (User interface)
• Is a very solid building block that you can plug many plugins on it to make endless creations
• Excellent in Visual effects and quick animations
• Better in the modeling style that is now the industry standard (polygonal modeling)
• Was industry standard for Games

Now Maya is getting better in these aspects as well and you can use it standalone, and 3ds Max being standard for visual effects and Architectural visualization and games is because of no reason except for budget or because it was being used for long time and there is no reason to change. So as a short answer “If you are really keen to use the dominant software (in my opinion it is not big deal) and have no budget problems, it is better to start with Maya – it will help you as well to find a job in feature films studios” For 3ds Max users like me, continue working and produce quality animations, of course you can always produce the same quality as soon as you have the concepts and the techniques, however I advise you to be prepared for aggressive actions, I think you have to do the following:

• Think techniques
• Do not depend on outdated tools in 3ds max (like physique, Reactor, Biped …etc.)
• It is time to learn how manually you can do something related to animation (camera and character rigging) and deal with the problems that the plugins solve.
• If you are using plugins and you have good budget, then stop using any plugin that does not have a version for Maya, every robust plugin now have (Vray, fumefx, Realflow, VUE…etc) and kill 3ds Max only plugins immediately

I hope I answered the question frankly and in my case I am happy with max, and to reach its limitation you have to be very serious in what are you doing. Happy Animation…   If you like this article please share. For any comments about the article or any critic please send me an email.