Which Version of Maya Do I Need?

# 1 07-10-2011 , 08:48 PM

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I've been doing some tutorials and getting the basics down in Maya 2008 for game development/polygonal work. I won '08 for free a while back in a contest, and am contemplating upgrading to one of the more recent versions. Was wondering if someone who's been using for while could tell me how necessary an upgrade would be for someone doing relatively low-poly game models.

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# 2 07-10-2011 , 09:45 PM

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you don't really have to upgrade since it would not stop you from creating anything,but saying that 2008 was a bit of a dog release and Autodesk very quickly released 8.5 as a free upgrade i believe.
There are a few new features in later releases but to be honest not too much for modeling.
the latest 2012 release is a little buggy but 2011 is stable.

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# 3 07-10-2011 , 11:27 PM

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you don't really have to upgrade since it would not stop you from creating anything,but saying that 2008 was a bit of a dog release and Autodesk very quickly released 8.5 as a free upgrade i believe.
There are a few new features in later releases but to be honest not too much for modeling.
the latest 2012 release is a little buggy but 2011 is stable.

Originally Posted by jsprogg

Other way around, 8 was the botched release, and 8.5 was the free upgrade. I have 7, 2008, and 2011, and there's nothing modeling wise that's really revolutionary. 7 is still my preferred workhorse.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 4 08-10-2011 , 03:30 AM

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Don't get 2012... I haven't heard anything good about it, and it crashed on me when I tried to delete history :S

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# 5 08-10-2011 , 06:18 AM

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Other way around, 8 was the botched release, and 8.5 was the free upgrade.

Originally Posted by NextDesign

Hi NextD ..is that not what i said ...lol when i said 2008 i meant Maya 8
i loved maya 7 most of all to be honest, but i am currently using 2011.

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Last edited by jsprogg; 08-10-2011 at 06:30 AM.

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# 6 08-10-2011 , 09:06 AM

Acid44

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I have to agree with everything stated above. I've used 7, 2008, and 2012 extensively for modeling, and now for game modeling. 2012 is garbage, 2008 was great, but 7 was teh most stable by far, out of what I've used.

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# 7 08-10-2011 , 11:39 AM

Maniacal boy king of Babylon
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Well I am no Autodesk fan, but to say that there aren't any improvements from say Maya 6.5 to 2012 is outright wrong:
-Nucleus engine
-Mental ray integration
-QT interface
-new skinbinding tools
That being said, 2012 is very buggy and it seems autodesk is just throwing some stuff in just to make it look good ( bullet engine, DMM etc), I also dislike the fact that they are "unifying" all their products which imo will lead to one package in the end.

I personally stick with 2011 hotfix 3( mostly because of the fact I have some plugins and hate to reinstall them again), but if you only use it for modeling ( for games), you could just stick with Maya 7 with MJ polytools, since there is not much done on that.

In the end we the user empower companies like Autodesk and keep them in their seat, the only way you could possibly change that ( if you want that) is buying another package ( Houdini, Zbrush, Modo, lightwave, messiah studio and so on), complaining about it doesn't help

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# 8 08-10-2011 , 01:37 PM

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Posts: 2,988

Hey Mastone, I don't really agree with what some of your statements above.

Nucleus engine

Originally Posted by mastone

This doesn't really matter to him as he is only interested in modeling.

Mental ray integration

Originally Posted by mastone

Even Maya 6 had MR integration, I'm not really sure what you mean by this.

QT interface

Originally Posted by mastone

I don't really find this to be something to make someone upgrade. The QT interface is butt-ugly, buggy, and unnecessary.

new skinbinding tools

Originally Posted by mastone

You mean the dual-quaternion binding type added in 2011?

In the end we the user empower companies like Autodesk and keep them in their seat

Originally Posted by mastone

The companies keep Autodesk in their seat, not the individual user user added image

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 9 08-10-2011 , 04:26 PM

Maniacal boy king of Babylon
Join Date: Aug 2005

Location: the netherlands

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Hey Mastone, I don't really agree with what some of your statements above.

This doesn't really matter to him as he is only interested in modeling.

Even Maya 6 had MR integration, I'm not really sure what you mean by this.

I don't really find this to be something to make someone upgrade. The QT interface is butt-ugly, buggy, and unnecessary.

You mean the dual-quaternion binding type added in 2011?

The companies keep Autodesk in their seat, not the individual user

Originally Posted by NextDesign

-nucleus- You can use Nucleus as a modeling tool( if you have to model a table cloth for instance), but the main point being that there have been improvements, I personally think Ncloth is way better than the older cloth tool

-MR integration- Sorry what I meant by that was better Mental Ray integration, there used to be a time where you had to make a lot of half arsed connections and bogus lightmaps and what not.

-QT interface- I saw in your signature you are a technical director ( nice to meet you I am a maniacal boy king user added image

), which means you have a lot to do with technical stuff like plug ins, scripts, interface adjustments.
It used to be an absolute nightmare to create scalable stuff and there was a lot of humbug involved with creating custom stuff to maya because of this technology, QT made it easier to adjust Maya ( I know a programmer at a large gamecompany here in the netherlands who really hated the fact that al their plug ins and the likes were completely ****ed after an upgrade because of some (albeit necesarry)rewrite and these guys really know what they are talking about, they really go deep into Maya).
Of course they can improve a lot of things but as a design step it's a good step I think

-Binding- No I mean the capsule thingies with which you can do an initial bind and refine with the paint weights tool, that quaternation stuff had to do with rotationorder and stuff right ( I believe the quaternation method was ripped from 3ds Max )?
I personally still use the component editor to delete unwanted vertices from a joint, but I am old school I can imagine that people find it a usefull tool for an initial bind.

-companies- Companies are users too user added image

, I think nowadays they have the autodesk packages because there is a large trained talentpool available( since the technology of maya itself isn't that groundbreaking anymore) and in turn the students learn their tools because "the movies are made with package X".

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# 10 08-10-2011 , 04:32 PM

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Mastone, the original post was asking: "how necessary an upgrade would be for someone doing relatively low-poly game models." And I think the general consensus is that it's not very necessary. We can argue back and forth about upgrades and downgrades here and there, but that may be suitable for another thread?

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# 11 08-10-2011 , 04:47 PM

Maniacal boy king of Babylon
Join Date: Aug 2005

Location: the netherlands

Posts: 1,605

@Stwert:

Mastone, the original post was asking: "how necessary an upgrade would be for someone doing relatively low-poly game models." And I think the general consensus is that it's not very necessary. We can argue back and forth about upgrades and downgrades here and there, but that may be suitable for another thread?

Originally Posted by

You're right that's why I said this as well

.....
I personally stick with 2011 hotfix 3( mostly because of the fact I have some plugins and hate to reinstall them again), but if you only use it for modeling ( for games), you could just stick with Maya 7 with MJ polytools, since there is not much done on that.
....

Originally Posted by mastone

I just replied to Next design nothing else, I don't think it is a very practical method to reply on a comment in a specific thread by creating an entirely new thread, you get a reall messy forum like that user added image

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# 12 10-10-2011 , 01:30 PM

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Thanks everyone! I may have misstated my case a bit: I'm the only artist at the company, so I'm responsible for low-poly modelling, rigging, and animation.

New skin-binding tools kind of intrigues me, since all I've really learned to play with is the Paint Weights and Edit Membership. But I don't think I'm dropping a few G's for just that.

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