Maya beginning - Mac switch

[Westford111]

I am considering switching from PC to Mac because (1) my 1988 Mac was better than my 2005 XP operating system (so a new quad with all the bells and whistles is around $ 7500); and (2) I want to mess around with Alias' Maya, probably the Complete version, which is around $ 2500. I know precisely nothing about Maya, digital animation, or graphic design, but it looks like a heck of a lot of fun. That's what it would be for. Just fun.

I would like to talk to someone who uses Maya alot to see whether I'm nuts to buy Maya Complete to use on one of the new Mac quads, given that I don't know what I'm doing, just as a hobby.

Constructive comments?

Thank you.

West

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

If you have $7500 to fork out for a new <drool>quad</drool>, then what's another $2500...?

I would probably go for Maya Personal Learning Edition first, to see if 3D animation generally and Maya particullary was something for me. That's free and should be a nice way to try/learn the basics.

Just note that, as far as I remember, you cannot export projects from the Learning ed. to the full version.

 

[ATD]

Well, the good and the bad. Maya is an AMAZING and fun app but it's no toy. It is by far the hardest app I have ever come across, I would say it took me longer to learn Maya than all my other apps put together. The Manual is over 6000 pages and little of that is tutorials. After knowing another 3D app really well (Electric Image) it took me about 3 years and about 70+ training DVDs to get a firm handle on this beast. You are not nuts to buy Maya but you did pick a VERY involved hobby to get into.

I'm running Maya Unlimited on a Quad and it's sweet. I'm getting renders at more than twice the speed my Dual 2 would do. Because I'm on Unlimited I can link both computers and get 6 cpu renders going with Mental Ray. You get 10 Mental Ray licenses with Unlimited, 2 with Complete, which means you will not get the full benefit from a Quad if you are using Mental Ray as a renderer (I don't use Maya's renderer, Mental Ray is a much better renderer for Global Illumination, HDRI, Final Gather, SubSurface Scattering, Caustics, Blured Reflections, Refractions... ).

I would highly recommend the Maya Personal Learning Edition first (like Mitthrawnuruodo said) before you buy the program. I would also suggest Photoshop if you do not have it. I do a lot of work between the 2 programs. Here's a link to my work if you want to check it out

www.atdesignla.com

BTW, you can get Complete for about $2000.