Well I have finished working through my first 753 page book on 3D studio max studying it on the schools computers it gave me a pretty good knowledge, but also left me with a lot of questions. Of course at this point I am looking to further my education, however I am finding the more I look at 3d studio max the more I find all the advanced study material is related to plug-ins and 'MaxScript' So my question is two part, first of all what is MaxScript and what makes it so great, I know Flash script, html, C++, and a little bit of PHP along with intro courses to a few other programming languages, and to be quite honest I would rather avoid having another language rolling around in my head, just not that smart ^-^ The main thing I don't get is the thing that defines a scripting language from a coding language is one has to compiled first while the other is done at run time. Does this mean the MaxScript is something that actively can be run while you work on your projects (such as AutoIt scripting language) or is it used to effect the final rendering, though I know its not to make a output of the program interactive (maybe its physics effects or advanced particle stuff) but if that is the case why have I not seen a Maya counterpart to it? That brings me to the second part of my question and that is about Maya, yes the age old debate about what to do 3D studio max or Maya. Last time I studied the question myself I came out with 3D studio max being on top because at the time its interface was much more user friendly along with being more friendly for making buildings and stuff, and Maya only being better if it was the 8k version of Maya (something I know I couldn’t afford as a starting cost if going freelance) However the more I look into advanced studying materials it seems like Maya has all the cool stuff, how to create toon like characters, how to create photorealistic stuff, and lots of how to make game characters. When I look at 3D studio max studying materials though I find books on plug-ins (after burner and such like that) and books on MaxScript. Does the heavy difference in topics the books cover relate any to what the programs are capable of producing productively.

Quote:Original post by Riya
That brings me to the second part of my question and that is about Maya, yes the age old debate about what to do 3D studio max or Maya. Last time I studied the question myself I came out with 3D studio max being on top because at the time its interface was much more user friendly along with being more friendly for making buildings and stuff, and Maya only being better if it was the 8k version of Maya (something I know I couldn’t afford as a starting cost if going freelance)

In a few product cycles that'll probably be a moot debate. the same company owns both products now and they're likely to either take the best of both and merge them or differentiate the products so that they're designed for totally different tasks. It's not profitable to develop 2 products that fill the same market niche.

-me

Thanks for both your wonderful replies, but just to clear it up is Mel Maya's version of MaxScript?

Also I get what you are saying Palidine and thats part of what really sparked my curiosity back into comparing the two, I just hope whatever one I hop on ends up focusing on the area I want to in the end and that at the moment would be character modeling.

I already have the personal learning version of Maya downloading and look forward to looking into it, can either of you recommend a book for Maya that will be as solid as "3ds Max 8 essentials" by Autodesk.