ZBrushCentral

Maya vs Lighwave

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I do not want to start a war with this question, but it is important to me. Lightwave now has version 10, which is confussing because prior to version 10, they were promoting CORE, but I think now CORE is in version 10 for 495.00 as an upgrade (not sure of this) or if CORE is a separate thing all together…I think when Lightwave introduced CORE it confussed a lot of people like me.

My dilemma is what would be better, to get Maya or keep on with Lightwave?..It seems that 3D Max and Maya are always mentioned in these forums, and even Zbrush has GOZ for Maya.

I just would like to know if Maya is easier to do modeling and animations. If anyone has experienced with both Maya and Lightwave, I would like to know which one is better to work with. ( I know that Maya is more expensive)

#2

You can download a 30day trial of Maya 2011 here to see for yourself how it compares with LW: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=13578047
There are also loads of video tutorials for Maya that you can watch to get a better understanding on how it works.

#3

I think I used up my free trail chance with maya, as I tried to get a free trail, but was denied. I want to hear from Maya users and Lightwave users if possible. thanks

#4

Maya is great and really has all the tools you will need to do your work, besides in this day and age most studios will use either max or maya so it never hurts to learn one of those two.
Maya is great and seems to have really improved these last few years, would be a sound investment imo.

#5

what I am most interested in is not making of the models , but the rigging and animation primarily in facial expressions that Lightwave has a way to go on that. I am a cartoonist by trade and have no problem with the building, but when it comes to the facial expressions, that seems to be a area that is hard to get into, either by tutorials or just that others do not want to teach them to lower competition.

#6

I’ve been a strong supporter and user of Lightwave since back when it first became available outside of the Toaster suite, and have been using it ever since. I have collected over the years, tons of plugins, and know the software well.

But Newtek have mismanaged the software so badly in recent years that I simply find it difficult to recommend it anymore. Yes it’s great to model in, and it offers great quality. But working with other apps alongside it is often more trouble than it’s worth. It’s either now missing features that are standard elsewhere, or half baked solutions that simply don’t hold up anymore.

I hate to say it, but you’d be better off with Maya, Softimage, or Max. Those three seem to be the ones that get the most love these days, while Lightwave is almost always forgotten.

It’s a tragic shame, but unless the next version of Lightwave is utterly fantastic and compatible with other apps in the pipeline without any issues, it simply does not stand a chance of ever being the best again, and v10 will probably be the last.

#7

I am also a long time Toaster user when the Amiga was the computer and I had to put in 15 floppie disk to get the application loaded in those early years. But I believe you are correct about lightwave lacking behind other programs…but also we have to take in account the price for Lightwave compared to Maya and others. I check with Amazon Maya is not available. I checked the Maya site and it cost over three thouand dollars. Now I am not in a busines, and doing this as a hobby for now, but I still would like the best application to do models. I did a trial run of 3-D Max and found it to be very good in doing animation and rigging characters, but it also goes for over 3 thousand, I guess, if you want the best you have to pay for it. I live in San Antonio where Lightwave is located and visit their place. So I am a fan of Lightwave, but just recently they have complicated things with CORE.

#8

I am Lightwaver since version 7.x, hobby artist only, and I love it much. I have also checked out Maya, Max and Cinema 4D. Great tools, no question. If you compare LW price and value with products from Autodesk, IMHO LW is still interesting, despite their marketing disaster.

The CORE strategy of Newtek was confusing. But it is not degrading the value of LW 9.6, if the modelling, animation, and rendering features are sufficient to you. Upcoming LW 10 will be even better.

LW is a complete package including a high quality rendering system. If you search the web or the litrature for fine 3D artwork, which has been produced with any of the Autodesk packages, the most of it has been rendered with third party systems … which produces additional cost.

#9

So lightwave 10 should be better, do you know if core is inbedded with version 10?..

#10

As far as I know LW 10 will include Layout, Modeller, and CORE.

#11

I have always enjoyed animating in LightWave. All my private work is done on this software; and I use Maya all day at work, so am familiar with both and their respective failings.

LightWave is not as comprehensively standardised as Maya is; it would really benefit from abandoning backwards compatibility, clearing out the dead wood and paring down to just the shiny new solutions it has introduced recently. That said, its shader maker beats Maya’s hands down.

LightWave has free plugins galore and a very supportive user base. Maya is more liked by programmers, as it seems they can make Maya Mel script do more than they can easily get LightWave’s Lscript to do.

Maya 11 has a decent hair solution as standard. I may be wrong, but I think LighWave’s Sasquatch is still a lite version. I bought the full version plugin and can confirm it is infinitely better than Shave and a Haircut.

That’s about it. Hope this helps,

Rory

#12

I vastly prefer modeling in lightwave over maya, after 10+ years of experience with both in production. I still don’t think Maya has a true polygonal code core, everything new just seems hacked in. I would give Maya the nod for UVing though. I also despise how Maya handles subcomponent masking/selection. Edit: Soft selection and selection pivots has always been awesome in Lightwave. It’s still relatively horrible in Maya.

Rendering/shading in lightwave is always easy, good quality and you don’t have to jump through the crazy Mental Ray hoops (which is not mental ray’s fault, just how it’s ‘plugged’ into maya).

I find going between Zbrush and lightwave as easy as going between Zbrush and Maya so I wouldn’t say any application has an advantage over the other in this respect.

#13

See, this is what I like about getting people to compare, I feel better now in what you said, but in reality, I would find hard press to learn a new interface (Maya), Maya and 3-D Max are the main kids on the block, you look at any 3-D magazine and the contributors that have their work shown are using Maya over lightwave 70 percent of the time. I will stay with lightwave, and now tackling IK and FK, not to mention facial expression which the hardest one to conquer. Thanks again.

#14

I noticed that had mentioned you live in San Antonio, did you go to SAC that is where I learned to use lightwave. I have switched to Maya and 3ds Max, and I personally think it is easier to use Maya than lightwave. I have also noticed when it came to learning lightwave the problem of finding good sources and tutorials was a pain. Maya and 3ds max have tuts out the ass. It just made things easier for me personally.

#15

I have read all the replies on the verses between Lw and Maya…Since I am doing 3-D animation for fun a present time and not doing it as a buiness, I will stick to LW. I just want to get the feel of people out there on their thoughts. Lightwave is less expensive than others, so that has to be a factor to a lot of people. I live in San Antonio where LW is headquartered and visited their work place, and it seems a happy place to work, now that has been about six years ago, so I can not say it is the same.

I will stick with Zbrush and Light wave for now, but I will never say “Never” to anything. My problem right now is computer RAM. I am using a Windows XP professeional that only comes with 3 or 4 Gigs of RAm, not enough after modeling in Zbrush and exporting to LW, LW slows down after subdividing models. I need a new computer woth more Ram but I do not like Windows 7 and the computers and tech service from Dell is not that good anymore. I ordered a new computer Studio 9100 from dell and returned it because it was poorly thought out.
but like I said, I am doing this because I love to do animation and 3-D stuff as a hobby for now. I do not know how much I could learn from SAC, I know that SAC has animation classes, but not sure if they use LW as a platform to teach it.

#16

Surprised no one has mentioned cost. There is no comparison between the price of Lightwave compared Maya, yet some (including myself) would say that much of what you can do with Maya can be done with LW (perhaps not as quickly or easily - but I refer back to my comment about price)

#17

I’malso a hobbiest and I purchased a used copy of lightwave on Ebay a few years back for little $. I upgraded it to 8 immediately and was later on the fence about upgrading further. I got sidetracked with Modo.

The current Lightwave offer that I went with was an upgrade to 9 with a free upgrade to 10 when it’s released (in the form of one free year of core membership for future upgrades to version 10.) The core thing is a bit confusing for me so it didn’t enter into my decision to upgrade (it arrived today!). I was focused on claims such as better integration with zbrush and 3dconnexion support as enticements.

I just read this article: http://www.myouterspace.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10&Itemid=68 (Go William Shattner lol…apparently a Newtek spokesperson) Finally I think I understand what Core is. Its a gamble. Its going to be a total revamp of Lightwave with the input and participation of the userbase. You won’t know what it will offer, you can’t use your current plug-ins and after the first year you have to pay for Core membership to get any additional upgrades. I’m not sure I made such a wise decision since the free year of upgrades might not be such a “deal”. Essentially I’ve purchased a beta version of 10 and I may have to pay alot more for future versions.

Well re-reading the website:

"
Guaranteed no price increase for the next five LightWave upgrades
Immediate download of LightWave 10 preview builds
Getting all LightWave information first, with access to an elite community (HardCORE) which includes interaction with LightWave development management and two to three exclusive software builds per year
VIP invitations to special events"
So there is 5 free (hopefully meaningful) updates. and the year membeship is for being in the core insiders/input group.

#18

While this isn’t really a lightwave core thread…

LW 10 is definately a detraction from what Core was supposed to be, but it is a big improvement on 9.6. This unknown part is Core. It would seem that what is in Core is what will change over the next few years, but the rest of 10, and for that matter 9.6 now, is a very capable application (that as I mentioned before costs a LOT less than Maya)

#19
Are you sure it's the ram only? XP professional and 3 to 4 GByte sounds decent for ZBrush and LW if you run a 3 GHz processor. You might consider to get one of the new multi core processors of Intel or AMD. LW and ZBrush take advantage of this. I have a i7-950, and with its 8 logical cores handling and rendering is really fast.

What version of LW are you using and how do you export from ZBrush to LW. Using a very basic low poly model in LW with ZBrush made displacement maps should not slow down too much in LW 9.x to handle a model or a scene. Sure the rendering time will slow down depending on the subdivision level, but multi-core processors or a rendering network will cope with this.

Recently I switched from XP prof. to Windows 7 prof. and I think you should give it a chance. It is a great improvement over XP and it works fast and stable. There is no comparison to Vista - which IMHO was a pain in the …