Blender vs. Maya vs. 3Ds Max | ThreeDee

Discover the best 3D software for you in 2023! In this comparison, we'll explore Blender, 3Ds Max, and Maya to help you choose your 3D projects. Don't forget to LIKE, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE for more 3D content! 🔥
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[@user-jm5tm2fc2c]

作为中国的一名三维艺术家和软件开发者，我更喜欢使用3dsmax，虽然它又笨体积又大，但它是我的三维动画启蒙软件，使用已经超过15年了。再换一个新的软件去投入时间和精力学习使用，已经不现实了。即便是有那些精力和时间，我更愿意研究算法和AI技术，投入都更高效的生产力以及商业上

[@NugrohooAri]

Yea apparently 3dsmax is soo popular in China, like I saw tons of tutorial in bilibili

[@smashedlegends]

Maya is a focused program embedded in a pipeline. Its the best where it has to be the best: Modeling and rigging/animation. Its does not need to be good at simulations.. professionals use Houdini for that. Does not need to be good at sculpting... professionals use Zbrush.. and so on. Blender is a generalist. Its a program that do everything good but its not the best in any particular area. Its also really bad in a professional pipeline environment for lots of reasons. Thats why Blender is good enough for a small studio without budget and Maya is the best for huge studios. Pipelines.

[@nosirve9458]

I agree with all you said but blender in modelling is great nowadays, It lacks nothing

[@Pixel_FX]

Hard surface modeling with blender is way faster than anything.

[@rano12321]

Blender is a generalist tool so it's a jack of everything and master of none except modeling, blender is the best ddc for modeling hands down.

[@AreYouTheBot]

Maya and Max are "industry standards" not just because When they Released they were really good at specific things, but because they go hard are educational licenses, so it is more likely that a student just graduating will have experience in them, and then to get new grads along with "going with the flow" you go with the "industry Standard" Blender has been constantly innovating since it first released, and has been making many advancements in areas that AutoDesk has been falling behind. realistically Autodesk could combine both Max and Maya together by merging the workflows, or just offering both as options. and the only real logical reason they haven't is to give the disguise of "options" (even on their own website talking about the differences they state the same positives for both, and when they say which to use for what they are just re-wordings of each other), but really it is just to potentially get larger studios to pay 3K a year per seat for every artist so that "they can use either, and it is 'cheaper' then paying for both" Blender is catching up to both, by looking at their functionality combining, and still innovating as a free product. Max and Maya are nearly Dinosaurs at this point who retain their position based on the status-quo.

[@wallacesousuke1433]

@@nosirve9458 Maya is way better still, I started learning Blender but after giving Maya a try, I dont think I'm ever coming back to Blender

[@leahjanulgue7200]

I model my 3D Graphics on Blender and render it on 3DxMax Vray

[@JohnnyThund3r]

The funny thing is because Blender if free it's just gonna become a sorta "common language" among 3d Artists. Sure you may use Maya because Animation is better, Zbrush because sculpting is better, or Houdini because Physics is better, but every 3d Artist will know Blender because every 3d Artists starting out now is gonna use Blender first. Eventually the differences between Maya/Houdini/ZBrush will be so slight only the old guard will continue to use those programs... Blender is the future, been true for 20 years!

[@CrankHead-z8z]

😂😂😂 blender is half assed software with many small things needing and addon including modeling, destructive extrude, edge flow,real groups...etc for 20 years did not do much its only good for indie since their pipeline is simple and the output quality is mediocre hence they use it often until they hit performance road block. I have seen it happen many times that it became a joke.

[@JohnnyThund3r]

@@CrankHead-z8z Nobody cares what you think.

[@CrankHead-z8z]

@JohnnyThund3r neither you. I am just fact checking u to not mislead people coz the truth is out there doesn't need lies.

[@rederickfroders1978]

I was first introduced to 3DS Max after which I went to Maya which is pretty similar. Blender back then was a total UI mess to me and I was really turned off by how hard it was, for me anyway, to do the most basic things. I just recently tried Blender today and I am gobsmacked by how easy it is. Maybe I wasnt thinking straight back then, or they really did some work on updating the UI. Naturally, I switched, because, open source! I havent tried animation yet since I'm mostly busy making models and applying extrude, inset, bevel, boolean functions etc, but I think new Blender seems pretty great

[@samduss4193]

Also unsure when you tried blendeer but it was a mess .. I think it gets better but still some addon should be integrated more easily to my idea ;) but it has more and more potential overtime Maya and so one better maintain their level ;)

[@wallacesousuke1433]

I just started learning Maya and although its interface looks outdated, it feels way more intuitive and straightforward than Blender

[@samduss4193]

@@wallacesousuke1433 agree with you you blender interface is annoying

[@Lunaholic94]

Pre-2.8 Blender was horrible. Now it's amazing

[@wallacesousuke1433]

@@Lunaholic94 not really, still inferior to Maya and other solutions, the over-reliance on hotkeys is so annoying

[@SledgeNE]

3ds Max is winning always. But Blender is the best for hobby.

[@Koiavadesign]

yap.. 3D max rules and is more proffecionall

[@gouedallica]

You cant sculpt, you cant retopo good, you cant do hairs, renders suck, 3dsmax is getting old

[@4rg3s]

@@gouedallica This is a very shallow statement, showing that you did not know the software well. Sculpting = soft selection, and paint deform (push/pull = move tool in Zbrush, relax = smooth tool in Zbrush). This is not as sophisticate as sculpting specialized software, but it does most of the basic jobs. Autodesk has Mudbox. Sending models back and forth from Max and Mudbox is in the matter of 1 click. There is a retopology modifier. It is simpler than Maya but works just as good. Beside that, there are many modifiers which aren't named "retopology" directly but they are actually tools to retopologize such as ProOptimizer, Mesh Cleaner, Smooth, Relax, Slice, Subdivide... It has modifiers. You gotta know how to stack those layers. Max is the 3D modeling software that gives the most control over polygons/box modeling out of all 3D software out there. This is why game development loves Max. There is hair and fur modifier. You can also use that to grow hair out of splines, and just drop a Flex modifier on top to have dynamic animation, which I find more convenient than Xgen. And this is vanilla Max. If you count plugins, it reaches another level. Do you know the movie Avatar? Look up what software they use. You know Ubisoft's Assassin Creed? These titles are not old. Talking about render, hello, what rendering engine are you using? You have to understand that render quality depends on engines and specific computer power. Max has been used in the architecture visualization industry for years. This is the first time I heard someone say it sucks at rendering. Talking about rendering static, realistic images, Max + Vray are unbeatable. Even with Arnold right now, Maxes' Arnold still runs slightly ahead of Maya's Arnold. Don't bring Blender's Eevee in because this is like comparing a toy car to a real car. About Cycles, I haven't tried it out yet, so no comment. Blender can only get into the race for the last couple years since cooperation bumping huge money into it. So, don't put too much hope into "crowd funding" or "open source codes". Substance Painter used to be like that. And look, now it is Adobe SP. There are certain reasons why professionals model in Max, animate in Maya, create title in Cinema4D, create particles in Houdini and sculpt in Zbrush. A software like Blender, aims to be generalist.

[@theslicefactor4590]

Blender is a fantastic and powerful program in the hands of skilled people, and there are some phenomenal add-ons to enhance functionality.

[@arshiadehghan583]

hidden cost of blender are the addons that are buggy most of the time.

[@ThreeDee]

for the value they have, it is no brainer.

[@arshiadehghan583]

yes but that also means they are not being funded properly for them to make less buggy and more optimized software@@ThreeDee

[@pizzaparkerhotdogmaguire3225]

​@@ThreeDee It's not a good value. Especially when you're in a professional environment

[@AstroSquid]

My biggest halt of switching to Blender from 3dsmax, was, Max's modifier stack is awesome.. My impression of Blender is, I've heard it has a stack, but after using Blender for a few days I realized it might not be nearly as good as the modifier stack on Max. My first give away for that is that Blender doesn't let you adjust parametric object setting after you make one. So creating a sphere in Blender to type in the number of side then after you make the sphere, you can't adjust the number. That's what killed Blender for me, as I don't think their stack will work nearly as good as Max's which offers a great often non destructive way of modeling. Maya node undo's don't even compete with a modifier stack, but Maya in general is okay.

[@trinityx3o522]

Simply put, 3Ds Max is a more technical software than Maya. Maya's strongest point IMO is it's UI. The radial menu is really a life-saver. I can't for my life remember all thehotkeys for different tools.

[@NahidRahman11]

Nice comparison

[@ThreeDee]

Thanks! :)

[@MediMilitia]

I try to learn for creat medical related 3D animation video.. As a beginners,, which software best for me?

[@ThreeDee]

It depends on the use-case, if you learn Blender it probably covers all you use-cases. But the learning curve can be steep.

[@turtlebird]

Really awesome video! Thank you! Wondering how can I get the student version from Autodesk as I can't seem to find the right link to sign up for it, even though I'm using my edu email and Maya seems like it'd be the best fit for me based on your video. Thanks for any help you can provide!

[@thavrisco1632]

Google “Maya student discount”

[@gcharb2d]

Just google "Unlock educational access to Autodesk products"

[@ExacoMvm]

Maya basically does pretty much the same stuff Max does but in a better way as Maya is far better technically, performance-wise and most features/tools are more polished and easier to use or they're basically shared/ported tools from each other. However Maya isn't as popular and there are almost no plugins for it excluding the big ones such the ones from Chaos Group so that's imo why those two apps are well balanced I mean you can choose one they both will do the job for pretty much anything. Maya to me personally feels more feature rich which doesn't make me feel like I need to rely on plugins or scripts for every second task I want to do while Max has lots of plugins with superb integration which feels like it's part of the software for almost any specialization so if Houdini didn't exist then 3ds Max would be not only #1 for ArchViz and whatever else it is #1 at but also the #1 VFX software ( FumeFX, PhoenixFD, TyFlow, Cebas TP, etc ). It's a bit funny how ppl see Max focused on modeling while Maya actually is far more efficient and better for that mostly because of better UI/UX and more polished tools. Maya also offers basic sculpting tools and superior UV Editor also even has same boolean features of Max 2024 including same retopology tool so the only way Max can be better for modeling is just because of "Modifier stack" which is basically not that different from History of Maya as Modifier stack is still not fully procedural. Also neither software is used for "Texturing", pretty sure you had in mind LookDev/Shading. Texturing is done in Substance Painter, Mari or Photoshop if one still lives in the 80-90's :D

[@ergohash2517]

i agree. i used Max for 5 years and currently switching to Maya and maya just feels so much more comfortable and pleasant to work with. Everything is neatly organised and convenient. You are right, apart from the modifier stack there is barely any difference except for Maya actually having better UI/UX.

[@ExacoMvm]

@@ergohash2517 True, I would also recommend to look at Blender. I started using Blender because CyclesX is super fast for more basic projects like 3D graphs/charts and texture-less exterior scenes that doesn't require photorealism but still require physical accuracy ( beats Octane's DL kernel in simple scenes ) and it has decent GPU engine with various API's so even AMD GPU's work with it. Also Geometry Nodes are quite powerful too which is great for procedural modeling, mograph, scattering, some vfx etc. It's kinda hard to get used to it especially for stuff like modeling keybinds, but it feels so much smoother and way more stable than any Autodesk DCC and some systems/tools are better while others are worse, mostly worse ofc but there's also lots of scripts/plugins just like in Max. Maya for example constantly freezes for no reason ( likely poor tool/plugin integration, happens often with V-Ray and MASH ), something stops working even it did work many times before, throws random errors and even sometimes the project file breaks even it worked flawlessly and saved without errors. Meanwhile Blender has never frozen or crashed on me except during my own error like accidentally typing to many subdivs and such.

[@HoomanBhr]

I'd prefer 3ds max + Tyflow plugin

[@mohdaqib6535]

which of these should a civil/architect use ????

[@jonduke4748]

3ds for sure

[@nothere3982]

Hi! As a 2D artist, which would be better to sculpt 3D backgrounds and for camera changes and panels (as in the camera motion of the scenes over all)? My main concern is being able to make fast paced animations with a lot of angle changes while the background integrates well. If it integrated perfectly as an almost 2D I'd be happy, but my main focus is the camera movement. Any answer would mean a lot to me, thanks a lot for posting this video.

[@lukesky123]

let me get this straight. You're a 2d artist who wants to use 3d backgrounds? Like anime? I would suggest Blender. It has good 2d features that work well with their 3d interface and workflow

[@gcharb2d]

Have a look at Blender Grease Pencil, it's not the best at 2D animation, but it has the best 2d/3d integration by far!

[@MaxPayne-rd5wd]

If they fix blender's UI and actually fix some easy options instead of making them modifiers such as bridging and other stuff and when you add a new primitive the option shows as a pop up and disappears and you can't preview edged faces like 3ds max and the sculpting tools being total trashy unless you spend hours to fix around it, it's good in some ways specially for 2D. This video doesn't covers actual facts and problems. The problem with 3ds max is that it has many features pre existing and most are forgotten or locked out over time and you have to dig around a lot. It has a full Shader FX and similar to layer painting options same as Substance painter and so on but all forgotten and locked away same as legacy Zbrush plug-ins. Blender doesn't have much stuff in it other than most tutorials copy pasting each others work and just relying on custom plug-ins. Max shows complexity in baking maps and llarge render options and motion panels being complex and lacking documentation. These are just a few points. Please make a detailed video other than just showing preference. The history of blender and max, features and constraints etc and some bugs and abandoned features like CAT from 3ds max and addressing glitches and much more. Before geometry nodes 3ds max has a creation graph and particles system but lacks documentation and not widely adapted etc. But blender's geometry nodes got more popularity. Compare UV tools for both softwares, baking options. 3ds max can import and update animation to existing skeletion and update rotations too where blender lacks that feature and reorients it and requires fully baked ones and so on. Do some research and make a large detailed video please. I am not a maya user so can't say much last I saw maya was 2014 version to make sone hair cards for a character and baking in maya 2011 version and it was a lot simpler than Max. Do a detailed longer video please.

[@ramyissa20]

Is blender is a little behind in modeling than other softwares or I'm not working with it properly?

[@ThreeDee]

What do you plan to achieve?

[@ramyissa20]

@@ThreeDee hard surface sub-d

[@ThreeDee]

@@ramyissa20 yeah, as mentioned, 3Ds max is more sufficient for this task.

[@ramyissa20]

I tried maya, cinema 4d and blender for modeling and felt like blender lacks some tools like changing object origin without multiple steps. But besides modeling blender is a swiss army knife I love doing other stuff on it

[@tom_paul_3d]

@@ramyissa20 you can change the object origin in blender with a checkbox, i've even assigned that checkbox to my d key

[@soumyadeepghosh3434]

love blender

[@footballkings-123]

2:58 best modeling

[@rasim.gunduz]

3dmaya and 3dmax are very slow in development. The fact that Blender is free is very efficient in terms of feedback and developer. Blender is very good in performance. It can be easily done with models with very high polygons. The opening speed is incredibly fast. i love blender

[@viero313]

great video!!!!

[@ThreeDee]

Thank you Javi! :)

[@hamdi5343]

Is blender OK for begginers? Is it less easier than Maya and 3d max?

[@madjunir]

Blender is easier and has biggest community

[@lukesky123]

far easier and cheaper. And the resources, add-ons, tutorials and community are very vast and large.

[@hamdi5343]

@@lukesky123 yea I see that thanks alot❤️

[@hamdi5343]

@@lukesky123 BTW Iam biggest fan of starwars 🤣

[@lukesky123]

@@hamdi5343 are you now? that's great fam. I can't say I'm a big fan, just love Skywalker and my name is Luke, so why not?

[@gurgenpogosian4811]

the blender is greate for me

[@ThreeDee]

It's great to hear! :)

[@Zamundani]

Maya and max should be part of a pipeline due to their limitations. Blender is the whole pipeline.

[@9751_]

Blender is great I used it for 2 years in college, now I use Maya and personally I think it’s better but both are really nice software for 3D I really didn’t like 3DS Max at all though

[@marklesterocampo5949]

Blender is a jack of all trades but a master of none

[@tom_paul_3d]

Except modelling, youd be surprised by how much its used in the games industry

[@Bilangumus]

@@tom_paul_3d And architects. Some people ex from Zaha hadid are using it

[@wallacesousuke1433]

@@tom_paul_3d Maya is way better, and for sculpting, Zbrush for the win

[@xox8717]

Not really maybe for some small studios, both modeling & uving in Blender are dragging behind as the devs are focusing on geo nodes and other flashy feature and never polish the existing ones.@@tom_paul_3d All blender edit mode tools lack polish, loop cut start only from the middle & not from anywhere, spin tool is wonky, polybuild is half baked and so on.

[@TheTimeProphet]

This doesn't really sound like an unbiased review. Sounds more like an advert for Blender. I will stick to 3ds Max thankyou.

[@Sultan_Alparslan_HAN]

+Tyflow

[@gumphu]

MAYA.. God Father

[@공개미-w4l]

I actively used 3ds max and blender. The conclusion is simple. Blender is not as best 3d program as the blender fanboys say. Of course it's a good program. Aside from the disgusting praise from fanboys, it's a relatively decent program (given that it's free).

[@magnuscritikaleak5045]

The Videogames and Film industry as a Conglomerate of Churches, shoving recessive Dogmas and hard coded shennaigans that a Software dev can only solve some or even not most of the Bugs Autodesk' pumps out. Autodesk' is such a detached organisation it is like the Church of Mormons makes The Foundry look like the Unitarian Church....

[@sargeanthawk4108]

I would encourage studios to drop maya for blender. I dont care what special features maya has the program has constant technical problems.

[@gcharb2d]

Blender doesn't fully support industry standards like Alembic, FBX and USD, studios will never replace Maya with it, Maya is a mature and production proven software, not Blender, also, Blender is crippled by limitations, and its erratic development is driven by donations, there are many projects that the BI dropped recently due to a lack of funding, just look at the Blender dev blog!

[@Killswitch1411]

Wont happen because of the support Autodesk gives. Blender doesn't have that.

[@thewholeworld9202]

Blender lacks photorealism. Also a lot of things which you can do in other 3d soft for 15 minutes, in blender will take you an hour or more.

[@theslicefactor4590]

Like what?

[@wallacesousuke1433]

@@theslicefactor4590 everything

[@theslicefactor4590]

A skill issue only, not a reflection of Blender's capabilities. People who know what they're doing can create amazing photorealistic things in decent time in Blender. @@wallacesousuke1433

[@gcharb2d]

Blender has very old tools, everything takes longer in Blender, but the blender fanboys can't tell the difference because most only know Blender!

[@Nollywoodhybrids]

Sponsored by who again?🤪😁

[@ThreeDee]

No one :-) we don't have sponsorship from anyone in general

[@Itsyesfahad]

I mean obviously Blender is free other than that it's nowhere near 3ds Max or Maya.

[@madjunir]

Depends on the type of project and how big team and budget. Blender already being used in commercial projects. Also development is faster and faster. I suspect Blender 4.0 will be crazy good.

[@wallacesousuke1433]

@@madjunir it will take decades for Blender to catch up Maya/Zbrush and by then they will have evolved even further

[@trinityx3o522]

@@wallacesousuke1433 Can't say about Autodesk, but companies like Pixologic & Sidefx will definitely keep improving

[@yongshaochen3559]

blender is god!

[@DaMann-zm6kt]

Blender is the poor man's God.

[@Shahadat_Shahid_420]

Blender best.

[@magnuscritikaleak5045]

The Video and Film industry are in Current Financial Recession they are recession alot. The only reason they are afloat thanks to the Yakuza and the prominent Criminal Cartel families who support Autodesk as Shareholders and stock decision holders.