# Maya Reviews **Vendor:** Autodesk **Category:** [3D Modeling Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/3d-modeling) **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 267 ## About Maya Autodesk Maya is a comprehensive 3D computer graphics application designed for professionals in the film, television, and gaming industries. It offers a robust suite of tools for modeling, animation, simulation, and rendering, enabling the creation of intricate 3D assets and dynamic visual effects. Key Features and Functionality: - Modeling: Supports NURBS, polygons, and subdivision surfaces, providing flexibility in creating detailed 3D models. - Animation: Offers advanced character animation tools, including rigging and keyframe animation, facilitating lifelike movements. - Simulation: Includes capabilities for simulating realistic physics, such as fluid dynamics, cloth behavior, and hair movement. - Rendering: Integrates with powerful rendering engines like Arnold, delivering high-quality visual outputs. - Customization: Features scripting languages like MEL and Python, allowing users to tailor workflows and develop custom tools. Primary Value and User Solutions: Maya empowers artists and designers to bring their creative visions to life by providing a versatile and efficient platform for 3D content creation. Its comprehensive toolset addresses the complex demands of modern digital production, streamlining workflows and enhancing productivity. By offering extensive customization options and supporting industry-standard formats, Maya ensures seamless integration into various production pipelines, making it an essential tool for professionals aiming to produce high-quality visual content. ## Maya Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users praise Maya for its **straightforward UV mapping** and excellent features, making it a valuable tool for 3D modeling. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of use** in Maya, especially for straightforward UV mapping and feature-rich capabilities. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **great features** of Maya that enhance the ease of 3D modeling and UV mapping. (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users report occasional **crashes** in Maya, leading to unpredictable behavior that negatively impacts their experience. (1 reviews) - Users report encountering **software bugs** that cause occasional crashes and unpredictable behavior, affecting their experience with Maya. (1 reviews) - Users experience **software instability** with Maya, noting occasional crashes and unpredictable behavior that disrupts usage. (1 reviews) - Users often face **software issues** with Maya, including occasional crashes and unpredictable behavior detracting from the overall experience. (1 reviews) ## Maya Reviews ### 1. Animation and CAD Rendering software **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexander N. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I like its overall versatility. Maya is a powerful enough software that you can essentially accomplish anything withing the CAD realm while utilizing it. Maya is the choose software for many companies when it comes to CAD animations, Renderings, as well as a lot of pre - composite work. 3 companies I have worked for in the past use it, and I currently use it now. It is a staple in the industry. **What do you dislike about Maya?** After using Maya for a few years now (on and of depending on the project) I have grown to realize that the User Interface could be dramatically improved upon. Although it is technically an Auto desk product, its User Interface is not as intuitive as most other Auto desk software's. Also compatibility with other Auto desk software's is lacking for Maya in its current state. Also compared to other CAD rendering software's, the ability to tessellate raw data is limited due to the machine you use. Other software's I have used have not had this issue at as severe of a degree. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Maya is an incredibly powerful software, but it does come with its flaws. Some you can work around and some you can not. Overall it is an essential tool i use in my career, but I could hope for some updates to make it more user friendly. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Within my workplace, when we have a need for animation and CAD modeling, Maya is one of our go to software. Being as powerful of a software as it is, allows for a lot of the work we do to get done in house and save us time and money in the long run. ### 2. VISUAL MASTER! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kunal S. | Motorcycle Digital Designer, Automotive, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** The best would definitely be the ease of polygon modelling! the support of vray makes it even better for digital designers like me! the power to render in hyper realism and amazing quality of animation shoots it the ideal software for rapid modelling / visualization and animation. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Dislike would be the complex placement of important controls, the bugs in plugin loaders, and the most common problem! - crashes during lighting and visualization. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Make the most out if it! it is the future! there is nothing maya cant make or do, be it modelling/ animation. the ease and quality of modelling is very good. and the animation tips and tricks is off the roof! **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** with maya, rapid modelling has been done in important car design projects, visualization and animation is done as well. benefits would be the speed and ease of modelling, and quality of visualization, also the amazing support fot vray. ### 3. Maya is a great tool for modeling **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Megan V. | 3D Environment Artist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I primarily use Maya for modeling but I like that I can also rig, animate, and render when I need to. The modeling tools are always improving and making things like UV unwrapping easier for users. I also like that you can change the menu and panel layouts easily to customize how you work. Maya works well on both Mac and PC. **What do you dislike about Maya?** There is not much I dislike about Maya because I don't use the rigging or animation tools often enough but it seems like there is not enough documentation for certain aspects or errors you can get while using the program. Also I cannot access certain plugins for rendering on my earlier year version of Maya. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Watch tutorials and read documentation to get to know the menu layouts of Maya because he sheer amount of tools can be overwhelming. Also if you are unsure about buying the product, there is a free student version you can use if you are a student trying to learn it. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Maya has given me a sophisticated tool for all my modeling, rigging, animating, and rendering needs. The free student version has benefitted me greatly. ### 4. MAYA is the one **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mike G. | Director, Motion Pictures and Film, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 26, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** MAYA with the latest 2106 has become the defacto leader of the pack in terms of DCC apps. The already class leading animation and scripting abilities which have made MAYA the mainstay of studios throughout the world are all there with Autodesk working really hard on making MAYA easier to grasp for new users. With the additions of the motion graphics toolset MASH in the SP2, alongside the acquisition of the Arnold render engine which looks like it will replace Mental Ray, to the already excellent built in Bifrost dynamics system. MAYA is the one sure bet in the 3D industry! MAYA Also has excellent support from 3rd party plugins, for example the excellent GPU render Redshift has brilliant integration with MAYA. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Even though Autodesk is working hard on making MAYA Easy for new users to grasp, a lot of the core toolset are hidden or not immediately intuitive like they are for example in CInema 4D. Also MAYA isn't cheap and from July 2016 will only be available via subscription, which makes it a serious investment. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** MAYA is the application that I would recommend any 3D artist who is new to the industry to pick up first, for established artist's Autodesk are adding enough goodies to make MAYA worth reconsidering **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** MAYA can handle any DCC task, especially with the announcements of SP2, the Viewport 2.0 working paradigm means that even viewport animations are good enough in some cases for final ouput ### 5. The all in one sculpting tool for quick outputs **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ujwal I. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 21, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** The best part of this software is its ability to sculpt your ideas without much difficulty and with haste, it allows us as 3D artists to create and design forms through a wide variety of tool and options, enabling the use of various selections we can sculpt the 3D parameters from a Raw block to a finely enhanced shape - able to communicate the product or character in all its views. The addition of the rendering tools as well its ability for rigging and animation gives a major plus point to stretch the boundaries of visualization into multiple ways. Personally I use V-ray as a rendering plug-in in Maya that allows me to create a better result in terms of visualization. **What do you dislike about Maya?** most of the times I have had difficulty in exporting files to be rendered in Maya- using V-ray plugin. it creates a few glitches which can be sorted by changing few of the importing parameters. the accuracy or tolerance compared to softwares such as Alias or Fusion 360 is not that great, it gives an approximate result in terms of dimensions and precision . **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Its a tool for quick sculpt modeling and a great software for rendering ( would be a plus point to have Vray to as the rendering engine). Its ability to rig objects gives the option to animate the products as well as characters - creating showreels through animation without investing on scaled mock ups. It also has multiple camera options and setting allowing the user to create a realistic approach in terms of visualization. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** None ### 6. Bringing my student work to life. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kyle K. | Student, Higher Education, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 19, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** With this program I can quickly animate and render a cad file that I've built in alias. This program is very powerful and can do so many things, but yet it doesn't feel over whelming. There is a great community online and within a short period of time I can learn exactly what i want and make a great final product. **What do you dislike about Maya?** My major problems that I have with the software are very minimal. Those being camera controls. I jump around from several different programs those being Alias, Catia, RTT Deltagen and Vred, and I have the most difficulty with just basic camera controls, where the other programs come more naturally. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** It is a simple and powerful way to show off your ideas and thoughts in a way that will impress your audience. with in an hours time I can make a car design appear to drive right in front me. this real life scenario brings to life the design. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use this program to animate and render my student work, to show to our sponsors for my school program. the ability to have a well done animation and render can make the difference between getting the job and missing it. ### 7. Very powerful but very difficult to use **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ryan P. | Senior Mentor, Animation, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 13, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Autodesk Maya is an extremely powerful 3D software and is considered an industry standard in the film and video game industries. Maya includes modeling, texturing, animating, simulating, and rendering capabilities. Maya is impressive simply because is extremely powerful and offers many aspects of 3D as listed above. Maya also has a long list of big name productions backing it. Having used Maya after learning 3D on Cinema 4D I see that it is a very different software. Maya has higher capabilities than Cinema, including advanced parameters in modes such as simulation or compositing, just to name a few, that Cinema doesn't have. Modeling in Maya is very intuitive. It is easy to switch between line, point, and face modes. There are also many tools that make it easy to manipulate the mesh, add even cuts, and extrude symmetrically, while still maintaining quality topography. Rigging is another feature in Maya that I found to be easier than other programs I have used. It is easy to add a skeleton and then set up IK chains. Maya offers soft bind which is more fluid but requires weight painting, as well as rigid bind, which is lighting fast to set up, but will give more robotic movement. It is also easy to add "look at" constraints, such as to create a controller for eye movement. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Overall, Maya's interface does not impress me. It takes a while to learn where everything is placed, and to me it seems that certain options are hidden away where you wouldn't think to look. In addition, it is easy to mess up the interface and struggle to be able to fix it. I also find that some modes of Maya are particularly difficult to work in, especially Texturing and Camera Work. It is very hard to create procedural textures in Maya. Compared to Cinema 4D, where there is a much heavier focus on procedural textures, Maya makes it difficult to create complex and realistic textures without loading bitmaps. It also it hard to edit materials once they are created. There doesn't seem to be a global materials panel where you can see every texture created. If I am incorrect about this, it also speaks to the obscurity of the interface. Camera work in Maya is fairly difficult in my experience, mostly because there is no quick way to select a camera to view. You can cycle through cameras, but there is no keyboard shortcut, so it can take a while once you start creating many scene cameras. It also takes a while to get a hang of how to select which camera you would like to render from. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Spend a lot of time researching the different aspects of Maya and how to use them. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** One clear benefit to using Maya is that it is a very prevalent industry standard. It is a must to learn Maya to work in Hollywood-level studios, and many smaller studios may use Maya as well. It also may be helpful in collaboration with other artists who may be using Maya. ### 8. I learn 3d with Maya **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Grace Stephanie M. | Animator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 12, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Maya is pretty solid, It has everything you need, from small game animations to big features, you can achieve a lot using Maya. it's really good for modeling polygons or surfaces but is my favorite for animation. Animating with Maya is fast and easy, you can move around keys, animation curves, you can change the frame rate,animate visibility, snap keys,resize animation, repeat post infinity and pre infinity loops. Creating ghost and saving animation are new things that can save you time and money. Maya has also a lot of new features in every version. Rigging with is also friendly and customizable. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Modeling in Maya is quite different from 3D Max, you don't have a tower of modifiers, so you can't go back as easily as in Max, So modeling in Maya take a bit more of skill, time and patience. It's harder to do lighting using Vray, but the lighting with Mental Ray is pretty good. Some time maya crashes, that sucks, but if you are careful enough there will be no problems. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Maya is easy to learn, but the more you learn, the more things you realize you don't know, Maya is big and ever changing be patient is worth it. Also don't try to master everything in the software, just focus in one feature at a time. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** With Maya i have work for video games, tv commercials, indie short films and feature films. Maya can do it all.It's also compatible with fbx, photoshop, 3dmax and unity ### 9. most powerful modeling software I have ever used **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Javier C. | Junior Architect, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 07, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** At the begining seems bit complex software, but after 1 month of use I have realized that I can model everything I want and I imagine, without mention the support grantes by all the scripts. This opened me a new world within design softwares. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Extrusion and offset surface tools end up in a bit dirty model with non manifold edges or surfaces crossing. If you desire a clean model you will have to place properly every vertex. This takes hours! **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Really powerful, in terms of design you can find whatever tool you imagine, if not I am sure you can find support on all the script people create to make your life easier. It is a software designed for animation and maybe because of that it has much more potential for designing than we think. Just be patient, in few weeks you will wonder what you did all your life withour Maya **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** How easy I can obtain organic shapes and volumes clicking just one button. I can model a primitive shape and clicking one number I turn this into a curved and organic model, it is so helpful! ### 10. Great and powerful 3D software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Danny B. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 06, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I love its modeling capabilities. I am able to use it as my main modeling program, even for projects I plan to complete in outside programs. It is able to handle extremely high-poly models, and has an extension modeling toolkit. The accessibility to the toolkit is also very nice, the hotbox makes it very easy to navigate to Maya's large number of available tools. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Maya can be very buggy, which can result in a variety of errors. Sometimes it can just crash at random, sometimes the preferences become corrupted so you have to trash them. Sometimes your maya scene file can become corrupted too, which creates a larger problem. There are also specific bugs, such as using booleans too many times, resulting in Maya shutting down. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Maya is one of the easier 3D softwares to learn, but this does not make it a "junior" product. It has a huge variety of tools and capabilities that are extremely useful to any 3D artist. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I was able to use Maya to create high-poly models. Within the program I was able to texture and light the model as well. This makes Maya excellent for many tasks within a 3D pipeline. ### 11. A good place to start **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Troy K. | Customer Service Advisor, Computer Games, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 05, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I started learning Maya as a student when I first studied 3D. I think that Maya 2013 had a row of display options in the viewport windows which I found massively quick and useful. The right mouse click and hold to display all mesh select options was again very quick and useful which made modelling pretty straight forward as a new user. Also key frame animation was fairly basic to learn including the graph editor. The tools were layed out pretty tidy and understandable. One of my favourite parts was the attribute editor and channel boxes on the right side of the interface was very good they contained quite a lot of scene handling options. The top left had a list of Modelling, Rendering, Animation, Dynamics etc, when selected laying out its own set of tools. Overall a very well coordinated software. Great choice of colour and icon graphics, healthy for the eyes on a bright screen! **What do you dislike about Maya?** It all depends on the machines power being used. In some cases rendering can be mega slow so V-ray and Mental ray wouldn't be so cool to use. I also experienced random crashes without auto save on, an absolute wounder when progress had been made. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** If you are keen on UV unwrapping, Animation, Rigging, Skinning then Maya is so easy to do these tasks. Especially the UV unwrapping. Its colour coordinated blue positive, red negative, Purple overlapped. Has to be highlight of the software. A great software to start out with or transfer to from another. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Maya gave me a strong knowledge of 3D as a whole. Again its a great software to start out with in terms of the basic structure and layout of the software. I wouldn't be where I am today in terms of 3D experience if it wasn't for Maya. ### 12. Modeling for Production **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lionel C. | Marketing Artist, Computer Games, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 15, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I'm fond of the customization and box modeling tools within Maya. I mostly use maya to build out low res cages for import to Zbrush. It's a very wuick workflow for me. The new retopo tools are also quite handy to work with. I have slowly been transitioning to using maya for retopo on my high resolution models. **What do you dislike about Maya?** The different viewport modes are taxing on my computer and graphics card. Sometimes the screen flickers when I change from perspective and orthographic modes. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Learn how to customize the quick menu. It really helps in developing a quick workflow. While the new UI has made a great improvement design wise, the menus and location of things can still be quite intimidating. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use this mostly as a hobbyist but I have been able to crank out some really good renders for marketing assets using Maya Mental Ray. ### 13. Depends on what you want to model - but nice software ! **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Timothée S. | Design Intern, Machinery, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 24, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Indeed Maya is clearly the best software for animation and I highly recommand it for this purpose. Concerning its modelling tools, it is quite intuitive (in comparison with 3DS max for example) and it's a good software when you need to model soft objects like automotive interior seats, etc. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Maya is a little bit too 'one-sided' because it's not so versatile in terms of modelling needs. 3DS Max for example is much more versatile, especially for industrial design. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** As I was saying, switch for Maya if you have a lot of animation to do, and some "Pixar" things to design, that's quite cool for this use, even if not the best. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I realized benefits with Maya when I had to make a product animation for a customer years ago; and it's almost the only time I used Maya. ### 14. My go to for 3D **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Clinton C. | Senior Environment Artist, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I started work in animation and then moved into game development. This means I use a slightly different set of tools and I think that is the greatest part about using Maya. In no way do I ever feel restricted for what I am using the program for and there is always more than one way around any issue that I am working with. Also the newer additions that have been added in the last few years have definitely be an awesome additional to the tool set and work space. **What do you dislike about Maya?** The .FBX set up could be better. There are a few issues when bringing in previously made meshes that may result in a bit of work. Some of the menus can be a bit hidden at times but I think that is also part of the growing process of the software. Finding a place for every tool can be tricky. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Its not a hard switch to this 3D package from another package given that you understand general 3D software and if not learning can be a fun be challenging reward! **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using Maya for games I believe is one of the easiest programs to get the maximum range of tool-sets for every artists. So as a studio to own only one software Maya would provide each role with the full potential to complete their tasks successfully. ### 15. Flexible and Friendly **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kevin a. | Design Lead for a Non-Profit, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 29, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** The ability to integrate your output to many other 3D party programs is very useful . Maya's latest Maya LT 2016 , offers users to switch between game engines faster . Maya offers a complete user friendly playground which can be customised . Also there alot of third-party plugins and pre-sets available for beginners and advanced users . The ability to use Maya own scripting language (MEL) is also a valuable asset to add . Almost all external render engines support Maya . All studios use Maya , so if your looking out for a animation job or a visual effects based work environment Maya is your guy to begin with . Once you grab the tools and method of 3D modelling , Maya is become your every day best friend . Trust me . **What do you dislike about Maya?** The amount of options available is too much . Other software's have a better layer and texturing system . Maya has a lot of bugs ,but many answers are out there for the problems . **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** 3D's max would be my next choice . But maya and 3d's max has alot of users compared to the rest of the softwares out there . I would recommend Cinema 4D , if you like doing motion graphics and titling . Go for Blender if you are broke . **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Maya is used by almost most 3D firms across the globe . Maya is considered to be their first preference when is comes to 3D modelling and rendering . But again it only depends on what type of output your expecting . If you looking for 3D CGI , then maya is the best . ### 16. Maya **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mike B. | Lead Technical Artist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** It's great for rigging, once you know the basics and Python/MEL you can make your own auto-rigger. Cloth simulations work pretty well. The simulations look nice and they're easy to setup/tweak to get results. It's not THE best, but a nice start. The modeling toolkit is a nice start, but still a bit clunky. Some settings don't work the way you'd expect, like symmetry in draw mode. Overall, Maya is very customizable and has great documentation for scripting in both MEL (native language) and Python if you're into that. It also has all the basic tools you need for character animation. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Dynamic simulations workflow is a pain. Node system isn't full integrated, but there's a good foundation. When rigging its easy to make a mistake, but incredibly hard/impossible to fix unless you're scripting. Otherwise it's a very time consuming process. It would be great if the workflows could be unified, like Houdini's. With Houdini, if I make VEX node tree for a simulation, I can then take that tree and use it in a texture to manipulate it. A lot of the things you learn for 1 workflow will translate to another discipline in Houdini. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** It's a must-know software- an industry standard. It takes a few months to get the basics, but to really master it requires a few more years. It's very accessible though, with plenty of documentation for any level. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Has great UI for organizing scenes and dealing with large amounts of assets. With a custom pipeline its seamless. It does alright out of the box, but again it needs a little love to reach its full efficiency potential. I use it for rigging, cloth simulations, modeling, and character animation. ### 17. My Maya experience **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Design | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 18, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Polygon modeling is the way to go. It is also very nice that nurbs are available. Animation is good and rendering capabilities are great. Very user friendly. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Could use an update on tools to make some things a bit simpler. View cube sometimes glitches out and disappears. Material editing can also be difficult. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Very good for creative modeling and animation **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Integrating this software into the design world is the main business goal. The realization is that it is more capable than traditional software. ### 18. If you can dream it with maya can be created. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Motion Pictures and Film | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 19, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Well, first just say that Maya it is a very complex tool and full of sub-tools. I would say, maya is better 3d software than others in the market. Overall I like the integration that it has with render engines, and how easy is to change user modes, for modelling, lighting or whatever my needs are. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Instability. I know 3D can require lots of processing math calculating, but at work time, it can be annoying sometimes miss out some work, or just get stuck because the software doesn't run. It could have easier connection with sculpt - modeling softwares, as the workflow is key in the 3D industry. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Try to create a easier user interface. As we jump from one software to another and even coming from 3D max, everything is different, they only have in common the colours. It could be more helpful if softwares coming from the same company have similar UI. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I do 3d solutions for surgical applications. And with maya as primary software everything comes easier. ### 19. My main application **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Валерий . | Lead | Senior 3D Artist, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** It has inbuild feature almost for any type of task. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Unwrapping solution is better then in other big softwares but worse then for example UV layout. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** it's userfriendly and has all you may need. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm making models. All kinds of. ### 20. I use this products as a student to visualize and animate my designs **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew H. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 19, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I really like that Maya is really easy and intuitive for making quick and simple animations. i also like that it has a really effective use of lighting and shadows. shortcuts are also very useful in Maya **What do you dislike about Maya?** the software is is very complicated. everything is hidden within the menus instead of being in-front of you. the materiel editor is very complicated as well. creating Back plates is very complicated. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** If you are in the business for animating than Maya is the best software you can use. Maya is also decent at making 3D digital renderings **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a student i use Maya to showcase my designs more realistically. i can easily import my 3D models into Maya and throw couple of lights and materials and start rendering out my designs. ### 21. Autodesk Maya **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Felipe R. | Interactive Designer, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 02, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** It's a very powerful software. It's complex, but it is best and the most well-known suite for animation industry. **What do you dislike about Maya?** The interface. Still confuse for new users. Also, for complex modelling, it constantly crashes after specifics commands. You will need, ideally, a powerful workstation to run it without problems. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Its good to have as a backup software as well. Import from almost all the other software and export in different format as well. Not only for modelling or animation, but I also use it for fix 3D models. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I had to fix a missed surface from SolidWorks for 3D printing. Because Maya imports almost all the formats out there, I easy fixed it before print. Save me time and money!!! ### 22. Industry standard for film and television **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bader B. | Lead Animator, Animation, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 12, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** The tool set in Maya is extremely robust for almost all parts of production on both feature and tv animation. In my line of work as an animator, nothing comes close to having total control over your 3D characters as in Maya. The best part about the software as well is that it can be customized to every studio differently that it almost appears to be completely new in every studio I have ever worked at. If you are serious about animation or 3D in general Maya is a must to have and learn. **What do you dislike about Maya?** The program is very robust that it can be very hard to learn other aspects outside of you're on specialization. For instance Rigging is simplified in other programs, but in a sense that is a limitation and in Maya it takes longer to learn to do something because you actually have total control. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** It is an industry standard and as much as it has its faults, to have a career in animation Maya is a must so I would definitely recommend it. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I do not own a business but work in animation studios in the UK and the only problem we are solving is entertaining people. My job is to create fun believable worlds and it cannot be done without Maya. ### 23. Best 3D software for animation **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nikolett M. | Freelance Post Production Artist, Motion Pictures and Film, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 23, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** It's a very effective software to use for 3D modeling and animation. There are a lot of controls for anything you need for both, and you're cable to fine tune. I can create high quality polygon models with a clean wireframe. Maya has everything I need from creating the 3D models to complete animation and rendering. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Lot of the controls are ten Windows deep so to speak. Some of the options are hard to find because they seem to be hidden in the menus. It would be much easier f there were more shortcuts to get to those menues easier. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** It takes patients to learn all the functions and which menus they are hiding. But its well worth it, since Maya is cable of so much. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating Clean and detailed models as well as animations. ### 24. Maya the best **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 22, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Maya is the most complete software for 3D. I really like the part of animation and rig included, because is customizable (in an easy way) and is perfect to make the best job in the easy way saving a lot of time. Is also very cool to use for modelling and VFX. The graph editor for animator is the best! **What do you dislike about Maya?** I think maya is a a complex software and learn to use it is not really easy. It have a lot of tools (and this is a plus) but also you have to spend time to try and learn how to use them. The good side is there is a good guide and a very large community can also help you. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I think Maya can help a lot of problem that other 3D softwares have. You can customize it and you can find a lots of way to solve the problem you could find in your job. ### 25. Made my senior thesis with Maya **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anna P. | 2D Artist, Animation, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 02, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Maya has everything in a nice little package. It's one of those programs that you could only use it, and nothing else and get a finished product out of it. Though, using Maya with other plug-ins and programs is where you can really get it to shine. I still like the fact, that for a small project, you could just rely on one program alone to get it done. Plus it is my favorite thing to 3D model in, while I enjoy the organic modeling in Zbrush, I am a huge fan of box modeling. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Maya has a few problems. It crashes a lot, sometimes tools stop working for reasons that are unknown sometimes, and you can spend a lot of time trying to fix an issue that isn't even your fault. You have to baby Maya a lot I find, and be forgiving of it. I don't like this because it wastes a quite a bit of my time, and there can be days I feel like I didn't get anything done due to problems Maya gives me while I am working. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** If you are looking for a product that has a nice package of features and alone has tools for 3D modeling, Animation, texturing, and Rendering then Maya is a safe bet. It is also compatible with a lot of other 3D programs and plugins that make it even better to use. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Even though I have to baby Maya quite a bit, I wouldn't know how to accomplish certain things without it. Like I said it's a nice little package of a software that allows you to do everything in the 3D side of the pipeline. ### 26. Where every animator should start **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Catalina C. | Illustator, Animation, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Maya it's a great software to get into animation, it's almost 100% designed for that task, it's kinda intuitive in the layout, Tools are accesible by the extended menu and the bar so it's ok if you don't remember how to do or where is a tool. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Maya has this big contra when you are working with imported material. Maya uses a very strict folder order in which (if you change something) sometimes files just stop working. And sometimes tends to crash (but it's not a usual thing) **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Maya it's a great tool for animation propuses, it's easy to understand and shares a lot with other popular 3d softwares. It may not be the best software for modeling, but for animation it's one of the best, **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** One of the tools i been using for an animated short in the company i work in. I have a student licence on my personal computer to practice rigging every now and then. ### 27. Complex 3D modeling **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Maria Gabriela S. | Graduate Assistant, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Maya is a complex 3D modeling tool, i like that it has a plenty of tools that you can use when you are modeling any type of scene in 3D, it is a little difficult to learn but once you know the software you can do whatever you want, you just need time to learn it properly **What do you dislike about Maya?** due to its complexity, sometimes it is hard to remember the place of some tools, even though it has a lot of tools you can use to model, it is common to get lost in the software searching for some of them especially when you are a beginner. it needs a lot of time to learn and tutorial are often difficult to understand **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** it is a very good tool for 3D modelers and i thin is one of the most used softwares in the market but it takes a lot of time to learn and is very complex, it is worth to try **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** 3D modeling business mainly, it could solve any type of problems especially in business like architecture, animation studios, motion graphics, product development, industrial design ### 28. University Student Utilizing Autodesk Maya - Working Towards a Future Profession **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Design | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 19, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** What I like best is Maya's modeling capability. It allows the user to quickly mock-up and shape rather organic shapes. The modeling is, in my opinion, the most intuitive part of Maya. **What do you dislike about Maya?** What I dislike is the overall user interface. There are many functions buried in layers. It makes the software rather unintuitive for a beginner. Once the software is learned, the user will become accustomed to creating their own shortcuts or utilizing the preexisting ones within the software, but until that point, Maya could use a better workflow interface. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** I would primarily recommend Maya to those who are looking for a software that will allow them to quickly and efficiently model organic shapes in 3D. Maya is great for lighting effect when looking to do a digital rendering as well. Maya's ability to split the screen into multiple perspectives (as is available with most Autodesk software) really gives it an advantage over its competition. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using Maya primarily to animate and render 3D models we have created from Autodesk Alias. We also use Maya for more organic 3D modeling; the kind that would be more difficult to accomplish in surfacing software like Alias. ### 29. The father of 3D Modeling Software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mert T. | Graduate Student Researcher, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 08, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** It contains everything you need in terms of the modeling and animation of 3D scenes. Also MentalRay renderer, that is included in the package, provides realistic renderings by utilizing advanced options in the render panel such as Global Illumination, Final Gather, Ambient Occlusion, and many more. **What do you dislike about Maya?** This nothing like a real dislike, but in order to use Maya efficiently and to do what you have imagined needs quite a training. Its competitor Cinema4D is a lot easier in this sense, but it fails to do many things that Maya can do. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** It is a great piece of software, just don't get intimated by its complexity. That complexity is going to be your best friend after you get used to it. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used it as student only, so I haven't applied any business solutions using Maya. However it is widely used in Film Industry, Advertisement, almost everything related to design. ### 30. Awesome product **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 10, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Great software and I love the amount of file formats have been improved from the earlier versions of maya. I really love the improvements in the animation and rendering engines. **What do you dislike about Maya?** I really hate the amount of time needed to render a scene and the processing power needed to render a full scene. I know this will improve with future technology advancements. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Hard to learn how to use the software but alot of help available. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** The main benefit or maya is the amount of plugins and information available. Really isn't another 3d package with all the features. ### 31. One of the best 3D applications for breaking into the business! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Cecilia N. | 3D Animator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I love that Autodesk Maya is widely used by the entertainment industry, schools, and studios across the world. Because of this, there is a vast amount of help and tutorials that can be found for Maya. The user interface is friendly and after knowing your way around Maya, you can quickly create 3D animations. this was one of the first 3D programs I learned and because of this, it made it easier for me to pick up other 3D applications. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Maya was the first 3D application I've used so any other 3D program I learned afterwards will always be compared to Maya. The workflow for modeling and making changes to geometry in Maya is definitely the weakest aspect of the program. Whereas other programs you can make changes to the model after rigging and binding, with Maya, you need to finalize all your modeling beforehand. There is a possibility to change the topology of the model after rigging, however, in my experience this hasn't always worked out as well. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** I recommend that you take the time to learn all the tools of Autodesk Maya. Just like with other programs and applications, there are many ways to approach the same task in Maya. Also, setting up shortcuts and hot keys will save a ton of time and make your workflow faster. This is very useful especially when working on tight deadlines. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Maya is used widely in the film and tv industry to create animations. Using Maya at work, it's been used mostly to work on commercials. The benefits of using Maya is that it is used widely by many people all over the world so there are many artists and studios that use this. ### 32. Maya review **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** srinivas j. | Production Desktop 3D Artist, Media Production, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 02, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I like the interface and ease for modelling, I started learning modelling with Maya. The options that pop up on clicking space bar, that got me intrigued and especially to check the way the model looks when smoothed with a single click. Animation in Maya is fast and texturing too is simple to unwrap **What do you dislike about Maya?** Modifiers are a little constrained, and I wish there were more options to use, more modifiers could be helpful. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Start with Maya if you want to model characters and want an easy way to learn modelling or sculpting anything hard surface or organic **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I start creating characters or smooth surface object or props using maya to get the proportions and the face right from basic ### 33. Must have for a student learning 3d **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rahul T. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 29, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I love the sheer amount of control the user has over the software, from adding scripts to customizing your workspace and more. Animating is a breeze, modelling being difficult is a thing of the past, and renders look beautiful. There is still a lot more to learn about the software, Maya has tons of features that I haven't tapped into yet. **What do you dislike about Maya?** It's quite complicated to use at first, but once you get the hang of it, there's no other software you'd rather use. It crashes from time to time, but that's only because the computers that I work with at college are quite old and have outdated graphics cards. Beyond this I see no faults while using the software. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Great software for simple modelling, rigging and animating. The way to go for any 3d animator. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Currently, I am just a student learning animation design. As a student, this software has given me the benefit of experiencing the entire animation pipeline, which is a very valuable asset. ### 34. Maya 2012 - 2015 **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Samantha F. | Assistant and Animator, Medical Devices, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I began learning 3D modeling through Maya I've used it from simple character animations to 3D projection content. It's layout is easy to use, clean and visually appealing. It's quick, easy allows plugins to be added with out a fuss is acceptable on many platforms and basically a very good learning tool. **What do you dislike about Maya?** It's not like cinema where your have pre made project files to build on. If you want something quick it's a tad of a draw back as you basically start from scratch. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** It's a hurdle, you need patience, you need to put those hours in but it's worth it in the end. And there are so many other programs that you can use with it. And very few limits. ### 35. Maya is simply the most comprehensive 3D graphics solution out there **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vladimir P. | 3D Artist, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 28, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Maya is simply the most comprehensive 3D graphics solution out there. Whether you are a modeling artist, animator or light&rendering specials, Maya got you covered with a robust set of tools, which are updated with every new release. As a 3D generalist, I am using a variety of Maya's features, in particular - the new Modeling Kit, UV mapping, and seamless integration with many great plugins, such are render systems like Vray and Arnold. **What do you dislike about Maya?** - Weird bugs that occur from time to time, - It would be nice to improve the stability in general, - Steep learning curve. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have been using Maya for many different project in my carrier, such are: - motion pictures and shows specials effects, - game design (asset creation and environment design), - photorealistic product rendering, - abstract graphics, ... Maya is the only software which was capable of digesting even the most comprehensive tasks, like rendering millions of polygons, complex character animations, cloth simulation etc. It usually has all the tools you need, but if not, there are plugins you take advantage of. ### 36. Maya is amazing **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Motion Pictures and Film | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 08, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** The workflow switching between the different areas of maya has just got better and better. Still the best animation software hands down. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Occasionally it crashes when working with animated texture maps, whichever in on a particular project was something we were doing a lot... **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** The best teams of knowledgeable and artistic animators in the freelance pool tend to be maya users, so we've managed to build a strong team whenever we need one for each project. ### 37. It is the industry standard, but not the best software out there. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** José Luis M. | Test Engineering Associate en Accenture, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 25, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Maya has many great tools for animation, 3D modeling and rigging. **What do you dislike about Maya?** It's user interface is horrible and the learning curve is longer than other 3D graphics software. Also, you need to pay lots of money for it, when you could pay less or nothing for other software that does the same as Maya. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Fill yourself with patience. Maya can do powerful things, but it requires a lot of practice and learning before you can even start feeling ok with it. Once you can handle the software with confidence, you will start creating many cool things, but then you will have to deal with mental Ray, which is a raytracing render engine that provides thounsands of options before rendering. When you get there, you will fill intimidated again. Beging changing settings or watching tutorials to see what each parameter does and how it will impact your images or animations. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** 3D modeling and animation. ### 38. The Best tool for modeling, Animation, Movies and Game Assets. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel Mauricio P. | Freelance - Founder & Videogame developer - Desarrollador Unity 3D, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 25, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I like the workflow between Maya, Mudbox and Unity, Maya has all the tools needed to create high quality props, animations and 3D content. The workflow is more quickly than 3Dmax. The interface is easy to understand in a short time, the integration with Mudbox is really good. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Nothing by now. Maya has all the features needed, the new tools they improved will be just plus and more reasons to use Maya. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** If you can use Maya, just use Maya, it's best tool for 3D. If you are not sure, Access to the Autodesk student program and download a free student license for 3 years and test the software by yourself. If you are a Game Developer and needs something less expensive, you cand buy Maya LT, have all the tools needed to create assets for our projects. For High Poly modeling and texturing is better use Mudbox (it has a good integration with Maya), Substance or other painting software you prefeer, and remember use Photoshop or other 2d editor software you like to find the results you want. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** 3d low poly modeling, skinning, rigging, uv mapping, animation, simulation and export content to other softwares, it is an indispensable tools for working. ### 39. Good but not the greatest **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tristan W. | CEO, President, Chairman, Mechanical or Industrial Engineering, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 25, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I like the easy to learn tools, I was a drafter for a while and was trained on Autodesk Inventor. Being Autodesk, the interface is very familiar and nice. I like how easy it is to integrate fluid and fume creations with this software. It's a decent software; its great that Autodesk offers it free to students. **What do you dislike about Maya?** I dislike how slow the work flow is and how little this software is used in todays work environment. Most companies use 3Ds max, which I would recommend. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Please take all your innovations from Maya and implement them into 3Ds Max. Most users are going 3Ds Max and I hate to see Maya fall behind... if you can't beat them, join them. (FYI Maya and 3Ds Max are both owned by Autodesk) **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** This software was great for fluid and fun generations for VFX work... that's about it. Everything else is about average. ### 40. I've used Maya for 5 years for both personal and professional projects **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Zach G. | UX Designer, Marketing and Advertising, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 24, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Maya is an extremely versatile and capable application for professional 3D production. I particularly appreciate its modeling and rendering features. **What do you dislike about Maya?** The sheer size and complexity of this program can be a little overwhelming. The interface seems cluttered at times, and necessitates the use of hotkeys to quickly access the most used features. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Maya is a great product for professional production. It does have a steep learning curve and requires dedication to master. I've used it for 5 years and I still am familiar with only a small portion of the full feature set. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'ved used Maya to model, texture, light, and render characters and environments for animated video productions. ### 41. A good starting point **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Josh W. | Environment Artist, Computer Games, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 26, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Maya has a lot of applications; 3D asset creation, rigging, animation, rendering, and more. It's very proficient at the things it does and all the tools are categorized by function and available in a pop up menu for quick access. **What do you dislike about Maya?** What Maya does well, somebody else does better. There are competing softwares for modeling, rigging, animation and rendering but nothing that has everything in the same package. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Maya is attempting to get back on top again by stealing a lot of the features that competitors include. This is good for Maya and Maya's users as it is constantly updating it's toolset to be more powerful. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** While competing softwares can accomplish a lot, having all of Maya's features in the same package can cut down software costs in a huge way. ### 42. Maya is one of the most important tools I have to make a living. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Junio Luiz O. | Jr Rigger, Animation, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I mainly use Maya for both rigging and animation. Although I have experience using other features (for modelling, rendering, lighting, etc.), most of the things I have to say are about the rigging and animation tools. There's always room for improvement, but for me the software is very good and can handle most of my needs. I'm glad that as time goes buy, Maya interface is getting simpler and therefore easier to read. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Unfortunately, bugs and crashes are still something common with Maya. Everybody has a story of how they lost their work because of some error that occurred while they were using the program, and I'm one of them. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Usually I provide animation and rigging services of props and characters for Tv shows, commercials and games. I work both as a freelancer and an employee. ### 43. Maya is a complete 3D software solution **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anamika J. | Freelance Graphic Designer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 31, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Maya is not just 3D software but it also gives us a quality product on 2D graphics as well. Overall user experience of Maya software has really improved. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Sometimes out of nowhere, some of my objects turn black on the default render view mode. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Maya is a complete 3D software solution for modelling, animation, texturing, rendering and dynamics. Maya is used by film and video artists, game developers, visualization professionals, web and print designers to implement their creative ideas to reality. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Currently, I haven't been gotten opportunity to work for any business projects related to Maya yet. ### 44. Autodesk Maya is a powerful 3D modeling and VFX studio available for productions **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Louay M. | Co-Founder, Animation, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 02, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Maya gives you many features for creating realistic models that interact accurately with their environments. You can add fur and hair to your models that react to physical forces down to per-hair collisions. You can also create realistic cloth, liquid, and particle effects. easily integrate 3D effects into video footage and compose different scenes. **What do you dislike about Maya?** the 2d tools curves and surfaces need to improve . the UI nice but need updates for the time line and add key features on it , adding more presets for shaders and dynamic options .. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Maya gives you all needs and features and tools to make models and animations , VFX such as liquid, particles, 3d effects. its the complete package for your production . **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** creating realistic models and environments . create realistic cloth, liquid, and particle effects. ### 45. Again one of my daily use softwares, mostly depends on the project requirements **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Derek D. | Cg Artist, Animation, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 28, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** the vast nature and the universal acceptance of it, in the whole vfx workflow. **What do you dislike about Maya?** The sluggish behavior at times, and lack of plugins for it. The frequent crashes, and the fact that you can stack modifiers on a model, and go back to edit the lowest primitive, is much simpler than in maya. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Its a bit overwhelming at first with buttons everywhere on the screen, dont get scared, take it one step at a time, youll fall in love with it. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** when it comes to large scale animation jobs this is the go to software for our company. ### 46. a drop on a ocean of opportunities **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Salvador R. | Project manager transportation designer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 15, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I like the best the sun and sky rapid rendering, it´s easy to use and the result looks perfect **What do you dislike about Maya?** I dislike that with that wide range of options I tend to get lost in to the side menus options **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** If you use Autodesk software this is the way to go for your rendering and animation **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** for rendering I came from using keyshot for my quick renders, and when I started house maya the result of my animation, rendering and modeling increased like day and night ### 47. Takes patience to learn, but when you get there it's awesome! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 12, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** Great render results, big range of tools that help you achieve the animation/model you have in mind. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Non user-friendly interface, Crashes a lot, and more if the project is big, takes a lot of time rendering, you need to spend like 30% on the design and 70% on solving problems, the error message it's not easy to understand. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Take your time to understand all the tools and how do they work. Read about good geometry, don't get frustrated, it's a hard software, but at the end you will be satisfied with the work, and when you learn Maya any other program will be easier to understand. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Animation, 3D design ### 48. Great and accessible software but let down with the new subscription service **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 13, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** A powerful piece of software which I've found is a great introduction to the world of 3D modelling. I was taught this in University, however our classes were started off using 3Ds Max, but being a Mac user I quickly migrated to using Maya as it is more powerful and more widely accessible than Max. Honestly, I'm unsure why we weren't taught it from the beginning, seeing as a lot of us were Mac user's and 3Ds Max just seems inferior in comparison. **What do you dislike about Maya?** One of my few beefs with this software is that the rendering process does not assemble animations into a video, instead providing a folder full of images that need to be put together in animation seperately. I was very disappointed to find out that AutoDesk have followed suit with Adobe and switched over to a subscription based service. I strongly disagree with this switch over and I heavily distrust software companies that do it. When I purchase software, I expect to own that software and use it as I please, (even if it is for an elitist price) I don't purchase software to get locked into a contract in which I have to commit to a lifetime payment scheme or the big company will come and take my software away. **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** Before AutoDesk switched to a subscription service, I'd recommend Maya to anyone looking for a great all round 3D package. However now days I would tell you to disregard this product all together and then I would reccomend downloading blender and taking a browse through the tutorials and the forums, its got a great community and a world of resources to learn from. Companies like AutoDesk and Adobe just want your money. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** As I mentioned, I strongly disagree with the subscription switch over and as a result I have stopped working toward purchasing a full version of Maya. Instead I've opted to use the community driven, open source software, Blender. I really like this software and although I've used it little in the past, swearing off Maya, really gave me the chance to get to grips with it, and I've never looked back since. ### 49. Trom review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Individual & Family Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 18, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** How easy it is to nav around Maya, the shortcuts are extremely useful especially when you get into the swing of things with maya. I have been using maya for 5 years now (Studied it in uni) so it is deffo my go to programme. **What do you dislike about Maya?** How much it freezes (however this could be due to poly count). **Recommendations to others considering Maya:** deffo use the pre tutorials available from Maya. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Struggling to work with the poly count as I am creating a film/game. ### 50. An intuitive platform for a pro rigger. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Avi K. | Freelance Maya Tutor, Internet, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2016 **What do you like best about Maya?** I particularly enjoy Maya's node-based structure which facilitates rigging and troubleshooting rigging issues. **What do you dislike about Maya?** Modeling tools are not quite as robust as those of 3Ds Max. I would often fulfill any modeling and UV-mapping needs in Max before importing into Maya to rig and animate. **What problems is Maya solving and how is that benefiting you?** Currently, I am honing my skill with dynamics for hair and cloth. The challenge is avoiding double transforms and keeping everything scalable. Maya makes it easy for a rigger to grasp the logic behind its intricate systems and it has enhanced my problem-solving acumen. ## Maya Discussions - [What is new in Maya?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-new-in-maya) - 3 comments, 1 upvote - [laraib](https://www.g2.com/discussions/49923-laraib) - 2 comments, 1 upvote - [How can I review and beta test the new tools being introduced to Maya 2020???](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-can-i-review-and-beta-test-the-new-tools-being-introduced-to-maya-2020) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Why blendshapes are not working when we export from maya](https://www.g2.com/discussions/why-blendshapes-are-not-working-when-we-export-from-maya) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Is there an easier way I can connect multiple Maya users without a server?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-there-an-easier-way-i-can-connect-multiple-maya-users-without-a-server) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [View Maya pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/maya/reviews?page=5§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-31+05%3A00%3A01+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=d4af47d2-a699-4d36-a52b-697b76ae9361&secure%5Btoken%5D=5c5f99091e8beb186aa952e5a8506d505aa8c980d1ae5a7aa265b9b4e2b8bea0&format=llm_user) ## Maya Integrations - [Adobe Substance 3D Painter](https://www.g2.com/products/adobe-substance-3d-painter/reviews) - [Meshy](https://www.g2.com/products/meshy/reviews) - [Mudbox](https://www.g2.com/products/mudbox/reviews) - [V-Ray](https://www.g2.com/products/v-ray/reviews) - [ZBrush](https://www.g2.com/products/zbrush/reviews) ## Maya Features **Design** - Sculpting - Topology - Drawing - Brush Variety - Effects **Generative AI** - AI Text-to-Image - AI Text-to-Video - AI Text-to-3D **Generative AI** - AI Image-to-Text - AI Text-to-3D **Move** - Animate - Render - Views **Agentic AI - Animation** - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration **Store & Manage** - Pipeline - Controls - Template library **Generative AI** - AI Text-to-Image - AI Text-to-3D ## Top Maya Alternatives - [Unity](https://www.g2.com/products/unity/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (353 reviews) - [Blender](https://www.g2.com/products/blender/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (306 reviews) - [Cinema 4D](https://www.g2.com/products/cinema-4d/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (136 reviews)