The dog's golden nads (Maya Unlimited 2.5)

Member Name: drbanner

Product:	Maya Unlimited 2.5
Date:	04/04/01 (179 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very Very power tools, brilliant naviation system.

Disadvantages: Can be overwhelming at first because of the huge range of options.

If ever there was a King of 3D animation then Maya would be it.

The depth of the program is VERY intimidating for even the most experienced artists, but once you go through the excellent tutorials then whizzing around the screen becomes second nature with a combination of ALT-SHIFTS-CONTROL-SPACEBAR keys and a 3 button mouse; it definately beats the current 3D favourite "3D Max" hands down in this field.

You can build anything using it's simple polygonal or nurb building system. On the surface the tools look just like any other 3D app, but select a sub-menu for a tool and you soon realise that you really have to dig deep down to reach full depths of the tool.

This is where problems can arise...sometimes you just want to build simply geometry but the complexity of Maya can get in the way. For example, I haven't figured out a simple way to create polygonal text which going through half a dozen options.

Once you get over the hang of the tools and learn that Maya isn't as overwhelming as you thought when you first began, you will understand why the big boys like ILM and Pixar use Maya as their workhouse.

Summary: