Maya

Alias Maya is probably one of the best known 3D programs around. Its made a major impact in the feature film area as can be seen by looking through the film credit page here.

Maya is classed as a high end rendering program. By high end I means it can achieve very realistic results, it's not exactly easy to learn and by no means last it's expensive. The version of Maya that I have is Maya 4 Complete. I haven't upgraded to the latest version as it would mean paying the full price again, and the reason I haven't upgraded in the past is due to the cost of upgrading being in the £600 region. This is something to beware of if you are planning to get into using 3D rendering software.

What's it like?

Well it's not one of the top programs for nothing. The user interface is extremely customisable, Things like the hotbox, hypershade, hypergraph ( images above )and channel box are great and once you know what to do with them can help speed up your creativity a lot. As I've already said this is high end stuff so it'll require a lot of learning and patience to master this program. If you do want to give it a go I'd recommend this site for help 3D Buzz. On this site you'll be able to download video tutorials for Maya and you could buy the Maya Fundamentals set. This set costs $249.99 and consists of 82 hours of excellent and very intense Maya training.

Maya Software

There are three Maya packages available.

Maya Advanced £4,899 + VAT
Maya Complete £1,499 + VAT
Maya PLE (Personal Learning Edition) Free Download

The PLE version will give you a good idea of what this program is capable of. But like all PLE's it does carry watermarks on the interface and any final images. There are also restrictions on size for any rendered image and the PLE uses its own file type so that any file created in Maya Complete or Unlimited will not load in it. The Maya PLE version was used for the images at the top of this page.