Doom III animation

[bootlegtrader]

I have seen/heard/read interviews with the game designers, and they keep mentioning doing their animation in a program called (my-a)? I know how to pronounce it, but what is the name of the program? (how is it spelled) Anyone use this program?

[HateFactor]

It's called 'Maya', and no I stick to Lightwave. ^_^

[Alientank]

Is Maya basically the premium animation program? And is it hard to use?

[Lord FlatHead]

I installed my l33t haXerXored copy of Maya two weeks ago but I haven't done too much with it. It looks a bit more complicated to get into than 3D Studio Max, but basically it's the same thing.

[EVIL]

maya is used for almost any game these days for 3d animation. maya is the king for modeling and animation.. and its quite hard 2 learn and all.. i dont know.. i currently use max 5.. i dont know. the poly tools are shitty in max.. so i think i will go with maya once i buy a new pc for doom3.

[Zaldron]

Maya is the industry standard because the original programs from Alias and Wavefront were the only thing that worked on those old workstations. So pretty much all the CG companies at the time decided to "upgrade" after the A|W merge instead of buying something new.

Maya is nice and all, but its not like its vastly superior to MAX or Lightwave. The only thing going for Maya is price, the NURBSs modelling and all those extra plugins.

Contrary to Hammer-stroke's comment, Max5 poly modelling is amazing, while Maya's kinda drags in this aspect.

Again, the only reason why practically every other package has a bad reputation in the movie industry is because its not the "standard".

And no I am not pulling this out of my ass, it comes from a similar discussion held innumerable times on CGTalk.

[EVIL]

hmm.. i just tryed lightwave @ a friends house.. and its great.. very nice poly tools.. maby i will go with lightwave..

[DaJuice]

What Zaldron said. Max's poly tools are some of the best around now.
I prefer to do all my poly-modeling in Houdini though, hmmmm procedural workflow:)
And maya is not used to do the majority of game animations. I'm pretty sure max is still more widespread in games than maya.

[BNA!]

HAMMER-STROKE said:

hmm.. i just tryed lightwave @ a friends house.. and its great.. very nice poly tools.. maby i will go with lightwave..

ALL Doom3 modelling is done with lightwave:
http://forums.newtek.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?2/36327

Since the guys from Raven Software (Quake4) are hanging around at NewTeks forums also, you can guess that they work with lightwave also.

If you want to buy a tool, Lightwave offers you the best bang for the buck. The modelling tools are just great and the renderer is among the best (some people from the MAYA front consider Lightwave as their render-plugin for MAYA)

For animations: You will need a program able to export ma or mb files (= MAYA ASCII or Binary).
Lightwave doesn't offer this, but I'm sure id software will allow you to use Gmax or MAYA ple to animate.

[LorD BaZTArD]

No, that's not quite right, Lightwave can be used, I don't know where this guy gets his info that it is ALL being done in lightwave. I understood that most of ID where using MAYA, but lightwave was usable as well.

[BNA!]

LorD BaZTArD said:

No, that's not quite right, Lightwave can be used, I don't know where this guy gets his info that it is ALL being done in lightwave. I understood that most of ID where using MAYA, but lightwave was usable as well.

He is correct and you understood it wrong.
Modelling = Lightwave
Animation = Maya

He get's his info from, well, id software - he's the Lightwave product manager.

But if you've really read the post, you have noted that at no time other programs got excluded from the workflow.
The fact that Lightwave is used for modelling doesn't mean you can't use other programs.