Which Software is better for Unity Game Making ? Blender or Max

Please Help

 

There is no "better" as both are good for Unity. Both support pretty much all features and it's personal preference which one like more. Blender is free and in that way better for collaboration.

About Max, I'm not sure but nowadays even Maya LT might be better for Unity since it has direct integration and is more designed for game development.

 

The one you are familiar with.

 

Better yet, the one you can afford.

 

Max and Maya are professional software. Therefore, they're better but more expensive. Blender is free. Depending on if you want to drop money or not is how you should make your decision.

By the way, Maya and Max are free if you are a student for non-commercial products.

 

From years of experience I can say - this is not true by default. It may be the case often times but not in general.
Just because something costs thousands of dollars does not make it a better product.

Blender can do things the others can do and vice versa. I see Blenders weakness in the lack of support and especially documentation. Some features grow inconsistent to the rest of the UI. Slap on top of that lack of documentation and it may throw roadblocks your way you did not expect.

Since we're talking games here, anyways I am pretty sure you can achieve the same results in Modo, Maya, Max, Blender and Cinema 4D. How fast you are depends on expereience and preference.

 

Max is hard to use anyway. Very outdated software and some weird concepts here. I'd say go either with Blender or Maya. Blender is certainly capable of making great models since they've made several animated movies with it and one live action with CGI effects done in Blender.

 

This is not necessarily the case. I learned how to use 3DSMax long before I ever touched Blender. But once I got used to the way that Blender handles things, I never went back to Max. I honestly prefer Blender's workflow.

The real consideration is how comfortable you are with the tool, and what it allows you to do. If Blender lacked a feature that your game desperately needs, Max would be the clear choice. And how easily and quickly you can manage a tool directly effects how quickly and efficiently you can produce content. And as any developer can tell you, this is incredibly important to how much you can produce.

The one big difference in terms of commercial vs. non-commercial is more related to those aspects. For instance, 3D Max is not open-source, so you can't alter the program yourself, should you need to. Blender is, and you can. 3D Max isn't free to use, which limits the learning possibility, while anyone can try Blender without cost. These are significant elements when making a decision, but they are by no means the only elements.

 

I had no trouble picking it up in early high school. Blender is definitely a different mentality in controls though and if you're already used to using hotkeys extensively then Blender may be a better choice.

 

You can have more blendshapes on your Blender models than on your Max models ;P

 

that's not only a matter of how you are used to a software .
i'd also rely much more on a company like Autodesk that can provide fast support and upgrade to their products over the years as things evolve , blender evolves with blender community, and this is often much slower...
i'd personnally choose a tool that won't make me waste time on bugs, lack of exporters, lack of plugins etc...
i've seen a lot of guys stuck on cryengine with blender because crytek didn't support blender exporters and plugins enough.

 

A lot of experienced 3D modelers aren't going to be swayed by this particular argument, especially where Autodesk is involved. A different company with a better track record of supporting and improving their products would be more convincing. Autodesk has been a bit monopolistic in their approach to 3D modeling, and honestly a bit of a mess over the previous decade.

The support for Blender in the commercial space is purely up to the developer. Most engines have limited support for Blender because the developers in question usually use major packages like 3D Max and Maya internally. And the 3D modeling suite that your company uses for its own work is always going to get the highest priority. We've seen a little bit of a shift away from this in recent years, largely thanks to the move towards third-party engines like Unity and Unreal. A more general-purpose engine has to be a little more general purpose in the 3D tools it allows for.

 

i agree on most of what you say, but Autodesk is not only for modelers, it's autocad, revit, and all afterFx and editing Tools... some companies also take that in account.

 

you can't just use max or maya anyways... Nowadays you need some other tools to model: 3D coat, Zbrush, mudbox. Some retopo tools ( topogun etc...) and some other texturing tools than just photoshop: quixel suite, substance painter etc... Not sure but i think blender has some high definition modeling tools and retopo as well. if you're used to blender and don't have any money then stick to it. If you plan on joining a studio then be prepared to learn the major 3D packages ( maya, 3Ds max etc...) and the specific workflow of the studio. just my two cent

 

Very true. In all honesty, I would prefer a modeling package that focused much more on modeling, and left a lot of the other functions up to more extensive packages. And this applies to both Max and Blender. Both programs attempt to be so general-purpose that it can be very difficult for beginners to really get to the core of what they're trying to do. You don't need to know about video compositing and post-process shaders if all you're trying to do is get a simple model in-engine.

If some of these tools were a bit more focused, their learning curves wouldn't be so bloody steep. But we have what we have and we deal with it.

Having corporate backing for documentation and support is indeed an advantage. It's part of what makes Unity so keen as an engine. Blender's open nature makes that aspect of it less consistent and reliable. If you need to dig into some more advanced features don't be surprised if some hefty research is necessary.

All the same, I'm grateful that a low-cost alternative like Blender is supported in Unity. I'm more of a hobbyist, and not looking to drop fat loot on a package like 3D Max or Maya.

 

I understand that idea and I agree to a certain extend. Actually especially Autodesk to me are an example of a company I would not want to put my complete trust into. They have become too large, too expensive and have a much, much, much too complicated way of managing their licenses internationally.
In that regard I am a fan of The Foundry and Maxon because they as a company are accessible, in direct contact with their user base and have really fair terms. I also like the software, of course.
Autodesk products on the other hand are just so widespread that nearly everybody supports them first and other products later.
For Blender everybody can integrate their own support if necessary.

In the end everybody will have to find the software for him/herself and I am glad that there is a large market and competition, nowadays. Early 2000 3D software was still super expensive and inaccessible for the normal user. So it's a good thing for everybody that we've got continuing progress.

In that case you should really give Modo a closer look. It started out as a modeler and version 901 seems to bring it again to a whole different level. Look up Tor Frick on YouTube if you want to see what Modo is capable of as a modeler.

 

that's the problem of every successfull company.... stay little means stay accessible, they just made the good decisions and that's why they hold that major part of the market.

but IMO the major mess with Autodesk is that they should really unify their softwares, with the best of each, maya with some max thingies and Max with some maya thingies is just ridiculous.

and yes i still don't understand why Autodesk doesn't offer a solution for real-time content only.... oh wait, yes, i finally understand : because companies will buy the full product a full cost...

years and years ago they did a really nice move releasing Gmax, sadly it was made for a limited number of games and just died....

i'd like to test modo or This : https://clara.io/

but for one man it is difficult to master perfectly all softwares, plus one or 2 engines... so, sticking to max allows me to spend more time Learning unity or cryengine.

 

I still say it's more worth your time to learn Maya or Max than Blender, if you are serious about doing 3D art. If you get really good, your knowlege can actually translate to an industry job. I don't know of any company that uses Blender as their primary modeling software, while basically all of them either use Maya or Max or both. I don't really get the "comfort" argument that people are throwing out, if you are just getting started. No matter which tool, you're going to be uncomfortable by default.

If you need help deciding between the two, Maya is for the most part known for being better for tech (rigging, scripts) and animation, while Max is generally accepted for being better at modeling. Although Maya can model well and Max can animate well, but if you'd rather focus on one or the other that might help.

 

So far I didn't find any bugs in Blender. It's quite stable at the moment.

 

i didn't said "bugs" , blender seems stable to me, i said that when crytek or others work on new plugins or exporters, they fosuc on max and maya first, the, maybe blender, maybe not

 

This. So much this. Blender is made to be used with one hand on the keyboard at all times. Even with the new UI, it's all hotkeys at its heart.

If you can get the hang of it, it [using hotkeys] allows you to model ridiculously quickly.

 

Which is true for Modo as well. Even more so if you assign hotkeys to your most used commands, as well.

 

they are both great products.

 

Personally I'm prone to 3ds Max. Very strong modeling tools and then you've got stuff like Character Studio and CAT for animation.

 

/judgy pants on

Can you even afford Max? Last time I checked it was about $4500.

Personally I prefer max because I've always used it when I needed a 3d tool. Tried blender, but found the workflow clumsy compared to max.

They need an indie version of 3DSMax though... one that is stripped down to what I actually need, and can afford.

 

Pixar would be one, especially since they're using Linux desktops to do all the work and then Linux servers to do rendering.

 

There was one and even free, but they discontinued it back in 00s.

//edit: The name was gmax.

 

At least they tried to get it right with Maya LT, it has decent animation and rigging tools which help. On top of that they've put in some sculpting tools / decent topo and integration with substance designer etc.

I find Maya LT great for my needs, Modo had various things that were sub par. .FBX issues, sculpting tools lacking, Planar / UV mapping a bit daft, lacks proper shader tree and shading model, smoothing groups suck, animation was difficult to figure out. I got into Modo due to the ease of use with box modelling but in the end I found Maya LT SOOO much better bar one issue with camera planes.

Although Modo's cleanup tools and as said box modelling rock.!

Blender is something I could never get into, nothing wrong with it as such I was just quicker with 3DSMax and especially Maya LT.

I've always found Z-brush difficult to work with, the controls and workflow never have and never will make sense to me. I can use it and often do, but it's one of those "odd" tools.. Even though at what it does (Z-remesher) / sculpting etc. it's just damn amazing.

 

An important consideration is how easy it is to learn. Not just documentation but tutorials (unless you're already know how to use 3D content creation apps). Check out what learning resources are available.

 

This is incorrect. Pixar uses their own proprietary software called Renderman. Also Pixar is not a game company, and considering this is a forum for a game engine and the OP was asking which software was best for game dev, the fact that the company was a game company was implied in my post.

 

Thats right. I do vaguely remember gmax.

Indie is a big market now. They should definitely consider a version that is super cut down, and priced accordingly.

 

RenderMan is rendering software, not modeling or scene-editing software. It is used to render scenes that are created in other software packages. I believe that Maya has the best RenderMan support, so it is likely that Maya is the software package that they most commonly use for modeling at Pixar. However, RenderMan is not what they use for modeling.

And as it happens, RenderMan can be used with Blender. (though it is also likely compatible with 3DS Max as well) And a non-commercial version of RenderMan was released by Pixar earlier in the year, so it can now be experimented with by any hobbyist modelers/animators. Go nuts.

 

soooo true! just sounds like an Advanced software with a prehistorical interface

i worked a little with Gmax that had good a MSFS export.

EVERYBOBY wants an "indie LT" version of MAX , why does it just not happen ? that's because :
a company that needs Max just WILL BUY Max... but the most important reason is Autodesk "comprehensive" behaviour about 3dsmax being in the "top cracked" softwares....
did you hear about any agressive autodesk campaign about illegal cracks... no, not yet, not like adobe did...
because they know that someone that will download a copy of max and will learn on it will stay on Max...
and that's exactly why max is on top of 3d packages and why ressources and all kind of plugins are so available.

 

I shouldn't say anything about any of this because I'm terrible with all things art related, but I like blender. If I can envision the bounds of the object then with just shortcut keys and numbers alone I can get a shape going. And if I want some fancy artist touch there is a sculpt mode that works with a multires modifier and I can use 2 levels of my choosing from the multires versions of the model to get a base model & bake a normal map from the higher one.

It's also free, open source, has extensions from the community and it probably has the best name. Hopefully one day EpicGames partners with them just so their name can be 'EpicBlender'.

 

It's fascinating how often these things are discussed every time the quesion pops up. And every time (as I said already) people mostly state their favorite tool as being the best, despite that the same question has been answered so often.
I think the next time a "which 3D software ist the best" thread pops up it shoud be stickied so that the question doesn't get ansered again. Also After 2 - 4 pages it should be locked because everybody probably has pretty much said everything there is to know about all the big programs.

Fact is: ALL the major players can work with all the major engines. The major players right now being Blender, Modo, Cinema4D, 3DS Max and Maya. Most of the lesser known ones probably also play along with the current engines as long as the programs can export obj for geometry and FBX for animations.
Pipeline products like ZBrush, Mudbox or Coat3D play along with geometry but not with rigging and animation.

All the rest depends primarily on the knowledge and preferences of the user and as a clos secondary on project and production pipeline with others (the order or importance can switch in a large company but does not necessarily have to - see Seneca Mennard from id Software and Modo).

The things a program has to be able to in order to work are: Modeling, UVMapping and for characters rigging and FBX export. These are the bare minimums that are necessary to make art for games. Sculpting is a plus and even if the program cannot bake internally (or does not support the correct normal forma) there are external free programs for that as well. That's it. Everything beyond that point makes life easier - and I'm not going to lie: it can make life a hell of a lot easier - but is in most cases not essentially required.

 

Completely disagree, as someone who uses Max and Blender, I much prefer blender

 

Same here. Loopcut makes modeling so fun, you can easily add detail.