OTOY Forums

I am thinking about dipping my toes in the water here and am wondering what modeling software you recommend and why? If this is something I get really into, the goal will be creating photorealistic scenes/environments (indoors and outdoors) and eventually animated objects, all for VR. Learning curve is not an issue, just interface, end results, and overall power/options. Is Maya the way to go?

I am totally ignorant so please excuse me if I didn't ask the right questions or give the right information.

Sounds like you are a beginner. If that's the case, you have the advantage of not being used to any other software, so pretty much you are an empty canvas. Any modelling tool will be the same difficulty for you.
There is no "easy to learn" software, they all are "easy" once you get into it.
Autodesk has a wide lineup of software, Maya and 3DS Max are the most popular, but they are expensive. Although you can try them for free for 30 days, and they are fully functional.
Otherwise you can try Blender. It's free and Open Source, and in recent years has become more and more professional. You can do pretty much anything with it.
The choice is yours, good luck!

I'd recommend either Max or Maya like Rikk has suggested, are you a student? Autodesk offers lots of software for free if you are. Blender is a free alternative that has quite a large following but I've never heard of it being used in industry.

If you were choosing between Max and Maya it can depend on a number of things - what's your end goal? Photoreal interiors/exteriors like you suggested would lead me to think architectural visualization or just architecture in general. If that's the case then 3DS Max is the way to go.

If you've a particular job/company in mind that you're wanting to work for then find out what they use, Maya is common in the games industry but there are still a lot of studios using 3DS Max also.

Animating objects is easy enough in either software but anything more advanced such as character animation tends to favour Maya.

Hope that was some help.

It all depends on the what you are planning to model.
If you are going to do archviz like me , you could use Archicad or Autocad Revit. Others use Sketchup.
I am using Archicad, and that is because it is like custom made for me doing mostly straight forward (Dutch) Archviz. It could have been Autocad Revit as well. It is very architectural (with libraries to make it easy by adding complete models of objects).
Cinema4D is much much better in freeforms, but not too easy to learn.. at least not for me. I did not have a click with C4D as I did have with Archicad... So finding software that suits is another issue, like a coat fits or not. (could just be me though

If I had to start from scratch and were planning to do freesculptural forms for visuals Archicad would absolutely not be the way to go.
I would advise you to look around a lot and find out where your heart belongs... ...go for demo software to find out, look around on different forums (maybe you are already , look at youtube tutorials... and try to find people that are doing now what you want your future to be, and see what software they ar using.

If I were you I first would take a look for the open source software (lIke RIkk suggest Blender) and see if you can do your thing with that... (saves you a lot of money on long term

good luck with your yourney

Thanks guys, lots of helpful info here. I think finding a few videos/stills that incorporate the kinds of things I might like to do, then finding out what they used, is probably the best first step.