how does maya plugin compare to cinema4d/3dmax?

[PiotrAdamczyk]

Hi

I am thinking about buying a Maya Octane license but i dont know how good it is compared to cinema4d or 3dmax's version. Are there any issues? Most importantly, is there a material converter from standard maya materials that works well?

[itsallgoode9]

well..they're redoing the plugin from scratch right now, so it's hard to say till we see the new one. They're supposed to release a beta of it sometime soon but there was no exact date and we haven't heard an update in a few weeks.

In the past, support has been pretty atrocious because the dev was stretched pretty thin, as he was working on multiple plugins. That has left us Maya users pretty pissed, honestly.

Pretty much, I'd say stick with the c4d for now, unless you have a specific reason for needing Maya plugin.

[calus]

Hi
I am thinking about buying a Maya Octane license but i dont know how good it is compared to cinema4d or 3dmax's version. Are there any issues? Most importantly, is there a material converter from standard maya materials that works well?

Indeed there's a function in the shelf to convert maya and mental ray Shaders to octane but this is a very limited conversion.

The Maya plugin used to be very late in development compared to the C4d one and a little behind the Max plugin, also the C4d plugin have a way better integration.

As this was also my concern (and what itsallgoode9 says), at some point I even bought a C4d plugin license, but finally I rarely use/need it:
The Maya plugin is now pretty stable and feature complete, it can be more efficient for production, once you are used to its quirks.
Currently it still has some issues, motion blur for particle instancer is broken, and some important Maya feature are not supported like Xgen and bifrost.
Oh, an important limitation compared to C4d: none of the standard maya procedural textures are supported/prebaked like in C4d.
But as Maya is node based it is closer to Standalone.

About the current state of the plugin, since 3 months we have now a dedicated developer (this was not the case before) and next version of the plugin is currently on a heavy refactoring/development but this is for the best, see here :
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=53709

Finally the best would be to try the last demo version here:
viewtopic.php?f=109&t=53159

[prodviz]

Cinema has been way ahead of the Maya plugin, as far as release (vs3 testing release 4+ months ahead).

Features such as procedural displacement have been in C4D and Lightwave for quite a while.
Procedural displacement was a feature request for the Maya plugin about 2 years ago but we're still not there.

There has been a switch of the lead programmer recently, and only time will tell, how this pans out.
I would have like to have seen at least 2 main programmers on the plugin.

This may all sound pretty negative, but VS2 of the plugin is very stable and usable.

The main issue for me, is that I recently had to put together a rendering solution of hardware and software for a large automotive company.
I could not list Octane as the main render engine, due to the above, along with several other issues, including a general lack of support.

Doing some R&D and testing, I found the Iray for Maya had been released (now direct from NVidia), with a 90 day free trial.
Out of the box, Maya procedurals are supported, along with procedural displacement , faster loading of large data sets etc. etc.

It's a real shame, but I had to recommend Iray for Maya as the software side of the rendering solution.
Had the Octane for Maya plugin been on a par with the C4D version, I could have recommended Octane.

I hope that the new programmer brings the Maya plugin up to date with the other apps.