Maya vs Unity

Baring in mind I didn't work with Unity as much as I did with Maya for this module, I decided to take a moment to reflect on the differences, generally the benefits and drawbacks I was able to pick out.

When it comes to animating, Maya I felt is superior and that seems to be the consensus amongst most people. I recall how adjusting the camera seemed to be a more complex job in Unity than it is for Maya, and that complicated scripts are apparently required to make objects move on their own.

However, it was useful that sound files in .aiff format could be dropped straight into Unity. Also, we didn't need to spend many hours rendering it and editing it in Final Cut.

I made my animations with many different cycles which I felt was more more efficient than manually animating each scene; although it did mean some planning and confusion followed placing my characters and their cycles in the scene until they could be sorted out accordingly. For example the character would often be dragged to one location but end up elsewhere when the scene is played because the character moves, whereas at other times it displays where the character moves to, rather than where he starts off. It took a fair bit of fiddling to get it right, but the benefit is, it made it very easy to make the necessary changes and re-export it.

When it comes to environments though, Unity is a powerful tool in terms of it's lightning and particle effects, which would be a much more complicated job in Maya; and the scripts, whilst they can be a drawback by making things complicated, are actually a great asset. The lighting in the second scene in particular I think is very impressive (that would be Andy's handiwork I think as he handled the environments).

Until this point there seemed to be little difference or point to exporting it to unity, as it still looked like a Maya animation to me, though that might have just been because I felt more comfortable working with it because I had done it before. Expanding my horizons in this module by introducing Unity and Maya for animation has made me realise that whilst they both have their areas of specialization, they are equally potential when it comes to producing animation.