Maya Unlimited Vs. Softimage XSI advanced?

[LisaBowens]

I'm able to purchase these at a low student price, being a student. I was wondering. Which one is "better" , so to speak.

Which one is more powerful/better effects?

Which one is easier to learn?

Which one is better for integration in games?

Thanks,

-Joe

[GregoryBeard]

Maya has always been king. Maya 8 that is. It supports better hardware too for faster rendering.

[GregoryBeard]

To answer your questions specifically:

Neither package is more powerful or better. The real answer is that they are powerful in different areas and overlap in almost every remaining area. In the early days, Softimage was -the- powerhouse in the animation field. These days Maya has drawn much of the market share. That being said, Avid has done much to improve their product and grow their core market again. Traditionally, one would model in Maya and animate in Softimage. Nowadays it depends largely on the task at hand as the two are nearly equal in features. Having used Softimage XSI for a bit I will say that I personally designed much better then Maya, this is primarily due to the fact that XSI is based on a much newer code base. As a result, features in XSI tend to flow together better and work across the package as a whole. I also feel that XSI's animation system is beyond Maya in certain areas.

Moving on. On the topic of which one is easier to learn, I would heavily favor MAYA here. I type that in caps because Maya is VERY far ahead of XSI in terms of community, books, and dvds. While one interface may appeal to you more then another (which should be a factor), I find that the shear breadth of information on how to do anything and everything with Maya makes it a great place to learn.

As for which one is better in games, this is a hard choice. I would say neither. 3D studio Max is the defacto standard when dealing with game development. This applies both to in game low-res art (hardly 'low res anymore) and high-res CG intros and cut scenes. Yes, Maya and XSI are used game studios but this is on a per studio basis and chances are, every studio you work for will also have 3D studio max.

Of note, both Maya and XSI have made strides to support integration into the game development pipeline but XSI seems to have more recently produced great kits for connecting into current popular engines like CryEngine 2 and Half-Life 2's Source engine.