[bjames]

I’m curious what others opinions are on what they feel is the best version of Maya for Irix.  I know this may be an open question, but I hoping that anyone who may have used Maya from v1 to v6.5 on sgis may have an opinion of what was the best overall experience when blending stability/reliability, interactive performance and feature list.

It kind of like what AutoCAD version (in the 90s) was the best and worse, for me best is R14 and worst was R13.

[indigofan]

Version 6.5 has a much improved and FASTER rendering engine which had been optimized from PowerAnimator days. There are also a bunch more complex modeling and animation features that are available to leverage also along with Live, Fur and Hair, which are possible with plugins on earlier versions. Some of which can be accomplished in earlier versions by working around limitations in previous versions. An example would be animating a shader which can actually take keyframes that have to be fudged in earlier versions. If you are looking for Renderman compatibility, I think that V3 or V4 are the best as well as direct integration with Composer and StudioPaint when the options are installed.

[bjames]

To be honest, any version is better that what I used to use when I did a lot of 3d renderings (architectural) and other animated visualizations using 3d studio R2 up to 3ds Max v7 ( last version I upgraded to) and AutoCAD R12 to 2010.

So all the Maya and PA would be a learning experience, more of figuring out how to translate my knowledge of 3D studio to Maya, PA and softimage.

Since Maya 6.5 was released in 2005, it’s assumed to be at least on par or better than 3dsmax r7 that was released over a year previous. Not sure, I will have to figure that out.

[indigofan]

To be honest, any version is better that what I used to use when I did a lot of 3d renderings (architectural) and other animated visualizations using 3d studio R2 up to 3ds Max v7 ( last version I upgraded to) and AutoCAD R12 to 2010.

So all the Maya and PA would be a learning experience, more of figuring out how to translate my knowledge of 3D studio to Maya, PA and softimage.

Since Maya 6.5 was released in 2005, it’s assumed to be at least on par or better than 3dsmax r7 that was released over a year previous.  Not sure, I will have to figure that out.

Can't help there, was using Mac's before SGI's, I used Electric Image a bunch, never really touched 3DS Max.

[vishnu]

I think people who paid for the Maya 6.5 upgrade felt universally ripped off, in fact a lot of them said it had so few improvements that it should have been a free release. That said, since Maya 6.5 Unlimited is now a free download, which works perfectly on Irix with the hax-force license, and Autodesk doesn't care anything about it (trust me, I called them, the sales rep I spoke with had never even heard of Irix), why would anyone want to use anything else? 😛

[bjames]

Hahaha…. I read the same thing from a computer graphics magazine review saying the same thing about the 6.5 upgrade. But you are absolutely right… 6.5 with all the bells and whistles on a fully loaded octane 2… why not… Lol. If it was good enough for dreamworks,….

[gijoe77]

I recall people saying v4 or 4.5 was pretty good also for SGI, but I forget what their reasoning was - I think it also depends on what plugins are available - I haven't really come across too many plugins though, but I seem to recall Arete Digital Nature Tools worked on v3 and v4. Not sure if anything is available for anything higher.

I decided to just install all the Maya versions