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One key factor which many commenters seem to be oblivious to is nurbs vs. polygons. Maya in the 90's had excellent nurbs modeling tools which made it specifical

One key factor which many commenters seem to be oblivious to is nurbs vs. polygons. Maya in the 90's had excellent nurbs modeling tools which made it specifically well suited for film work which required highly detailed organic models. 3D Studio Max on the other hand was all about polygons which made it the weapon of choice for video game studios which had to squeeze every last bit of performance from the game engines and PC's of that era. It wasn't until the mid aughts that Maya incorporated sub-division surfaces when it's use really took off in the games industry. Japan as it's often the case was a bit of an outlier as they were a pretty big market for Softimage/XSI. Valve being valve was also a Softimage customer. They even partnered with Autodesk to release a custom XSI version specifically for modding their own games. https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Softimage_Mod_Tool https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Softimage_Mod_Tool

jscheel 4y ago
I still have my boxed copy of Softimage|XSI that I bought when I was a senior in college. It was such a great tool.
- ingenieros 4y ago
  Softimage was so ahead of their time and it's such a shame that they ended up being acquired by Autodesk only to kill it a few years later.
djmips 4y ago
From when I used it, Maya was perfectly fine at doing polygons just as well as 3D Studio Max. It was just a more expensive. That being said Maya didn't come out until 1998 so all the early PS1 games I know mostly used 3D Studio Max. One exception that is well documented is Crash Bandicoot which had an art pipeline using the predecessor to Maya, Alias PowerAnimator running on SGI IRIX workstations with all custom written tools. They even used PowerAnimator to make the levels - not just the character animations.
- ingenieros 4y ago
  I got my introduction to Maya in 1998 at around version 2 if memory serves me right. While it is true that it shipped with some polygon tools they were quite basic and quite subpar when compared to other DCC tools available at the time. I remember when the "edge loop" tool was finally introduced after it had been on 3D Studio Max for ages. The silver lining was MEL which technical artists could use to code up their own tools . This is probably what Naughty Dog ended up doing in the example you provided. Those guys truly broke a lot of new ground with the severe limitations of the tech at the time.

jscheel 4y ago

I still have my boxed copy of Softimage|XSI that I bought when I was a senior in college. It was such a great tool.

ingenieros 4y ago
Softimage was so ahead of their time and it's such a shame that they ended up being acquired by Autodesk only to kill it a few years later.

djmips 4y ago

From when I used it, Maya was perfectly fine at doing polygons just as well as 3D Studio Max. It was just a more expensive. That being said Maya didn't come out until 1998 so all the early PS1 games I know mostly used 3D Studio Max. One exception that is well documented is Crash Bandicoot which had an art pipeline using the predecessor to Maya, Alias PowerAnimator running on SGI IRIX workstations with all custom written tools. They even used PowerAnimator to make the levels - not just the character animations.

ingenieros 4y ago
I got my introduction to Maya in 1998 at around version 2 if memory serves me right. While it is true that it shipped with some polygon tools they were quite basic and quite subpar when compared to other DCC tools available at the time. I remember when the "edge loop" tool was finally introduced after it had been on 3D Studio Max for ages. The silver lining was MEL which technical artists could use to code up their own tools . This is probably what Naughty Dog ended up doing in the example you provided. Those guys truly broke a lot of new ground with the severe limitations of the tech at the time.