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Comment by ashleysmithgpu | Hacker News Reader

Artists at my work still use 3ds max. Despite it crashing every 5 minutes, being slow, having less features, costing infinitely more, having zero support, terrible documentation, compatibility issues... I could go on. I show them blender and they immediately don't like it because the shortcuts are different.

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I've read 3ds max 9 (2006) documentation. It's the best software documentation I've read in all my life. It covers everything from basic to really advanced. I don't know how the documentation is today.

Less features? The only thing I can think of are the advanced topology surfaces that rhino has. I'd argue most people don't need or want those.

What I REALLY dislike about max is the subscription model. It encourages piracy in all but the wealthiest nations worldwide.

But the biggest downside of all is being windows only.

I would say the pricing of MAX encouraged piracy since the beginning.

>the biggest downside of all is being windows only.

I like how nobody ever complains about software that's OSX only, but if something is windows only then HOLY SHIT CALL OUT THE FUCKING CAVALRY

People love Linux, BSD and macOS/OS X in ways they've never loved Windows, that's why.

Most people tolerate Windows. Many are waiting for the day they can get rid of it completely except for this annoying list of Windows-only applications they can't live without.

Different shortcuts are a HUGE issue for me when switching between different products. It made my exodus from Eclipse and Photoshop so much harder and made me come back to both products for a few month. The frustration because of the lost productivity was just too huge.

But maybe there are shortcut profiles for Blender to match 3DS Max?

There are, but I found they don't help much.

I had the same attitude coming in from Softimage but eventually had to bite the bullet because I was screwing up a lot of Blender's workflows just because I remapped a few keys to match SI. But once I'd internalized the default ones (which took a dozen hours), I never looked back.

EDIT: YMMV and it could be different for Max - I haven't used it in a long time, so I can't compare.

Ino summarized most of the points that are good about 3dsmax, but I do believe character rigging for instance, is way easier on 3dsmax. The UI is definitely superior IMHO.

But yeah, it is overpriced commercial software, so you are way better off using Blender in the long run.

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