Blender and Maya are platforms for creating realistic 3D models of designed objects. Many professional designers and architects worldwide use them, but the question is, which platform should you use for your architectural visualizations?

Both of these architectural visualization platforms have had their updates in 2022. After these updates, many architects may wonder which platform offers more and which update has better features.

We are here to help you decide which of these platforms is better and has more valuable features, following their latest updates.

Blender overview

Blender is free software offering various tools to help you create realistic projects. This tool is excellent when it comes to detail-oriented projects that require precision and coherence. Moreover, it lets you create designs with the exact parameters you will use for building your project.

Blender is a hybrid platform that can use both your CPU and GPU for rendering. This hybrid system enables you to create high-quality projects in no time since CPUs are responsible for precision, while GPUs process data quickly.

Maya overview

Maya is a platform for creating high-quality 3D animations. Professionals in the animation industry mostly use it, including game developers and cartoonists. Architects also love it since they can develop photorealistic designs and objects. You can use various tools on this platform to contribute to your project’s overall atmosphere.

Like Blender, Maya focuses on details contributing to your project’s big picture. Thanks to its hybrid system of CPU and GPU, you can create different scenes in no time. You can also create breathtaking simulations of real-life elements such as waterfalls, snowfalls, etc.

Modifiers in Blender

The Blender platform consists of various modifiers that enable you to design and automatically bring your 3D objects to life. Thanks to those modifiers, you won’t have to manually add all the details to your projects. Additionally, these modifiers won’t destroy your object’s initial look but will contribute to its realistic feel.

These modifiers are easy to use and edit; you only have to select the one you want from the control panel and activate it. You can also choose specific areas of your project where you want to apply your modifier, and the software will do everything else for you.

Editing these modifiers is easy, too; the tool will present you with the options you can edit, and you can swipe them to create an object according to your preferences.

Maya polygon modeling

Polygon modeling is not something you would usually find on 3D visualization platforms. However, Maya makes the modeling process easy and seamless.

Polygon modeling consists of straight geometry shapes with three or more angles that can help you model any object in no time. This type of modeling mainly serves to create faces and figures you will animate later.

To create the most accurate projects, you can use a combination of polygon models called a shell. By combining more than one polygon model, you can create complex objects that will be as realistic as possible in 3D.

Moreover, these shapes and models will help your objects properly move once you animate them, which can help those who want to develop a game or a cartoon. You can truly create an animation that will be as close to the real world as possible.

Latest updates in Blender

The newest update on Blender was on September 7, 2022. This new version, called 3.3 LTS, offers various new features that meet the needs of modern designers worldwide. The 3.3 LTS version primarily focuses on giving objects a new dimension and enabling designers to handle them more easily.

In the latest update, Blender has presented some significant new features: Hair We Go, Sculpt It, UV Unwrapping, Light, Shadow, and Contour, Fast Line Art, new geometry Nodes, etc. All these new features enable you to create your projects faster than ever with Blender. You can also focus on the details, such as hair, and sculpt your objects the way you want.

Maya updates

The latest Maya update, called Maya 2023, features all the different tools that enable you to handle your visualization process much better.

Since Maya is a relatively new platform, it has had some malfunctions in the past, but the latest version promises to fix all of them. Moreover, it has been reported that Maya will work 30 times faster than before the update.

Although Maya hasn’t released many new features, those already on the platform have been significantly improved. That implies that you can have better retopology tools and better Boolean tools.

When it comes to new features, Maya offers Deformers updates that can help you create more symmetric objects and adjust details easier.

Pros and cons

Blender

Pros:

• Hybrid system
• Beginner-friendly
• Free of charge
• Various valuable tools

Cons:

• Loading problems
• Only compatible with newer PCs
• Not many tutorials available

Maya

Pros:

• Fast processing
• Many animation tools
• Plugins
• Saving projects as readable text

Cons:

• Pricey
• Not beginner-friendly
• Some features may fail to load

Which one to choose?

Both of these platforms have different uses in the visualization world. However, you can create almost anything using Maya or Blender as your visualization platform. Since Maya is a relatively new platform, we must say that people trust Blender more.

If you must choose between these two platforms, we recommend using Blender over Maya. Blender has way fewer bugs and problems and is free of charge. With this tool, you can create anything you might imagine.

However, Maya is a better option for those who want to add animations to their projects since it has various tools to make that possible.

Overall, both of these platforms are excellent for architectural visualization, but the stability and reliability of Blender might be better than Maya’s. Hopefully, we will see Maya with fewer bugs and more features in the future.

Conclusion

If you want to express your creativity using visualization tools, you may wonder what the best platform to do so is. This in-depth comparison of Blender and Maya, solutions that have engrossed many worldwide, might push you in the right direction. Both will help you create realistic projects, but Blender might be more reliable than Maya, especially since Maya is newer software.