A friend of mine wants to get into 3D Animation for the gaming industry - but I'm no animator. I use 3D Studio Max, and, while I know the program well, I'm not so informed on the animation side of the program. I also hear Maya is better for 3D Animation, but I've never heard an actual reason why. Now I want to put my friend off to the best and friendliest start, so what would you guys recommend?

Getting him off to the friendlist start would probably involve a much easier to use package, as both 3DS Max and Maya are (as you are aware) rather complex pieces of software. I'm a Maya user now, but I used Rhino before hand and the tutorials are superb for learning how to model. The downside to Rhino is that it is NURBS focused, so it isn't the best to actually develop games with, it simply has a great learning curve I think. It has a pretty big file format support as well, so you can export out whatever you model in Rhino to 3D Studio Max or Maya. With a student license at $200, it is hard to beat, really. A program like anim8tor (which is free) wouldn't be bad to start off with either.

That being said, I'm using Maya now and I love it. I can't really say if it really is better than 3D Studio Max, but it certainly is different.

[Edited by - zer0wolf on April 11, 2006 8:24:58 AM]

I can model, texture, and animate in both programs, and I have to say I like Maya more in all respects. 3ds does have the edge in poly tools, but Maya's overall interface is nice enough that it makes up for it. Max has the edge in a couple areas:
Binding, it is about the same to actually paint weights in both programs, but 3dsmax lets you modify the Skin alot more after the fact, which is very nice.
Biped. If you are using motion capture especially (.bip files preferably, otherwise .bvh), there's nothing better. Biped is really a tremendous time saver for games. Its not as customizable as many film riggers like, but since game rigging is much simpler, it fits the bill and then some. Its worth it to learn max's Biped even if you do all the rest of your stuff in Maya if you are going to do animation.
Support. Because max is written in DirectX, and Maya in openGL, the former has much better connectivity and exporting to games written in DirectX. This is especially important if you need to write your own 3d format (or a programmer does, more accurately).

It won't really matter in the end. If you know one program well, the learning curve to get to the same level in the other is no more than a couple months, especially if you customize your shortcuts and UI to make them similar.

If your friend is starting out, I'm going to say 3ds, simply because so many homebrew and hobbyists use it, if you work on a mod or whatnot it'll allow greater interconnectivity. If he gets serious, and isn't happy with 3ds, switch over to Maya. But either one and you can't go wrong.