Autodesk offers Maya, a 3D animation, modeling, simulation and rendering tool available to artists, animators, and educators, used to create realistic characters, models, and scenes, as well as effects such as explosions, cloth movement, etc.
$234
per month
FreeCAD
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
FreeCAD is an open-source CAD software that specialized in 3D design. New features are added to FreeCAD by an active community of developers.
N/A
Pricing
Autodesk Maya
FreeCAD
Editions & Modules
Monthly
$235
per month per user
Yearly
$1875
per year per user
3-Year
$5625
3 years per user
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Autodesk Maya
FreeCAD
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Maya is also available through Autodesk's Flex plan and pricing. Tokens expire 1 year from date of purchase. Not all products and features are available with Flex. Students and teachers at qualified academic institutions worldwide are eligible for free access to Autodesk software for one-year through the Autodesk Education Community.
Autodesk Maya is a great software, it has so many tools that you can create a full movie without even jumping to any other software. Although it's pretty hard to learn but there is nothing more fun, once you get a hang of it. In general, its tools are best for modeling and animation.
I see FreeCad as the perfect solution for a startup with limited resources that want to save as much as possible and doesn't mind using non-standard 3D CAD software, i.e., it's not required by customers to use specific software for compatibility. It's perfect for hobbyist use and makers who don't care about brands and pay monthly fees. I see it as very well suited for small businesses that need FEA (finite element analysis) and can't/don't want to pay huge amounts of money for it, just like us. I see FreeCad as less appropriate for big corporations or well-established businesses that need standardized solutions, compatibility with clients or good version management. Don't get me wrong, it can get the job done, but it will be much slower than state-of-the-art CAD systems.
Right now Maya has no good viewport like Blender 2.8 has. It is good that Maya 2019 devs focused on performance and stability but it's strange to see that mainstream soft aren't on trend in developing really cool and helpful tools.
Maya LT is very good for artist who don't need complex FX tools. So the devs must add python API to Maya LT.
Add more helpful tools to modeling section especially for retopology.
As Autodesk Maya was one of the first softwares I learned, so I feel very fun to work with it. The overall usabilty feels very natural to me and I felt it's easy to learn but tough to master kind of software. Some people find it very difficult to learn, so I deduced some rating points.
Usability is awkward. Perhaps if you learn it as your first CAD, it will feel OK. Still, it comes from commercial CAD products like mine (Onshape, Solid Works, Inventor, Solid Edge). You will feel it is less intuitive, with a less polished UI, difficult to customize and, this is a subjective one, less serious. I'd love to see it improve the usability and UI. I believe the engine behind it is powerful, but how you interact with the software is still lacking.
We were evaluating the products within the Adobe portfolio like Adobe Animate, Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe After Effects majorly among few others before finalising on the Autodesk Maya. One of the major reasons for that was earlier experience with the Autodesk Maya tool for the engineer and also it has more to offer than Adobe with multiple products.
Freecad is used often when receiving files from multiple sources and the need to work with cad in various forms from meshes to solid cad. Often when receiving scans of 3d objects the format is easy to work with and convert to traditional cad later on. There is no other cad that can bridge the gap between all the cad formats that we found yet.
