This is Autodesk's fault - not mental images'. My complaints are restricted to mental ray, which is a beleaguered mess in Maya and isn't well supported like it is in Softimage or Max. But Maya is so large (it's literally 10X the size of Photoshop) that covering every great feature would be impossible. The rigging tools are unmatched and the interactive bind tools in 2012 finally relieve you from painting skin weights manually. I've been a Maya user since version 3 and version 2012 is a great release: the Qt port means it's 64-bit for OS X but it's faster than 2011, which was sluggish to use. layered) but there is no way you can do the same thing in both applications, Maya is just way more advanced and the learning curve is steeper. After Effects: completely different workflows (nodal vs. Maya is not easy to learn - that's why Cinema 4D appeals to other people.
