Quote: "only if you know what your doing Raven those coming from milkshape will easily be put of by the look of Maya and then not touch it is it looks intimidating to a 3D noob, MEL's nice I use it a lot to swap out images and create custom shelf buttons and set up lights and remember maya is all MEL every command you can use in Maya is MEL meaning that everything can be scripted by the user "
I don't believe that, most people comming from Milkshape will generally be put off by the fact that there isn't as many 'tutorials' readily available on google. Not that anyone bothers to try the actual Alias website, which has a bunch of tutorials.
The UI has nothing really intimidating about it, certainly not compared to 3D Studio Max or Softimage|XSI. So whichever you choose, you will be having to learn something new.
As for MEL, yes it is nice... provided you can use it.
The language IS NOT simple to pick-up and play with. Just like C which it's based on, it isn't just intimidating but extremely problematic to anyone who has no idea of what they're doing.
It is definately not something you just use on the 'off-chance' to do minor jobs either. It doesn't provide you with "every command you can use in Maya", what it does is provide you with the scripted commands based around the Maya Engine.
Every Single Command in Maya, is basically a MEL Script.
The fact you can interop with the other Scripts to produce more and more complex things is beside the point as a whole, the real functionality of MEL comes from it's commandset.
I use it most of the time tied into Renderman to create shader, custom binds/skins, variations on tools current available, etc.
It certainly isn't something you generally use all the time, just when you need it to achieve something that isn't possible from the Point'n'Click Options.
In that is where Maya stands out though, because most tools have a very large mirade of options attached to it; providing you with an extremely versitile tool right out of the box.
