For actual productivity, absolutely. (AliasWavefront) PowerAnimator is worth messing around with just to try to figure out why it was the best leading up to Maya. Compare it to old Lightwave, 3dsDos/3dsMax, Rhino -Blender is not considered at this point in time- Cinema 4D was good though. But when it came to 3D software the release of Maya actually made everyone its bitch. Maya had that moment where one second you accept the status quo, this is how things are done, and the next you make fart sounds with your mouth because it's so obvious, it's so natural, designers of the every other program must have been idiots to not have done it this way in the past.
To put that into context I think games like Halo, COD4 or GOW gave the same "yeah, duh" impression of having something that completely unknown and and suddenly obvious and natural, or maybe the smart phone in general integrating everywhere. Maya just changed things in so many ways. In my opinion it truly made it available for artists. Editors for game engines like Unreal and Unity are now similar to what Maya was over 20 years ago.
In college a few 3D modeling programs were available to me, primarily 3D Studio Max and Alias (moving into Autodesk, who bought them during my college days) Maya. I tried to get 3DS-Max down
I really tried, but man Maya was just so more intuitive. I was in a program that had many outcomes, but the one I was most interested in was going into the games industry (I never did, because as I got older and really looked at the working conditions, I was kind of scared off by the fact that you have no upward mobility, perpetual crunch to the point where big places like Blizzard had on site laundry, meaning
they'd wash your clothes on site if you just fucking stayed at your desk working, art slave, and the like) and 3DSMax in those days was really the tool to do game modding and proper skinning and the like. Like it had a pelting tool while Maya
didn't, and better export into [insert game engine] options, if you didn't want to brute force it with .objs and crying softly into your lap while doing all the rigging again. I think XSI had some similar export tools, especially for the Source engine, but anytime I tried to produce something I knew was going into a game engine, even for fun, the hassle of getting it to work almost made it not worth the efforts if I was using Maya (which I was, because, ugh, 3dsm, your interface, I can do this thrice as fast in Maya.)
I was aware of XSI and Cinema 4D, but without easy student licenses supported by the university, or professors familiar with the software, I never pursued those paths. Blender as a free option existed, and even a few students made projects using it I remember, but its interface too wasn't Maya's (Left Mouse Button, the thing you use most of the time, sets the 3D cursor, something you almost never want to use ever? Why....?) And it was still in that "we're up coming but not a real alternative solution to industry standards" kind of thing. Like GIMP vs Photoshop. Awesome its free, but man, you need results and you need them now, can't be fucking around with this half-baked software.
After college my 3D modeling skills kinda degenerated, I tried for like, 6 years to keep them up, but no work that required it came along, and the cost vs piracy vs the headaches of piracy vs the "I can't claim its education I'm not a student they genuinely could fucking sue me into the bedrock if I somehow got caught using this key professionally" eventually means I stopped updating Maya, and eventually I didn't want to fuck with my 2008 version anymore, since it had all these problems modern versions (such as the skinning pelt tools) had fixed.
Blender 2.8 finally coming around to that "Maya-esque wow this makes sense" interface finally brought me back. I tried a few times in the intervening decade, but it never stuck before the 2.8 update. I'm trying now to rebuild those skills, mostly for fun.
Too Long; Didn't Read Boomer Rant: Totes know what you mean by that "Maya came along and made an interface that gave artists the ability to actually work" thing, I fucking lived it.
