Maya had a popular (on SGI) predecessor called Wavefront (at least the company was called that, but IIRC it was also the name of their 3d modelling/animation product), the company Wavefront was then aquired and merged together with Alias Research (PowerAnimator) by Silicon Graphics into a company called Alias|Wavefront, which then created Maya from scratch, but Maya took a lot of inspiration from Wavefront (and PowerAnimator I guess).
As far as I remember, 3DSMax was still an outlier throughout the 90's, but it quickly gained popularity in the PC game development scene because it also ran on PC and didn't require a separate investment in SGI workstations or beefed up Amigas (and I guess the rampant software pirating on PC in the 90's also played a role to make 3DSMax popular).
As far as I remember, 3DSMax was still an outlier throughout the 90's, but it quickly gained popularity in the PC game development scene because it also ran on PC and didn't require a separate investment in SGI workstations or beefed up Amigas (and I guess the rampant software pirating on PC in the 90's also played a role to make 3DSMax popular).