3D Programs

[ddp]

Can someone Prep me on these 3D programs? I mean there are so many of them: Maya, 3D Studio, 3D Max, Swift 3D, LightWave etc.

I am so confused.

[WMLeeBo]

1st-3d studio and 3d max are the same thing,

Correct name= 3ds Studio Max, yes with the "s" on 3d.
This prog is made by discreet and sells for about 3,500 us dollars. It the best in MY OPINION. http://www.discreet.com

Maya is a lot cheeper but not nearly as nice.

Swift 3d dosent make 3d is just takes 3d stuff from max or other 3d progs and converts it to Flash Vector Animation.
Swift comes in a Standalone and Plugins for several 3d progs. http://www.erain.com

Some Swift look alikes are
Vecta 3d- http://www.vecta3d.com
Illustrate! 5.1 http://www.davidsomething.com, not sure last name

Then lighwave is pretty much the same as max but totally different and its make by Newtek http://www.newtek.com

[ddp]

Thank you! Correct me if I misinterpreted, so basically LightWave, Maya and 3Ds Studio Max make 3 dimensional objects. To use in Flash I would have to bring them into Swift 3D which renders these objects into swf files which are usable by Flash and then I can rotate, fade,tween these 3d rendered objects?

Originally posted by WMLeeBo
1st-3d studio and 3d max are the same thing,

Correct name= 3ds Studio Max, yes with the "s" on 3d.
This prog is made by discreet and sells for about 3,500 us dollars. It the best in MY OPINION. http://www.discreet.com

Maya is a lot cheeper but not nearly as nice.

Swift 3d dosent make 3d is just takes 3d stuff from max or other 3d progs and converts it to Flash Vector Animation.
Swift comes in a Standalone and Plugins for several 3d progs. http://www.erain.com

Some Swift look alikes are
Vecta 3d- http://www.vecta3d.com
Illustrate! 5.1 http://www.davidsomething.com, not sure last name

Then lighwave is pretty much the same as max but totally different and its make by Newtek http://www.newtek.com

[WMLeeBo]

umm... 99.9 percent right, When you render the object in swf it is no longer 3d it is just 2d but with the animation of rotation in max each 2d frame makes the whole object look 3d

[St= Z]

WMLeeBo is basicly correct but I feel I should reiterate some points and maybe a correction or so..

Maya is far more expensive than 3ds Max and (Maya complete=10,000 Maya unlimited=15,000, WMLeeBo must be talking about the education version) and is definately considered more professional and high-end, maya has the strongest nurbs and nurms modelers is often the base for feature length animated films and high end animation (Monsters Inc, Final fantasy etc etc).

Lightwave is known to have the best "renderer" Which Is why it is usually the 3d package featured in commercials, Its a little more different than Max and Maya are from eachother (hard to explain unless youve used it) anyway its not as popularly used but it definately has a nitch and is capable of very convincing realism. (News cast station identifications, commercials etc)

3ds Max probably has the widest tool set and is the most intuitive to learn, plus its the cheapest (okay so "cheap" is relative), this makes it extremely popular with users like you and me, Max has vast array of features in everything, most notably (to me) is how many different modelers it has (Primitive, Mesh, Poly, Patch, Spline, NURBS, NURMS) Although other packages usally include most of these, they dont go in-depth with all of them like Max (Maya focuses on NURBS etc).

This isnt to say that they dont use MAX for commercials and they dont use Maya for video games, but with a little investigation I think you will find the above a good generalization of the sentements for these packages.

All-in-all I would recommend Max. Its a very long road to creating high-end 3D and Max can take you 99.5% of the way there, its only at the very top do they distinguish themselves. Plus Max has many more built-in features.

Flash is a whole other story, IMHO there is no program that has enabled half-way reasonable 3d in flash.

[WMLeeBo]

Hey St thanks for the correction I learn something new everyday!

[theMatrix]

On the subject of very minor corrections, the 'correct' name is 3DS MAX (no Studio), changed by Discreet for R4. Maya Unlimited is $16K (street price) plus an annual maintenance fee.

Despite the quality of LW's renderer, it's used for modeling and animation in broadcast/film. Rendering is generally done with Mental Ray or Renderman. The recent release of LW, version 7, is quite impressive.

While Maya was used to some degree in Monsters Inc., the bulk of the work in that flick was done with proprietary Pixar SW. Maya Unlimited was used as the base package for FF.

You would want to round out MAX with Character Studio, Reactor, and probably Thinking Particles to get a reasonable base. Really depends on what industry you want to work in.

good luck!

[FreeToys]

Another program that has a lot of loyal users is
Cinema4D XL7

It sells for $1700

http://maxon.net

It's the system that I decided on and I am very happy with it.

[Black_phoenix]

Hi, on the lightwave front they are working on a new package designed as a games making tool, to compete with max looking forward to seeing it...

i've worked with max and lightwave in the games industry

i much prefer lightwave for modelling

depends on what u want i suppose

good tool to know about

polytrans

http://www.okino.com (i think)

exports all sorts of file types

eg .3ds will export it to .lwo (lightwave object)

another good site is

http://www.flay.com

lots of 3D stuff to see and learn

good hunting

bp

[Tamsin]

Y'all forgot Softimage XSI, which is sort of mid price between Max and Maya (though more towards the Maya end of things), and, with Mental Ray, has by far the best renderer.

Maya is v good overall and widely used in the industry at the moment, but expensive, and the renderer is appalling. (dunno where WMLeeBo got the idea that it's cheaper than Max and inferior. It's high-end,and v pricey. Easy mistake to make though, as there's so much 3D stuff floating about these days it's getting confusing)

Lightwave - you'll need Messiah if you want to do any serious animation with this - but if not....

Max 3dDS probably the best bet if you want an overall bargain.

Plus, it's a good programme to know anyway, jobs wise. It's nearly all Max & Maya at the moment.

Good luck, and have fun!!

[St= Z]

Good point Tasmin. It seems to me that maybe SI is starting to fall from grace when Maya gained a stronger foothold, and Avid started restructuring? But then again I might be totaly wrong..

While on the sunject Houdini is another alternative, with a heirarchy-layer based render, its used for commercials like Dodge Cars among others..

[theMatrix]

Houdini is also well-known for its particle systems. It was used for a couple shots in 'The Matrix,' (mirror scene and the 'bug' placed in Neo's stomach). Probably the most expensive of the bunch, running about $23K the last time I got a quote

[Tamsin]

Originally posted by St= Z
Good point Tasmin. It seems to me that maybe SI is starting to fall from grace when Maya gained a stronger foothold, and Avid started restructuring? But then again I might be totaly wrong..

As I heard it from someone who worked at Avid, this is (very roughly) what happened:

Bill Gates got his mitts on Softimage in order to show off that he could port a high-end 3D package on to a Windows Platform.

So he did that, and threw a lot of lavish parties to celebrate, whilst completely ignoring the development side of things.

Then when he'd finished proving that he could do that, he left Avid flat on it's face, with nothing to show for the whole thing except a massive hangover! Meanwhile, Maya's rushing ahead with new versions.

Even Avid's most loyal customers get fed up with waiting for Soft to catch up. So eventually, they release XSI (missing some essential tools, and full to the brim of irritating bugs, as anyone will know who used v 1.0).

Well over a year on, and XSI v 2.0, is great. But unfortunately, it's a bit late, and they've lost a lot of customers to Maya.

This is what I heard, anyway.

If I were them, I'd have at least tried to have got a hold on the Mac market, but Maya got in there first as well.

It's a bit sad really, especially as Softimage was one of the 'pioneering' 3D packages back in the days of Terminator 2 etc.

Hope business picks up. We use Soft at our company, and earlier versions have been problematic, but I think it's excellent now, overall.

[alberto sejas]

... i find cinema 4D great too. Do you work with PC or Mac?

[busbyj]

Tansin: You are very close! Softimage XSI 2 is really a nice program - in fact, it is pulling ahead of the group. As you said, they have lost a lot of customers. The road to recovery is long - but they have claimed that the pace is picking up quick!

The built-in compositor is just beautiful... and I've not yet seen anything that comes close to XSI's Animation Mixer. If they are careful, I don't think it'll take them long to be back on top. But they need to be careful... Alias|wavefront announced that they are going to be offering a special version of maya (called Learning Maya) for FREE. This will be a full version of Maya Complete - it will not be crippled as far as features are concerned. To protect themselves, they are doing two things: There will be a watermark over all rendered images and the format that you save to will not be a standard Maya format. Also, commercial plug-ins will not be usable. You can find more info here if you are interested: http://www.aliaswavefront.com/freemaya

Well, I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in.

Take care,

Jason Busby
Lead Author - Mastering the Art of Production with 3ds max 4
Certified Discreet Instructor
Certified Alias|wavefront Instructor
Certified Softimage Instructor
... i've been a busy boy!
[Edited by busbyj on 01-20-2002 at 11:05 PM]