Whats biggest disadvantages of gettin v3 for max instead of v4?

[atlasshrugged]

v4 standalone is cheaper than the plugin for 3ds max.

I'm leaning to buying the plugin so I don't have to learn new modeling tools, but wondering if there is a huge drawback that is not evident in the features list over at electric rain.

Maybe using textures on vector output is one? I see that this is possible in the newest version, but to accomplish this in max plugin you have to create raster renders.

[gerbick]

Honestly, it's all about how comfortable you are in the environment you're in. Personally, as a 3ds max user, I can not stress how cool it is to stay within 3ds max's workflow and output my renders to *.swf and then compile then within Flash as opposed to having to use - nothing's wrong with the tools in Swift3D though, I've been using since version 1.0, so it's tools I'm used to by now - the tools within Swift3D.

On a quick day, I'm 4 times quicker in Max than Swift3D. On a detailed project, I'm even faster in Max than Swift3D. But some smaller projects, I'm fast in both.

Textures are considered bitmaps, so you'd have to render to bitmap swf animations in order to keep them. Slight trade-off, but it's the same thing within the standalone.

I'd say go with the plug-in. It'll definitely pay for that slight extra cost in the long-term, imho.

[atlasshrugged]

Many thanks for the thoughtful input. Much appreciated.

Wanted to make sure I wasn't paying more for less.

[walsher]

With this plug-in for Max, can you only render them out as .swf?

[gerbick]

output options are:

• Flash Player *.swf
• Swift3D Flash Importer *.swft
• Sequential EPS *.eps
• Adobe Illustrator *.ai
• Scalable Vector Graphics *.svg
• USA Animation *.pnt

Animations can be saved as a *.swf as well via Render Output File.

Hope that helps

[walsher]

Okay, I had no idea of the Illustrator or .eps file. Thats pretty cool. Thanks for the input