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new_horizon, on Nov 19 2004, 09:51 PM, said:
I just wish it had a better renderer and worked properly under OSX.View Post
Or is supported.
bmac, on Nov 20 2004, 09:35 PM, said:
and MAYA :mad: . I hate the smilies of this board. Anyway, Maya 6 is stimply the best thing man has ever made, and it will remain like that until Maya 7 comes out View Post
Maya is good.... for certain things. Lightwave is also good for certain other things. Maya isn't a catchall "best" program ever. I like using it, but there are still lots of things that it can't do as well as Lightwave. Don't go misleading people by saying that it's the best 3D program ever, if you just touch the box, you'll be the next lead animator on "Madagascar" and you'll have a beautiful girlfriend, and a Porsche sitting in your garage. All my friends tell me, "Get a PC so you can use 3D Studio Max. It's the best 3D program ever." I say, "Why? I'm not going into game development." Different 3D programs have different strengths and weaknesses. The trick is to know what they are, and work in different programs to be able to utilize the strengths of all. That's why even ILM uses several different software packages for different reasons. Maya, I believe, for its particle systems (although ILM adds proprietary software as well), Softimage for character animation, etc. Maya happens to also be good at animation, and it's for Mac, so that's what I use when I want to animate characters, but to build my characters (as well as space ships) I use Lightwave because its polygon modeler is far superior to Maya's.
Matrix
bmac, on Nov 20 2004, 04:35 PM, said:
Oops my bad.
new_horizon, on Nov 20 2004, 01:51 AM, said:
I just wish it had a better renderer and worked properly under OSX.
View Post
Have you had problems in OSX? If anything, I have found that Mechanisto is much better in OSX, because you can switch to a different program without interupting the rendering. (Very useful for long renders.)
Azdara Ace, on Nov 21 2004, 10:17 PM, said:
Have you had problems in OSX? If anything, I have found that Mechanisto is much better in OSX, because you can switch to a different program without interupting the rendering. (Very useful for long renders.) View Post
Yes, Mechanisto is generally better in OSX, especially when you accidently make something with too much transparency(****ing half hour render, and it didn't even come out right!). And it's free, which is good for me, because I'm getting a new laptop and my tech funds will be pretty low for the next few months. Maybe I'll get Bryce or Carrara sometime in the future, but for now, I use Mechanisto. And the name is just too cool for words.
-Anax
pov-ray, the only hardcore choice
povray.org
I mean, can you beat text based renderscript?
NebuchadnezzaR, on Nov 22 2004, 11:07 AM, said:
I mean, can you beat text based renderscript? View Post
Easily. Very, very easily.
Anaxagoras, on Nov 22 2004, 04:20 AM, said:
Yes, Mechanisto is generally better in OSX... -Anax View Post
I'm using Panther 10.3.5 and Mech is horrible slow to use. It takes a long time for the modeling area to update after you make a selection.
Don't you also have this problem?
new_horizon, on Nov 22 2004, 07:30 PM, said:
Don't you also have this problem? View Post
I have 10.3.5, and Mechanisto obeys me like I'm God. You might just be used to your other programs running much faster. Or you have an excessively low amount of RAM, which is rididculous. Or it could just be some odd file thing. Try increasing the memory alloted to Mechanisto. Maybe that'll help :).
Tycho, just boot back into 9 and solve all of your problems in one fell swoop. 9 is for productivity, X is for pretty (at least on a 333 mhz G3- clad Power Macintosh 8500 like I have).
ahem ahem
Anyhow, make of it what you like. I'm double linking this stuff on Just Graphics and EV DEV because this is the other community that would mainly benefit from this project. To paraphrase myself: Give in any comments you have, criticism, I don't care, as long as it's useful.
I just noticed I didn't include Bryce, shame on me. slaps self
Oh well, it's not finished. Yay for betas
This post has been edited by Evil_Spoonman : 23 November 2004 - 09:17 AM
rmx256, on Nov 23 2004, 04:16 AM, said:
Tycho, just boot back into 9 and solve all of your problems in one fell swoop. 9 is for productivity, X is for pretty (at least on a 333 mhz G3- clad Power Macintosh 8500 like I have). View Post
This is very true actually. I like OSX, but find I do most of my serious work in OS9. It just feels like you have more control over the computers, rather than the other way around. I've only got a white iBook 700mhz with 256mb RAM, but it's far better than that old 6100 I was stuck with for years.
Back to the topic...
It's amusing that more people use Mechanisto on this board than Maya! Rik and I are obviously responsible for 2 votes, so who gave it 2 more?
What about Amapi? I use that occasionally. Bit of an odd program, though.
new_horizon, on Nov 23 2004, 09:58 AM, said:
What about Amapi? I use that occasionally. Bit of an odd program, though. View Post
I'll take it into consideration for a later update.
Then you might want to look at this site to see what else you missed, though I doubt many of these programs are in use anymore: Some random webpage
Heh. Looks like it hasn't been updated since 2001! I voted Mechanisto.
(Warning, this is a long post...I'm trying to be as helpful as I can here, 'cause this has been on my mind a lot recently.)
I voted Lightwave, but school has made me use 3DSMax and begin to learn Maya. I don't really have a strong sense of brand loyalty when it comes to software--I've seen some incredible stuff come out of every package I've heard of. But, I will say it's frustrating as hell to go back and forth. Some may laugh at this. Allow me to explain:
3D software, in any form I've worked with, is simply not very intuitive. When you learn a piece of software, you're learning how its programmers decided to approach tricky areas of simulation. Once you understand how, for example, radiosity and volumetric lighting works in Lightwave, it doesn't make clear and simple sense as though it were obvious. It's more like "oh, so that's how I do it." While the concept is similar, knowing how to do these things in Lightwave doesn't inform you on even where to start with, say, Maya. The coders tackled the simulation of photon reflection in different ways, and that's just how it is. This follows on down the line to nearly every aspect of what 3D software does, even to basic interface choices (more on this later).
If you use one package a lot, you get used to it. In a sense, you start to think about 3D stuff in the same way the programmers did. The more you get used to it, the harder it is to think about it any other way. You may find you hit brick walls in trying to switch, especially when one program has something which another completely lacks (example: selectable/editabe poly edges aren't in Lightwave). This isn't so bad when you use different programs for different parts of production, though, as most FX houses do. For most of us, though, we're talking small budgets and limited time. In my opinion, as far as EV is concerned, you're better off just sticking to one package.
There are exceptions, though. Specialized, focused programs, like landscape-generators, have a polish and ease about them that all-around ones (Maya, Lightwave, XSI, 3DS, C4D) lack. Some people might prefer a free modeling program, and do their rendering in a free rendering program made by someone else. Whatever works is whatever works--I'm not really promoting the expensive all-around-wonder. In terms of each program's strengths , though, it's clear that focused programs will probably be easier to use for their intended purpose. All-arounds do have the advantage of flexibility, though, and can ultimately do a better job than the focused apps if you really put your mind to it. It depends on what you want to do, and how much time you want to spend doing it.
As far as which competing product you choose, I don't really think it matters much. They all push their features as selling points, and it can be hard to see around this, especially since the "loyal followers" use these as trump cards against those who use competing products. What it boils down to for me is not the high-level frills, but the interface. If I have to heavily customize the default setup of something to get comfortable using it, this is usually not a good sign. This just tells me I will have a hard time agreeing with the programmers as to how things should be approached, and I will be routinely looking for things in the wrong places. I don't like working with software I'm constantly angry at.
For me, what works best in terms of interface is Lightwave. The lack of icons leaves it nice and clean, and the seperation of modeling from animation and rendering further saves it from being cluttered and cumbersome. Now, I know a lot of people think exactly the opposite about it, so understand I'm not trying to say it's better , just that it works for me. Can you tell I hate "a vs. b" flame wars?
So, getting right down to it, judging the programs by their respective strengths and shortcomings is a little misleading, because it leads us down the same path the marketing departments devised. They want you to rank products, and on the terms they define. You can be told Maya is the best thing since the dawn of time, but be unendingly frustrated by it, and then what? Did the person who talked you into it really do you any favors? For that matter, when people ask what is the best 3D program and we link them to a previous discussion, are we really helping them out? If they're looking for a quick and simple answer, wading through the myriad threads the search function dredges up might just put them off, or leave them misinformed. The only answer I feel good giving is this: Download demos. See what works for you. Try not to get blinded by flame wars or advertisements--make your own decision.
Okay, one thing I will shamelessly promote: You'll be better off if you can get Photoshop as your 2D workhorse. Adobe really has the market cornered in this area, like it or not. Supposedly, alternatives like the GIMP are getting better all the time, but Photoshop truly is the de facto industry standard. I know we all want to stick it to the man and not support big evil corporations, but you'll be limiting yourself by avoiding the big, red "A". Seriously. I wish it weren't true.
Once again, repeated and emboldened for emphasis, it all depends on what you want to do, and how much time you want to spend doing it. It's all about the relationship you have between your creativity and your technical artistic knowledge. You can be really creative and not have an effective way to put it to use, and you can be very technically skilled and not make anything original. Somewhere in the middle, cool things occur. Without either, cool things are much more rare. That's what we all want to do, right? Make things that are cool?
dang, that is a lot of text. even though i edited it a lot.
This post has been edited by Onyx : 26 November 2004 - 05:54 AM
Assuming that last para' is a summation of the tomb preceding it; I agree.
I especially agree with what you said about Landscape editors. Terragen is one of the most intuitive programs that I've used, and I think Bryce could be that way if they just dropped the Modeler, and made it purely for landscapes, and city scapes if you want to import objects.
The Real Darth Bob, on Nov 26 2004, 05:09 PM, said:
I especially agree with what you said about Landscape editors. Terragen is one of the most intuitive programs that I've used, and I think Bryce could be that way if they just dropped the Modeler, and made it purely for landscapes, and city scapes if you want to import objects. View Post
I'm gonna go try Terragen. Sounds useful for landing pics and whatnot.
while mechanisto is a good 3D package, if you need more yet cannot afford Adobe Photoshop, try Adobe Photoshop Elements ($AUST 100) It has most of the compontents of the full Photoshop version and you can do some good things with it.
EV Ovveride: I gave listening post 2J out past Iothe a base on the planet so it was the only planet based UE listening post. It was a dome complex out past some desert hills which fitted well with the whole desert world scheme.
This post has been edited by seanrobertmeaney : 08 December 2004 - 10:22 PM