It''s a fact that 3d max and truespace are pices of dog poo compared to these 3 programs - not just an opinion Lightwave/Softimage/Maya As it stands these are clearly the top 3 pices of software for anyone that is seriously commited 3d graphics.(and I would like to ask people using any of these programs) *** Which is the best ? *** Well actualy just the advantages / disadvantages I know that lightwave has been sofar the least used comercialy compared to si and maya Softimage has been used for a great many motion pictures , and their toonz-studio has been used in popular animated movies mostly by FOX. One of their great projects was anastasia, and Prince of egypt, which kind of catches my attention But the program that get''s the best looks - based on who uses it is definitely Maya - The fact that Industrial light and magic uses it is a reason big enough for me to consider it as #1 choice, It is amazing what the program seems to be able to do if you look at SW-1 the Phantom menace. Another user is Pixar maker of Toy Story and TS2 Maya clearly seems to have the greatest future once maya 3 comes out, but what about price ease of use render times and just overal compatability with other programs ? What is the best for the average made-4-game grafics developer? any feedback is appriciated -and on a lighter note (ts4 is bugged and sucs - boycot CALIGARI) ~Weird_OWE~

I work in truespace / 3dstudio together.

Truespace is fast and easy. 3dstudio (max) is powertful. Draw in truespace -> export for 3ds -> inport from 3ds to max -> and finish the work.

Price?. There are some free-old-truespace, but if you want to made proffesional work, you can buy this. If you only want for a test/study, then w##ez is the point (after erase it!)

Is my opinion for a low-poly-modeller!.

For a high poly or a animate 3d, i don''t know



-eng3d.softhome.net-

yeah, ofcourse their the best(maya/soft ligthwave is kind of good but not like maya or soft) why most seriously commited 3d artist use 3dmax or ts4(or others{blender=free!}) its because most of those software cost more than most of us have, also the systems that are needed to run those progs are well above standard(oh, have u heard that the scene in swep1 where the robots where at war, it was 60 gigs(give or take a few) of hard drive mem). im amazed at how many people use 3dmax(cough*warez*cough) but it is very cheap compared to the big boys and very powerfull with many plugins.ts4 is a good modeler but blender beats it with the freeware pricetag, but then again it has a nasty interphase

if u see people using those software is because of one of these(1) they work for a studio that has then(wich is provably rich and famous and can buy those progs)(2) their college has then or 3+ person is rich, person has other ways to get then ect.ect.ect.

most seriously commited 3d artist can do wonders with what they have no matter how good or bad the program is.


ps, pixar does not use maya, they use their own modeler/animation programs that they made(they get the money from making renderman and selling it, best renderer out there i think) they been doing that since the 80s so they definitely have the best programs

quote:
-and on a lighter note (ts4 is bugged and sucs - boycot CALIGARI)

Yeah, thats true. TS4 stinks. I tried it out - it crashed loads, and the undo didn''t even work most of the time, so I wasted tons of time. I can''t believe that Caligari can get away with selling software as poor quality as that.

http://www.geocities.com/ben32768

It''s not the program, it is the artist. Remember that, Skippy, as you are staring at your Maya and don''t know why your model doesn''t look relistic. I know dudes that can make relistic people models using max... amazing.. Max is easy to use and has more power than TrueSpace. The rendering in Max isn''t as good as Maya and SoftImage though.. but u can get a plugin that exports your Max scene to Renderman which is nice. (that''s what they use in Toy Story?) Radiosity and better shadows would be a nice addition to the render package of 3DSM. It depends on what you are looking to do in the feild of modeling.. are you going for games or movies.. Studio max is used by a lot of game artists along with SI. A Resourcefull modeler knows their way around most of them, wich is good becasue somethings you can do easier in one package than another... Like eng3d said. They all have their own style..

I was thinkin about pickin up Hash Animaster for modeling.. anyone use that?

--Serpent Warrior
The Irish Bunny Project

Lightwave is probably one of the fastest at generating 3D models.
Softimage is good at animating. And Maya is geared more toward character animation. Compared to 3D Studio Max, Lightwave will give you more bang for the buck. In order to get 3D Studio Max to do all the things Lightwave can do, you''d have to buy several thousand dollars worth of plug-ins. Lightwave is also the most widely used in the movie/tv industry (Slightly over 50% of the movie industry uses Lightwave). Simply because 1) it''s capable of performing on the same level as the more expensive 3D packages 2) It''s CHEAPER than the more expensive 3D packages & 3) It''s probably one of the most widely used. Foundation Imaging, Flat Earth, and I believe even ILM uses Lightwave to some extent. Most of the production houses are small with only a handful of animators. These aren''t companies that can dish out $10k+ for a piece of software. Lightwave will let them do pretty much the same thing for Under $3k.

tS4 sucks? No, I don''t think so - odds are 1) you have a pirated copy, and 2) not the most recent point release of tS4 as well - so I can''t see how your opinions could possible mean anything to anyone with one iota of intelligence.

No software is totally bug-free either - I crash Photoshop on a daily basis, 3DSMAX 3.0 is probably one of the most buggy pieces of software that I have ever owned (updates have fixed this, happened under 98 mostly), and Maya on NT crashes a lot on heavy scenes when rendering (also fixed after the 1.0 release, mostly due to video drivers and OGL issues).

trueSpace is popular among independent developers because it''s cheap, easy to learn, and powerful enough to develop good games. There''s also a ton of free plugins, some which export directly to formats for 3D game engines, such as trueGene, which exports to Genesis 3D format. Many low-budget games have been created using tS, and they look damn good. It''s not the tools, it''s the artist..

MAX is the most-used program for game model and animation creation. This is because the format is easy and compact, and from what I''ve been told personally by some of the BIGGEST developers for MAX (Cebas & Sisyphus software, who actually developed much of MAX), there isn''t another program that''s as easy (or lucrative) to develop for.

Lightwave is used for some games, true, as is SoftImage, most notably many games created by Nintendo and Rare (Mario64 and Banjo Kazooie, to name a couple). Maya, as of yet, does not sport enough polygon tools to make a dent in the games market, and most developers aren''t willing to shell out so much cash, per SEAT (that''s copy), when they can get MAX for half as much and produce game development tools much quicker.

Another program not mentioned is MultiGen Creator (GameGenII for SGI Irix systems), which has been used to create the environments for Zelda64, San Franciso Rush and many, many other 3D arcade and console games. It''s probably one of the easiest to learn and fastest to develop with out there for developing gaming content. It took me about 10min to learn the interface, and another hour to develop an entire world, vehicles, and custom scripts (which can control an objects reponse to events in the world, a basic AI if you will), after which I was able to view the world through a VR headset. All of this was running through Fusion (basically a programming API on Irix) on an SGI Onyx box. Beat that for development time, and I''m not even a programmer.

It''s all peronsal choice, and definitely NOT the software. I''ve seen some amazing things done in Topaz, the first 3D software for PC (years before 3D Studio DOS) running on hardware that would make most people cringe (first-gen 286s).

If you think you need the most expensive software to be a good artist, then you''re not only deluding yourself but proving to the rest of us who actually know what goes on in the real world how clueless you are. There''s a particular producer for Disney who uses Poser to do animatics. Is that high end?

If that''s the kind of attitude you''re going to try and get a job with, you can forget it. I know I wouldn''t hire you.

Sorry for the rant, I find stupidity particularly annoying.

- Nick Robalik
http://www.digital-soapbox.com

PS - A correction to the person who commented on Pixar/ILM not using commercial software - you''re basically right, though from people who work at Pixar they DID use Alias to model some stuff for Toy Story (Toy Story 2 is mostly subdivision surfaces, and NOT spline-based models), and ILM used FormZ on Macs to model/animate and Electric Image (to render) most of the space scenes in the Star Wars Special Edition and The Phantom Menace (there''s quite a few articles around on this topic in various Mac publications).

Thanx 4 the repplies...

*1 I''ve seen the hash-Animation master, can''t say I''ve used it beacause a half an hour doesn''t realy count. The program is back about 3 years(which is a lot in this idustry). I couldn''t see what all the promotions about it were about. Onther thing I failed to see is the promised ease of use or the capablty. One of those two is not there. It took 5 minutes to find out how to do primitives. I got rid of it fast. If there is anyone that wants to stand up for that program - "youre wasting yor time"
*2 the relatively low budget modeler program that you should get, and I have been using since one of the first betas came out is RHINO3D. This is simply an AMAZING nurbs modeler. It has a great customizable interface to suit lightwave users or softimage users or just build your tools simply and fast. The control of the creativity that you have. with this program outruns numerous programs such as 3dmax in terms of nurbs. It has a steep lerning curve for first time nurbs user, so you will have to read a bunch of tutorials to get past the basic primitives. I''ve put on my own tutorial on my page, it''s old but if you wanna see it just lemme no
The downside of this program is that it''s only a nurbs modeler. I personaly would like the company to make a complete mesh modeler and an animator - but that''s too much
another thing about this program is that it is ment to be not used alone - and you can get softimage and 3dMAX plugins to read the files correctly. The nurbs can be easily converted to meshes using different densities for different resolutions. These can be exported in another bunch of file formats.
I''m totaly impressed by this program, the lab license is very chev too.

www.rhino3d.com

Damn - i should get into marketing ... I''m making a total comercial for these peopel



4th battle-man ...
Anopthe program that is making it''s way up is Mirai. It seems to made for game developers but the price is rediculous, noone in their right mind can afford this for anything else than products being sold internationaly. But if someone knows anything specific about this program - lemme no


anyways - thanx for the time



~Weird_OWE~

The copy of TS4 that I''ve used was not pirated. Thanx for the benefit of the doubt...
And it was Buged - maybe it wasn''t the latest update, but if you sell programs like this for a while - you should make sure it is not buged before you release it - that''s why I''m pissed off at Caligai - 4 "bull****ing" people like this. They are tying to meat their deadlines too fast and they get ahead of themselves - they shouldn''t do this. I have been a great fan of TS2 because it was a great program for the beginer that seemed to have a great potential for what I inted to do with it. but that''s all it was a great program for a beginer, it it just doesn''t do it anymore - and now with TS4 it seems to go down. TS3 was just fine.

~Weird_OWE~

Oh and *** digisoap ***

- I''m sorry to anoy you this much - it was not my intent I mean - how absolutly retarded of me to post such a message on this perticular message board - please do tell me what other message boards you use so that I won''t have the displeasure of taking up your valuable time. It''s horrible I hope this doesn''t happen again. I''m totally terrified to know that you wouldn''t hire me.
I''m just a stpid, retarded, selfish and anoying Idiot I guess - thanx for clearing it up for me.


but now SERIOUSLY ... The reason that I posted this is that I wish to start learning one of thes programs and I want to compare outlook of them, and comapare what is waluable to me. Yes it''s true 3dMax is just fine, but I''m not planing on doing just fine 5 years later, and for that I need to be able to use a program realy well and it would be great to have one program that I could use realy well. And these were the 3 programs it came down to.
but realy - the feedback is well apreciated ( informative feedback -I don''t need any constructive feed back - 4 now)



~Weird_OWE~