Which 3d Program

[canuckamuck]

I want to learn 3d, and although I have spent most of the last 14 years in front of a computer screen, mostly in Photoshop, I have not paid a lot of attention to the 3D programs.

I was wondering which is best, or at least which is the industry standard. I want to do 3D rendering, and then move into animation.

At the shops I see 3D Studio Max, Maya, Poser, Rhino, and assorted others.

Are there any seasoned veterans out there with some real world advice on which program to learn?

[phazey]

I used to use Lightwave (Jurassic Park, Babylon5) a few years ago - It's got a good solid modeler and a very intuitive animation layout editor.

Recently i've been fiddling with the Source SDK - specifically to convert architectural drawings of real buildings into game levels, pretty much like a fully interactive preview of what the place may look like. Example (not by me)

[Veazer]

I want to learn 3d, and although I have spent most of the last 14 years in front of a computer screen, mostly in Photoshop, I have not paid a lot of attention to the 3D programs.

I was wondering which is best, or at least which is the industry standard. I want to do 3D rendering, and then move into animation.

At the shops I see 3D Studio Max, Maya, Poser, Rhino, and assorted others.

Are there any seasoned veterans out there with some real world advice on which program to learn?

I won't claim to be a seasoned veteran by any means. I started playing with Lightwave in the mid 90's and lost interest when I realized my short attention span and the detail and perseverance needed for 3d animation were not a perfect mix. I still do some simple still work as needed for graphic design projects, but not often.

Rhino is a modeler, and i find it better suited for industrial design type stuff. I'm not much of an 'organic' modeler, and i like it a lot. They have a rendering suite for Rhino called Flamingo but I don't believe it does animation. If it does, it would be highly limited compared to the others you named.

I've been out of the field for years, but i would imaging that 3DS Max is still a big player. As mentioned earlier, I was a lightwave user myself, you might take a look at that. At the very least, don't disregard it. Because of the massive add-on market for 3DS Max, i would tend to lean that direction if i were starting all again.

Sketchup is my favorite modeler for quick architectural type modeling, be sure to download that and have a play with it. It really approaches modeling in a whole new way.

[niller74]

Back in the days when I was working for SGI and they owned Alias|Wavefront who produced Maya there was no doubt. Now since Maya was sold off to Autodesk it might have taken a hit. I cannot imagine that Autodesk till continue to have 2 so strong packages and develop them both simultaneously.

Both Maya and 3D Max are good products. I still think Maya has a edge though, but Max is a lot wider spread and you might find it a lot easier to find tutorials and other documentation online.

I dont know if Max has the student programme as Maya has. But Maya can be downloaded for free. It will place a watermark on all renderings though, but you will have access to the complete package.

Enjoy the world of 3D!!

[slackula]

If you don't want to spend money perhaps Blender (www.blender.org) will be useful.

[phazey]

Back in the days when I was working for SGI and they owned Alias|Wavefront who produced Maya there was no doubt. Now since Maya was sold off to Autodesk it might have taken a hit. I cannot imagine that Autodesk till continue to have 2 so strong packages and develop them both simultaneously.

Both Maya and 3D Max are good products. I still think Maya has a edge though, but Max is a lot wider spread and you might find it a lot easier to find tutorials and other documentation online.

I dont know if Max has the student programme as Maya has. But Maya can be downloaded for free. It will place a watermark on all renderings though, but you will have access to the complete package.

Enjoy the world of 3D!!

Ohhh SGI - damm good kit those boxes were. I had the pleasure of having a decent chat with the guy who did the "Money for Nothing" music video, and later the CGI effects for the movie "Twister". Brings back good memories..

[niller74]

Back in the days when I was working for SGI and they owned Alias|Wavefront who produced Maya there was no doubt. Now since Maya was sold off to Autodesk it might have taken a hit. I cannot imagine that Autodesk till continue to have 2 so strong packages and develop them both simultaneously.

Both Maya and 3D Max are good products. I still think Maya has a edge though, but Max is a lot wider spread and you might find it a lot easier to find tutorials and other documentation online.

I dont know if Max has the student programme as Maya has. But Maya can be downloaded for free. It will place a watermark on all renderings though, but you will have access to the complete package.

Enjoy the world of 3D!!

Ohhh SGI - damm good kit those boxes were. I had the pleasure of having a decent chat with the guy who did the "Money for Nothing" music video, and later the CGI effects for the movie "Twister". Brings back good memories..

I have a couple of old SGI boxes in Denmark, which I wish I could bring to Thailand, but I don't really want to pay some fat gov. official import tax to bring it into the country when I already paid 25% VAT in Denmark when bought back in the days.

[Veazer]

Ohhh SGI - damm good kit those boxes were. I had the pleasure of having a decent chat with the guy who did the "Money for Nothing" music video, and later the CGI effects for the movie "Twister". Brings back good memories..

I saw stacks of old SGI machines at Boeing Surplus in Seattle for next to nothing. I was tempted to get one just to gut it out and have the funky purple and black case for a modern PC.

[niller74]

Ohhh SGI - damm good kit those boxes were. I had the pleasure of having a decent chat with the guy who did the "Money for Nothing" music video, and later the CGI effects for the movie "Twister". Brings back good memories..

I saw stacks of old SGI machines at Boeing Surplus in Seattle for next to nothing. I was tempted to get one just to gut it out and have the funky purple and black case for a modern PC.

Grrrr.. Vandalism!! The old Indigo2's were nice boxes. If you can get hold of a Indigo2 R10k high or max impact you have a beautiful machine for desktop usage. They don't perform as good as modern PCs but the look and feel of working with such a box can't be explained. Use a remote PC for compiling/rendering if needed.

[canuckamuck]

Thanks for the replies, obviously my indecision is well founded. I guess there is no clear choice. I will just have to get inside some of the programs and figure out what I need.

[Veazer]

Grrrr.. Vandalism!! The old Indigo2's were nice boxes.

Ohh man, you're gonna kill me when you see my Sequent server beer fridge conversion then....

EDIT:

This reminds me of a story from uni. The physics dept ordered an nice SGI machine and were quite excited when it arrived... However, there was a forklift blade size hole on the side of the box, and a matching hole on the other. It looked like a frustrated UPS employee jousted the whole box. The blade had gone right thought the entire case and motherboard. We called SGI and they said, "what they hel_l, fire it up and see what happens!" The results were as expected: a few sparks, a little smoke..

Edited July 10, 2008 by Veazer

[youngkiwi]

3DMax is the design software of choice for many top interior designers, both here in Thailand and abroad.

[niller74]

Grrrr.. Vandalism!! The old Indigo2's were nice boxes.

Ohh man, you're gonna kill me when you see my Sequent server beer fridge conversion then....

EDIT:

This reminds me of a story from uni. The physics dept ordered an nice SGI machine and were quite excited when it arrived... However, there was a forklift blade size hole on the side of the box, and a matching hole on the other. It looked like a frustrated UPS employee jousted the whole box. The blade had gone right thought the entire case and motherboard. We called SGI and they said, "what they hel_l, fire it up and see what happens!" The results were as expected: a few sparks, a little smoke..

Video footage!! LOL I would have loved to see that. After all it is just hardware

[phazey]

After all it is just hardware

BLASPHEMY!

[slackula]

About 5-6 years ago I saw a few old SGI machines for sale in the used computer shop on the second floor of Fortune IT Mall. I *really* wanted to buy one for messing with, but they were something like 150,000 each IIRC.