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 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)

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.

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!!

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

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..

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, 200817 yr by Veazer

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

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

After all it is just hardware

BLASPHEMY!

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.