🚀 go-pugleaf

> This is all good stuff.  Alias Sketch will not work on a PC.  And I'm
> virtually certain that 4D Vision's Animator's pack will be usless to you
> because it's all 3D Studio R4 plug-in...I'm pretty sure of that.  Get Ray
> Dream Studio and not the 3D Studio...it's way out dated.  RayDream Studio
> has all the animation stuff.  Media Studio is a cheap way to get all the
> Audio, video and image tools you'll need and it's an award winnig package
> that I highly recommend.

Ray Dream Studio over 3DS? ugh? Is that because 3DS has been used in so many movies, TV 
shows, and commercials over the lest few years, and Ray Dream has ben used for...uh. 
been used for? You tell me. Maybe some print ads. It does hold your hand well if you are 
a beginer with all the scene wizards it has. But for professional animation, I find it 
lacking. For 3DS you can keep it up to date with one of the 500 or so plug-ins available 
as freeware/shareware and commercially.

> John, It depends on your bent.  The best, most intuitive interface, bar
> none is trueSpace2. It's an excellent program with more depth than you
> might expect. It lacks some of the super advanced features of LW and MAX,
> but makes up for it in being more productive for 95% of what you are
> likely to be doing. IMHO tS2 is the best way to get started in 3D.

I agree, Truespace is a nice tool to get started on. I don't think it is 95%
more productive in any way. But it does make things simple. But with a simple
program you often loose out on high-end features.
 
> For character animation there is no choice but Martin Hash's 3D
> Animation.  It's only $199.00 and includes IK, motion capture and
> editing, spline modeling and other advanced features.

Well Softimage, LW, and MAX with CS or Bones Pro are all good character
choices. MHA and AM just have them beat price wise. But AM and MHA have
cut themselves as a nich tool. Great nich tools they are though.
 
> LW5 is fabulous and has great new depth, can do much of what you can do
> in Softimage ($14,999.00) it even has it's own version of Q stretch
> dynamics. But it's not very interactive.  You have to guess at settings,
> input them and render to see the results...clunky interface.  It comes
> with a hundred or so plug-ins to help with fancy modeling, texturing and
> animation (and there are lots of great free ones like bubbles etc.)  It
> takes a long time to lean LW and even takes some time to get your things
> to look the way you want them to, but in the end it' s the best value on
> the market ($1500.00) with a great render engine (no volumetric lighting
> though...shame.)

Actually SI is around $8,000 with the Extreme version being around $12,000.
You could get a workstation, monitor and SI when it first shipped as a package
deal for $15,000. LW has OpenGL previews so you don't always have to render
to see your results. 4.0 also has a shaded preview plug-in. Volumetric lighting
is in the works too.

> MAX, is a big package.  I's very unwieldy and looks much easier than it
> is.  The three tomes of instructions are very poorly written, theres no
> index in the huge tutorial book and the other indexes are wofully
> incomplete.   Max's user interface remindes me of the WW2 bombsite that
> had two knobs that needed to be adjusted simultaneously...but the
> engineer put them six feet appart.   There are so many places where it
> should be easy to do something and it's not.  Don't look to the books for
> much help. The descriptions are a serpintine as I've ever seen.  Also,
> MAX has way too many bugs for a realease version.  It has a lovely
> renderer with volumetric light effects, but it doesn't know how to
> raytrace...something I often find useful.

MAX is a GREAT package. It is very easy to use. The docs are wonderful, as
they always have been. It comes with LOADS of features, and the interface has
been hailed as one of the best around by just about everyone. I would tell
the guy to try the free demo before I would take this last post about it into
account. The books are by far some of the best written manuals I have seen.
The tutorial covers the wide scope of the program, and the two volume manual
even has short tuturials in it. There is no need to a index in the back of the
tutorial book since every aspect that is covered in it is clearly listed in
the front with their page numbers. It does raytrace shadows with the default
renderer, and more renderers, including two raytracers(one that is VERY similar in 
features to Mental Ray) should be out for SIGGRAPH. As far as bugs go, from the 
newsgroup and my own experience the program has been rock solid. They only
thing that has given some people headaches is trying to get it to run on 95(1.1
will fix that) and network rendering can be difficult to setup on some systems.
Otherwise than that it has been used for one movie already with more TV shows and
movies on the way.

> Wait until the next version.  HOpefully by then they'll get a clue.  I
> have to congradulate them on the amazing variety of tools and neat
> touches in MAX.  It will be a fabulous product someday, just not today.
> Keep your eye on it, it's a comer.

I think they had a clue over three years ago when they started working on MAX.
It is a fabulous product today.
 
> Softimage Extreme 3.5 is the truly amazing choice that puts you at the
> top of the I can animate anything category, but the documentaion is
> inadequate for teaching you how to use it and classes are
> expensive.  It's great depth will take years to master, but MentalRAy is
> awesome and the NT version is threaded...very fast.

I ahve to agree here. SI Extreme will make you swoon. But like he said its
not a toy for beginners.

Jeff
-- 
Student Programmer 3
Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design
Emerging Technology Studio