Jump to content

Home

Best 3D program?


Pad

Recommended Posts

One way or another I really got into 3D drawing this week. Ive done some reading on some programs and well, there are quite a lot of them like Bryce, Maya, Cinema4D, 3ds Max,...

 

I´m now trying Cinema4d and 3ds Max, but which one(s) are you peeps using and what do you think is the best one?

 

I´ll upload some of my drawings later ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well it all depends on what you want to do and of course what your budget is.

 

If you want to get a smooth introduction to the basics of 3D you might want to start out with Bryce.

 

If you want to get into modeling and animation you might want to go with 3d studio max, which is a really good program but not entirely stable, so if your computer can just barely run it, you might have some problems. As someone said earlier, the also Gmax, which is a smaller version of 3dsmax, originnaly released for modders, and it's free.

 

I heared thet LightWave 3D is also really good, but I havent had the chance to try it.

 

You then have the bigger, baddest (in a good way :p ), 3D programs, Maya and Softimage XSI. Well as I've never gotten to play around in Maya, I can't tell you much about it other that it's a very professionnal tool and whatever you wanna do, you can probably do with it. There'a also Softimage XSI, which is also a very professionnal tool, but like Maya, it requires a god machine to run (You need to have a 1280x1024 resolution). I found it was easier to model in 3dsmax though, exept for characters because XSI has a powerful character bulding tool.

 

So, as you are starting in the world of 3D drawing, but my guess is you are not a newcommer to anything that's 3D, you might want to start out with 3dsmax.

 

these are average retail prices in USD:

Corel Bryce 5 : $85

Newtek LightWave 3D : $1 600

Discreet GMax : free

Discreet 3D Studio Max : $3 500

Alias Maya 6 : $2 000

Softimage XSI : $9 000

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One more thing I thought I'd point out is that I'm not the only one that finds Lightwave to be a very good modeler...id Software uses Maya to animate their models, but they use Lightwave to make their models (including those ultra high-poly models used to render Normal maps...in fact Doom 3 can load Lightwave models, .lwo files, directly without any conversion!). Also, Lightwave has been used in many tv shows and movies including Babylon 5...!

 

[Edit: Oh, and I forgot...if you can't afford the full version of Maya, then you can download Maya PLE. Maya PLE, unlike Discreet's Gmax, has all the features of the full version except you can't use it for commercial use and it puts a transparent image across the things you render. Not bad for free!]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Max is probably the best to get started with. Its very powerful and the learning curve isnt too bad.

 

Personally, I used to use a LOT of 3dsmax, then moved into lightwave (which i wasnt a big fan of) and maya. Maya and max are my programs of choice.

 

Bryce is a good, easy to use landscape program.

 

But yeah, stick to max :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...