3D modeling, rendering, and animation.

[Confederal_Republic]

I've decided to dedicate much of my free time in the foreseeable future to learning to work with 3D graphics software.

 

If any of you have experience with any of the high-end, complete programs, I'd appreciate your opinions as to which is the best, and why.

 

I'm considering LightWave 3D, 3ds Max, and Maya. They're all considered the highest tier of their category, but I'm wondering which one you guys think is supreme. Thanks in advance.

 

At one point, I was thinking about using Blender - it's supposedly almost as good as the aforementioned proprietary software. What do you think?

[ChAiNz.2da]

Max, Maya, Lightwave & Cinema 4D if you want to go professional (as in making money, freelancing, legit business, etc.). Otherwise half your clients are going to bitch at you

 

If you're lucky, you'll get clueless clients that will only want final rendered movies and not ask for project files.. hehe Then you can use any prog you want.

 

Stick with Blender or Gmax for learning, gaming or hobby.. the prices (free) are better unless you just want to go all out... hehe

[Confederal_Republic]

Max, Maya, Lightwave & Cinema 4D if you want to go professional (as in making money, freelancing, legit business, etc.). Otherwise half your clients are going to bitch at you

 

If you're lucky, you'll get clueless clients that will only want final rendered movies and not ask for project files.. hehe Then you can use any prog you want.

 

Stick with Blender or Gmax for learning, gaming or hobby.. the prices (free) are better unless you just want to go all out... hehe

 

The thing with Blender is how unreliable information about it is - many people say it's as good as (some say even better than) 3ds Max, LightWave 3D, Maya, and Cimena 4D, many others say that it's as good as the proprietary ones, but has a terrible interface, and some 3ds Max and Maya users spend their entire day debasing and mocking Blender. What do YOU think/know, guys?

[ChAiNz.2da]

The thing with Blender is how unreliable information about it is - many people say it's as good as (some say even better than) 3ds Max, LightWave 3D, Maya, and Cimena 4D, many others say that it's as good as the proprietary ones, but has a terrible interface, and some 3ds Max and Maya users spend their entire day debasing and mocking Blender. What do YOU think/know, guys?

 

Well, again it falls in to how you plan on using it. Blender isn't all that bad to be honest.. I've found it to be pretty decent and with the support of Source Forge.. it will only get bigger.

 

However, yeah.. if you intend to use your 3D work in the 'professional' world.. you'll get mocked if you ever want or need to troubleshoot a problem (that you are bound to run in to) or gawdz forbid want to look over your project files. Mainly because of industry wide distribution and compatibility. Probably over 90% of production houses will use Adobe / Autodesk / Avid / Final Cut products.

 

I swear by 3ds MAX personally. I work in Maya as well (when jobs require it), but I'm more comfortable in Max. Feels a little more intuitive.

[Quanon]

Well, Chainz anwsered most of your question. I use 3Ds Max a lot for my hobby time, modding Kotor, so I can't claim I'm a professional

 

Though I had some lessons about the program. One of the teachers mentioned that 3Ds Max is really nice at building up your model, but lacks a bit on the animation side. The guy claimed that animation is really a forté in Maya; while that program lacks a bit in the modelling side of things.

 

Not sure how much faith you should put into that though

 

Blender is a nice a tool, it has a good support by its large community and a ton of import and export tools and addons are provided by that same community. So that might sort out trouble, but... yeah, most of the members do a lot of 3D as a hobby.

 

Like Chainz mentioned it's perhaps best to stick with one of the bigger lads to get your work done as a pro, just to avoid a whole hassle. Certainly if money is involved people just get nasty :-S

 

 

Another part, is on how much money you want to toss add it, not just the software but also the hardware. And I'm talking for the rendering stuff!

 

One of my friends works at a architect bureau and they bought some older PC's to get that sort of work done, Network rendering, has cut there time down a lot that they would loose otherwise. Rendering is a pain on that, you can easely loose 12 hours when you're doing small films... and then you can still end up with nothing... argh, the nightmares

[Trench]

Go with Blender. The 2.57a release has beautiful UI (compared to older versions at least), and my friends who've moved from things like Maya (at school) to Blender (at home) have praised it on its similarities to the more expensive program.

 

Plus, as the Blender community grows, more and more possibilities will open up for it. It's entirely plausible that professional businesses will move over to the free software to save some cash.