Commercial 3D Graphics Tools (slightly off topic)
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Commercial 3D Graphics Tools (slightly off topic)
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| After reading some recent threads, I was wondering what you think (from a game development point of view) of the various commercial 3D packages. I haven't played with Maya much, and I'm out of date with Lightwave. I've never even used SoftImage. I'm currently using 3DS Max R4.2 for most of my 3D work. I find the latest upgrade prices for Max R5 and Character Studio to be pretty oppressive (i.e. a substantial fraction of the cost of buying rival packages outright) so I'm interested in hearing your thoughts... It seems to me that Lightwave, Maya, and Cinema4D are the obvious alternatives to Max. They all have (a) good scripting languages, (b) good polygon-level editors, (c) character animation tools (subdivision meshes and bone support). I'm leaning towards buying Maya rather than upgrading to Max R5 (since I'll still have Max R4.2 anyway...). |
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| I vote for Lightwave! And if you have game dev'ving in mind please note that Blitz3D+LW combo has TeraBits excellent .B3D converter, but Maya has none (to my knowledge). "academic discount" LW 7.5 is only $395.00: http://www2.journeyed.com/cgi-bin/sgsh0101.exe?SKW=ntspecial&FNM=21&UID=2003052804261010&GEN8=NEWTEK&GEN9=routey20.pro ..And you should get v8.0 for free too when it comes, according to this banner: http://www.newtek.com/buynow/lw_products.html |
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| I agree to Mustang. Lightwave it is. :) I used Max up to 4.2, too, then a collegue of mine started to work with Lightwave. I gave it a try and never looked back to Max. Lightwave is really a great package with everything you need. |
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| the more i hear about lightwave the more i think i should move over to it from max 4.2 |
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| I'm planning to purchase Maya soon. For me the big reason is animation. Modeling tools are all pretty much the same no matter what package you use but I find the animation tools in Maya much faster to use than 3D Studio Max or Lightwave (like you, I've never used SoftImage.) In particular tools like Paint Weights make it really easy to rig characters in Maya, the hypergraph makes selecting stuff trivial (until I used it I never really thought about how much of a chore selecting stuff is in most tools,) and tools like the graph editor and dope sheet make it really easy to tweak animation by moving keys around and adjust interpolation. Note that you can download a free trial of Maya (PLE, the Personal Learning Edition) from aliaswavefront.com The lack of a b3d exporter is concerning but then 3D Studio Max doesn't have one either and the current conversion paths (eg. export to DirectX, convert to b3d using Ultimate Unwrap) works just as well with Maya. |
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| 3D studio Max has a more direct route to Ultimate Unwrap now, since it can read and write U3D. files, Ultimate Unwraps native format. |
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| True enough. Soon I expect to write an exporter for Maya, probably using Peter's xml version of the b3d file format; he provided code to convert his xml file format into a b3d file. |
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| Its all a very personal choice. I still love Max. I am using 5.1 and think its the dogs dangly bits. I have used Maya and would like to try that a bit more but at work, we are all geared towards Max so I guess I am not going to get a chance. It seems very over complicated on how you do things or not very intuitive. Lightwave is a great package and it keeps on getting better but I still dont think it compares with Max. This I think is a lot simpler or more basic than Max but this is not a bad thing. Its all down to how much you want to put into a particular package. If I spent more time with Lightwave I would probably rave about that, the same goes with Maya but for ME, the all round package is Max. BTW: I can not afford any of them, I only get access to what we use at work and transfer the licences to and from work and home. So this is also a very big obstacle to overcome, like podperson said in his first post. Just my £0.02 |
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| I support a dark horse: Hash Animation: Master. It's not an all-in-one solution for low-poly modelers, but the animation stuff in it is a close rival to Maya and the modeling part is incredibly intuitive once you get your head around it. I've tried a lot of modelers and I just can't turn out anything nearly as good as I can with A:M. Its file export leaves a LOT to be desired, though. I've toyed with the idea of writing a B3D exporter but nothing's really gelled yet. |
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| LW for me but RealSoft3D is also worth looking at. Reasonably priced and some very comprehensive features. |
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| Well, I agree that Lightwave is a fanatastic alternative, especially when you consider what you get for your money. Blitz 3d output via the exporter is great too, but... Well, you already know Max and having worked with it awhile you'll have to learn all that neat stuff you already know in LightWave, which may take a while, which means less productivity for a while. The Max 5.x upgrade incorporates reactor (if Max 4.2 didn't I can't remember), some very powerful tools for unwrapping and mapping, baking textures and saving them out, new renderosity light stuff (which is apparently fabulous!), better animation capabilities, dope sheets and other helpful additions. Max 5 is aimed squarely at the animation and games industry, no doubt about that, and Rob has a plugin wihch allows those B3d features we love so much to be exportable. LightWave is brilliant at many of these aspects too, though, so it really is a tough choice, the price for the Max upgrade would cover the cost of LightWave (but I guess you'd have two full blown packages then which improves flexibility!) I wouldn't get distracted, if you know Max already, I'd stick with what you'll be more productive with, I'd stay with Max. IPete2. PS If you do buy LightWave we do run training courses for beginners and experts alike, if you are in the UK, just a thought. |
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| Lightwave here. I paid £400 second hand, thanks to my wife! I spotted an auction on ebay, it was going for £600, bit too much for me. No one bid on the item!, the guy relisted it the next week, starting at £500, I was going to bid, my wife said 'let me follow it', oooo k Amazingly no one bid on it again, my wife says 'I'm gonna email him and offer him £400', I thought 'no chance!', 1 week later he replied 'if you still want it for £400, it's yours' BINGO! Tom |
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| Thanks for the replies. I do have some further questions. Does Lightwave still have that distinctive Amiga-like feel to it? I really disliked having buttons that operated on mouseDOWN instead of mouseUP (combined with no undo). OTOH I'm agnostic w.r.t. the division of functionality in Lightwave between modeling and animation (it can certainly be a good thing). What differences are there between the academic and commercial versions of Lightwave? The differences between academic and commercial versions of Maya and Max are crippling -- and frankly it would be dishonest for me to use non-commercial licenses. Is anyone using Cinema 4D? It seems like a contender... Has anyone actually made the switch from Max to Maya? (I know Joe is contemplating it.) I find Maya pretty counter-intuitive, but I've seen folks rig stuff up in Maya to be FAR more user friendly than you can ever make things in Max (e.g. I used to work with the guy who set up the virtual version of Rigel for Farscape in Maya 1.0; he essentially built up a totally user-friendly interface for a virtual puppet -- like Poser only more specific). P.S. I actually have a copy of Hash. It's a very impressive program but import and export are its major weaknesses -- making it great for producing short films but not so good for game development -- imho. |
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| LW buttons still have a mix of mousedown/mouseup operations, I've never even thought about that until you mentioned it :) Layout still lacks an undo history (watch out v8!) The academic verion is fully functional, the major limitation being you can not use it to make money, wether it be selling any content, or using any content created with it in a commercial project. If I remember correctly, if you install any of the LW updates without having the hardware key/dongle installed, it runs in demo mode, so why not give it a try? There's something like a 200 point limit and a watermark on all renders in the demo. Tom |
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| In a sense I've already made the switch. While I don't own Maya yet, I'ld been using Maya exclusively for a couple years at previous jobs. I've been using Max again for the last few months for compatibility with a client studio but for other projects I intend to switch over to Maya because I liked it so much after having used it. Finding Maya counter-intuitive is a pretty subjective thing (but then most of the things people have been bringing up are pretty subjective;) I don't like how primitives are always created at the world origin but other than that using Maya is incredibly fluid. For fluidity of modeling tools I prefer Wings3D (modeling in that app feels like playing a piano) but in animation tools Maya is wonderful. You brought up rigging which I didn't even think about. You can certainly do "complex to setup and simple to use" rigs like you described but, getting back to efficiency working in Maya, what I normally do is setup a simple skeletal rig where I have to select bones directly in order to manipulate them. Then I hide bones in the viewport and use the hypergraph (which I keep open on the side) to select them. This feels as you describe, like a virtual puppet, since the bones are now completely hidden and it looks like I am simply manipulating the model directly. Oh, and to set keys just hit S. So the animation workflow is select a bone in the hypergraph, move/rotate it, hit S, move to a different frame and repeat. I can't compare to Lightwave in this regard since I've never used its animation tools, only modeling and texturing, but compared to 3D Studio Max the animation workflow is light years better. Rigging is so much faster than using Physique or the Skin modifier, the rigged character is much more intuitive to work with, and setting keys is done purposely as opposed to automatically (and thus hard to control) in a special "animation" editing mode. I also love customizing the UI in Maya. I realize you can do this in other apps as well but Maya has a couple important leg-ups in this area. First off the default hotkeys are really useful. QWERT controls your basic tools (translate, rotate, scale, etc.) Using these keys allows you to simply rest your left hand in normal typing position and quickly access those important tools. Second, holding down the spacebar brings up the hotbox (a floating panel of all the menu items like File, Edit, etc.) Between those and the fact that you switch between editing modes with a right-click menu, and change views that way, you can turn off the entire UI, including the top menu strip, and work like that. ************** I'm not sure why I'm talking Maya up so much. Ultimately I don't really care what you get; it's not like Alias|Wavefront is paying me. I guess I'm just excited because of some recent discoveries. For example I just learned that you can duplicate a previous position (essential for looping animation) by using the right mouse button when scrubbing the time slider. Normally, when using the left mouse button, scrubbing the time slider scrubs the animation too. But with the right mouse button the model stays in the same position as when you started scrubbing the time slider, so you can simply scrub to where you want and then hit S. |
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| I'm not sure why I'm talking Maya up so much. Ultimately I don't really care what you get; it's not like Alias|Wavefront is paying me. Well we all like to rant about our favourite softs; for me it's LW. And we ALL praise Blitz although I don't think that any of us gets $$$ from Mark for doing so :) |
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