Topic awaiting preservation: Best 3d Rendering program?

I was thinking about geting a 3d rendering program and i was wondering whats the best one if there is a best one?

I've heard good thing's about 3-d studio max and i have copy of bryce that I don't like very much.

Thanking you in advance,
StemZ



[This message has been edited by StemZ (edited 08-15-2001).]

I don't know much about 3D apps, but I think the ones that do could help you better if they know what exactly you're wanting to make with the 3D app. If I'm not mistaken, Bryce is good for Landscapes. You wouldn't want to use it to do human modelling. On the other hand I've hear that Poser can be okay for human modelling, but has limitations and you wouldn't use it for objects...

I was wanting one that renders people and objects well.

Excellent. I'm sure you'll get plenty of feedback here.
Strata makes a freeware version of its software, Strata 3D. Maybe you'd like to get your feet wet with that...

I'm partial to 3D Studio, because I started using it back at the Academy, back when it was DOS based... 3DS Max looks to be a good piece of software. Hopefully, someday I can afford it. I knew a guy in college who used Lightwave. He did some good skeletal animation with it... by which I mean he rendered a human skeleton and animated it. While in college, I went with some friends to some sort of computer fair, and there I found a good deal on Bryce 2 and Poser 2. Poser is strictly human/animal rendering. Bryce does landscapes, but can also render plenty of other things. Finally, a friend of mine suggested I look into Maya. It appears to be expensive as well, though not as expensive as 3DS Max, but from what I've heard, it sounds like a good piece of software.

Okay, Blender? Or Strata? Or Blender? Or Strata?

what do you have to say?

Well, "people and objects" kinda covers everything Could you be a bit more specific? Do you want to do character animation, special effects kinda stuff, still shots, architectural renderings, cool organic modeling..?

Chris (a LightWave user)


KAIROSinteractive

bryce and poser are not modellers.

rhino, 3ds max, lightwave, softimage, and maya are modellers.

bryce and poser are just apps that have preset models, of which you can bend and shape to your needs. bryce is a bit more elaborate and lets you create booleans. but its very limited in comparision to rhino, 3ds, lw, and maya.

first figure out what you want to make, then pick the app. chances are you'll use 3-4 per piece of art. integration is a good thing.



{ kat ; mmm.. a site! }

Kat, I got some news for you...Bryce is a modeller. GO to www.ozones.com , go to 'Ozones Work' and have a look at the Doc's bryce images. There's some good shit there.


In the beginning, there was the word...and the word was 'God', although by the time it reached the other end of the phone line... the word was 'Gznd'

I think you mean "Ozone's Images", Skaarjj.

Bryce is a good (not great) terrain modeller. It's not a full modeller though. It doesn't support any of the basic modelling tools - NURBS, patches, splines -- heck, it doesn't even allow polygon modelling. Primitives, booleans, and height maps is pretty much it, if I recall. If you replace the word "modeller" with the phrase "general purpose modeller", Kat's comments are valid (actually, I agree with it as written - I don't consider a terrain modeller to be a 'modeller').

If you're doing landscapes, even alien ones, Bryce works well. Especially for the price. If you're going to model a human head or a motorcycle or a tennis shoe, however, I wouldn't suggest Bryce.


My general recommendation to anyone wanting to get into 3D is to buy Newtek's Inspire 3D. Hell of a good deal, and your skills will translate directly to LightWave if you decide to get serious about it. Caveat: I don't actually own Inspire (I do own LightWave). This recommendation is based on specs and other people's opinions.

Strong second to that recommendation, and I have used Inspire pretty extensively. I'd heard they were going to update it to include some of LW 6.5s features but I don't know what happened that.

Hey Das, are you going to upgrade to LightWave 7? Looks pretty awesome, I still have 5.6 and need to drop the $ for the upgrade...

Chris


KAIROSinteractive

Hehe, looks like I bought 6.5 at the wrong time (just a few months ago). 7 is selling for the same price as I paid for 6.5, but it'll cost $500 to upgrade to 7

Yeah, I'll get it. Just dropped $500 on my new Intuos (today at lunch, actually, about 30 min ago). Probably wait till next month to upgrade LW.

Cool, I amy try to talk my boss at my new gig into getting it, he was intersted when i talked about it before and we have director so it's not too expensive.

BTW Das, drop me an e-mail when you get a chance if you would. I'd love to chat with you a bit about what you do in these here parts...

Chris


KAIROSinteractive

for free its gotta be blender, if only because its so much less hassle that strata to set up, smaller file no need for annoying keys or anything. it offers quite a few features of retail programs [nurbs, Radiosity etc] and in my book its a hell of a lot better than programs like poser or bryce if you actually want to be creative...
Downside is that it has the most un-orthodox interface i've seen. Its really good and lets you work quickly once you figure out what on earth is going on. However if you then move onto 3d Studio or Lightwave everything seems a bit weird...
3d Max is good but its default render engine is a bit crap, its slow and just not quite right sometimes...
but it is supported by a lot of plugins like Brazil [allows proper radiosity, for free] which open things up but then slow your computer down a whole lot.
I'd say you should have a go with blender etc before you jump into the hefty price for a full retail prog like 3d studio
has that helped at all?

; : Relain : :

sometimes life gets in the way of living - Grade

You know...you guys really have to stop dropping money all over the place. SOmeone might take it


In the beginning, there was the word...and the word was 'God', although by the time it reached the other end of the phone line... the word was 'Gznd'

[This message has been edited by Skaarjj (edited 08-23-2001).]

I kinda like 3D Studio, but that's jsut me.

______________________
Are you afraid of the Dark




And that is 600

[This message has been edited by Dark (edited 08-25-2001).]

Got into this one late...

I think that the distinction has really clearly been made between tools to make animations and toys to make images, I have seen some really nice stuff done with bryce but for the most part in my mind it remains a toy for the creation of images. Das allready mentioned its shortcomings. Now 3dstudio is a tool, I havent really seen much use of it outside of games/character modeling, I havent seen much use of it in movies or television. Like Fig I have a slight bent toward lightwave.

I currently use 5.6 and will upgrade when its financially viable to do so. Why lightwave for me? Lightwave has been used extensively in TV and movies, a few examples off the top of my head I can think of are some movies...like Titanic, 5th Element, Tomorrow never dies, Star Trek First Contact, Men In Black, Casper, Etc...Some TV Series, Babylon 5 series, Star Trek, Millenium, X Files, Star Trek: Voyager, Robocop: The Series, Etc...Commercials...M&Ms, Budweiser (ants), Dodge, Gatorade, Duracell, Etc...

I think that Softimage and Maya should be left out of the discussion as they are in the &5000.00 - 8,000.00 range, almost absurd for an induvidual to consider at that cost. I have always found 3dStudio to be way overpriced when compared to lightwave, I have used it in a classroom setting but its way out of my leauge in cost, I think its right around 4k still. The flipside is that when it comes to online tutorials for 3ds there are about 10x more than any other package. So the discussion breaks down to...are you buying it or are we talking..ahem...evaluation software. Either way, learning fundamental modeling principals will translate to all packages so its up to you in the end.

If we are talking a purchase of legit software you may want to check e-bay, I got my copy of 5.5 on e-bay right after 6.0 came out and I simply upgraded to 5.6 and have been loving it since.

If your looking for a program specifically to do awesome rendering you might want to check out
ElectricImage at http://www.universe3d.com/

It's a bit pricey....but hey you get what you pay for.

Their slogan is cool too...."render fast retire young"

Their site is cool too

cheers
kromaz

I've played with Bryce, Maya, LightWave, as well as 3D Studio Max and just by personal preference, I use Maya. 3DS Max is a good program but I just find Maya's rendering engine way better, better quality, quicker with the better quality, and a lot more resources (i.e. plugins, MEL Scripts, tutorials, education, etc...).

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

Another really cool renderer Ive seen work of Blue Moon Rendering Tools - BMRT. They say this will be better than Pixar's Renderman. I havent had any experience with it but apparently it plugs into most 3d apps and does a really good job. Its been used on movies like Swordfish, Stuart Little, and Hollow Man. http://www.exluna.com/products/bmrt/index.html


"You don't know how paralysing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter: you can't do a thing." - Vincent Van Gogh

From my point of view, Bryce is excellent for landscapes. Terragen is also very good and much much more quicj to use, but a bit simplier. If you want to make 3D art you also should use Lightwave.
This is just advises. The best software in fact really depends on what you want to do and how you like working.

Ultimately all things are known because you want to believe you know. -Zensunni koan

Good topic, because I'm interested in 3D too.

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bryce and poser are just apps that have preset models, of which you can bend and shape to your needs.

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So what exactly does Poser do? Or better yet, what does it not do; what are it's limitations? I've seen some cool work that people make in Poser and then put into Photoshop, and I was thinking about checking Poser for that reason (basically, to make cool sci-fi people images in Photoshop when buying Poser is probably a better investment than paying actual models to pose for photographs). I want something that I can learn fairly quickly, too. So for this very basic use, would you recommend Poser, or something else?

quote:

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I've played with Bryce, Maya, LightWave, as well as 3D Studio Max and just by personal preference, I use Maya. 3DS Max is a good program but I just find Maya's rendering engine way better, better quality, quicker with the better quality, and a lot more resources (i.e. plugins, MEL Scripts, tutorials, education, etc...).

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actually, maya's biggest criticism is its stock renderer, its just not up to par with the rest of the package (part of the reason they've now bundled mental ray with maya). lightwave's is far superior and actually used by a lot of studios to render out maya animated scenes.

for basic 3d check out the 3D toolkit at DVgarage, only $199 for the basic package with a ton of tutorials and that's a heck of a deal. there's also supposedly a free older version oftruespace on the newest 3d world magazine cd.

chris

[This message has been edited by Fig (edited 02-18-2003).]

Maya is a mother of all 3D apps! and its pain in the ass to use....

I think Houdini is considered by most to be the 'mother of all 3D apps'.

Maya would probably come in second (although SoftImage might take that honor - it's been improving a lot lately, while Maya has been lagging) but only when used with an external renderer (usually PRRenderMan).

Mmmmm...... Rhino. So easy to model stuff in Rhino, then just export to renderer.

I used poser for a while, the first version of it that was. Pretty yuckie program i think. Poser was mad for creating people. And nothing else. You could use .obj files as props but that was it. I got a lot of people with overstrained hands, heads, feet, arms, etc. Since i tried to use my mouse for positioning those things. I found it very hard to see what i was doing. But since that nr1 version things should be better and the program should be usable now. But if i am correct it still specializes in human bodies.

"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

I find it funny that people suddenly started replying to this year-and-a-half old topic.

....Jeeez do i have to check all those dates..... lol


"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

Yes...

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=87fa774c9aacddffb1a4b554d7348060&threadid=19315

Shine and shine. [Cell=992]

NOTE OF WARNING: Do not spend $15,000 on a program unless your sure you need all of those features.
if you have the money (or DL a bootleg) 3ds Max (is what many game developers use) , or Maya (is the choice of 3d computer animation movie companies like pixar and dreamworks) is only program really worth getting into. Personaly I profer maya because of its seemless integration with many renders and its support for texturing, animation,
If your looking to keep it legal Maya Personal Edition is a good program to start since it basicly a professional quality program for free. for a render in maya the builtin render is pretty good unless you want photoquality shots(which unless your really good at 3d you wont need). for good looking shots VirtuaLight is a great render with export scrips for it already available. Prman (Pixars render) is good but for the price its a wast of time you can get most of the affects through any Renderman compliant renderer for free. Aqsis is a good open source Renderer but its completed yet although it does have almost everything complete except for FOV(Field of Vison) Camera Effects.
I also find that 3ds max object snaps break too often (at least in 3ds Max 4.0).
Blender has some really nifty functions in it like the static radiosity even suports non uniform key blending but tutorials and learning how to use everything can bring really drag it down. (I think blender would be really good for game since it has all sort of realtime functions, and has source code :-) ), Like 3DS Max though it hard to model and animate with pin point accuracy.
although 3DS max has a good reputation in the game world look at the some of work amaturist are producing with Mayas Freeware version.
I don't have alot of experance with maya since I can't run it on my system (only runs on XP and NT DAMN ME!) but I've used it on other peoples computers and I'm Impressed on every feature.

sry if im missing something but

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Dark
unregistered

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a) I didn't know you could post here if you werent registered and
b) How do you have a sig if youre not registered?

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Now Officially Superior!

That account was regestered when he posted. He's had it changed to a new name.

k thanks, that makes sense

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Now Officially Superior!