[chip_artz]

I haven't been really big into (me spending the time) 3D software not until more recently. I have Bryce4, Lightwave 7, and well that's about it. But I was wondering, which programs are best for what? And What program is used the most by pros? Also is there Maya for the Mac? And one last question, how thw hell do I render an image in LW7? Need a good tutorial.
-chip

[Anthony]

Well...if you have LW7, I would suggest focusing your attention on learning it, learning modelling and texturing and animation. General skills are able to translate across software applications, so train with what you (hopefully) spent your hard earned cash on. Oh, and hit F9 to render something in LW7, just like each LW before it.

[chip_artz]

thanx Ant, no i didn't spend my hard earned money for it. my brother did, does that count? and since he went off to war i guess i inherited it. but i can't find his owners manual, and that's why i don't know how to do anything in LW7.
thnax again -chip

[Juan-Philipo]

I've tried Lightwave after i screwed up my Max program, and i must say i SOOOO wish i still had Max. A lot of things seemed a lot more easy in that.
I think "pros" mostly use Maya, its said to be the best by many.

[Svanur]

I think there is no right program. Just go with what you feel is most comfortable. I myself am a MAX person but I am thinking of learning on Maya and lightwave.

You could also try to focus on the program that focuses on what you want to aim at. Games, Movies etc.

[Catfish]

Maya is great - we use it at university. It's particularly good because of the workflows - there are numerous ways to accomplish tasks, and you can use whichever you prefer. The interface is highly customisable to suit this.

The renderer is the sole disappointment - it's very capable, but can be slow, and doesn't have the quality of, say, MentalRay. The good news is that the next version of Maya will replace their internal renderer with Mental Ray.

What else? Their subdivision surfaces is the best implementation around - they started becoming viable in Maya3 and are pretty much perfect in Maya4.

PaintFX and fur offer some great ways of producing entire forests or fluffy creatures fairly quickly, though they need a lot of tweaking for photo-realism.

The program is vast - you are continuously learning new features, and can see why it's used in so many films (hollow man, shrek, Final Fantasy, SW:EP1....).

I haven't tried Lightwave.

I've tried 3DSMax3. It's nice, but had difficulty adapting to it after using Maya for so long. It's very easy to create polygon characters in it - useful for games. I would suggest going with Maya if you want photorealism though.

The only downside would be the price. There's a student edition of Maya that's just about affordable.

[Darklighter]

just stick with lightwave if you've already started it, no reason to get into another prog, it's all the same shit in the end (personally i use max and maya)

[JoeKool]

Well..there are tons of more experienced artists on here than me, but in my little experience..I have yet to find a company that prefers LW (other than Station X I suppose).
IMHO, most game companies seem to prefer Max 3/4 and the majority of effects houses (Digital Domain, Sony Imageworks..etc) seem to use Maya more..along with Houdini and other nice packages.
A few select game houses I have seen use something called Nichimen..and I know the guys down at Weta in New Zealand who are doing the Lord of the Rings use that..
And if you are into post-production, looks like Inferno is a great package to learn.
So I gues sit really depends on what you want to get into and go from there.
Hope that helps.

[Anthony]

Actually LW has a rather large market share. Just have to be looking at the right industry.

[RumpusKing]

Station X is no more, I'm afraid. There are several LW houses around and several others that use it, but you never hear about it (including Digital Domain. Their main-bread-winning commercial division uses LW).

Each piece of software approaches things differently. Maya is a buzzword by now, and rightly so, but there are many things that are *far* easier to do in other programs. Learn each program's strengths and use whatever you need whenever you need it.

The more tools you can get in your box, the more desireable you'll be to a potential employer.

[a_sh]

they are all very good programs. as far as i have seen, they focus on abit different areas of 3d though.

lightwave (it was years since i used lw so i don't know if it has changed since):
very good for lowpolymodeling and general vertex-tweaking. the companies that uses lw are game-companies which need lowpoly-models and not much photorealism.

max (the program i use nowadays):
lots of different tools, tries to include every single technique out there. tons of stuff to learn before you can take full advantage of it. abit of a jack-of-all-trades. this combined with the excellent renderers available make max suitable for almost every company who needs 3d stuff. i have heard that some companies that uses other programs to modell, import their stuff into 3dsmax for rendering (with mentalray).

maya (just started learning it):
focuses heavily on mathematical surfaces rather than meshes, there one set the exact position of every vertex and face. this makes it very good for organical stuff. cloth and fur are great examples of this.


don't know if any of that helped. please tell me if any of it is outright wrong!

[goldnarmz]

id say maya if you have the money!
but if you dont(like most of us 'ere) i would choose Max(havent tried lightwave) because it has alot of support, there are alot of great free plugins which includes BRAZIL, Meshtools, ets which makes Max ten times better.

[Ko]

Hmnn... I see the age old debate beginning to brew here

But saying that the tons of plug-ins for Max makes it ten times better it maybe streching it a bit... I've only just scratched the surface of Max and didn't find it to my liking. So I can't really coment much on it.

I myself, am a Lightwave man, (born and raised) , And have been using it since version 3/4 on the Amiga. I'm not a pro animator and I have used it mainly for still images/illustrations, for posters and such.
But in my opinion version 7.0B has really taken Lightwave the last step to being a major league application, among the best.
It has the most complete set of polygonal modeling tools (maybe except for Maya4), and it has a lot of very cool features, only found as expensive plug-ins for other applications. It has it's own Global Illumination renderer buildt in... and it's actually quite good. The multi-mesh file structure, skelegons and other "intelligentities" have really improved Lightwave's workflow tenfold.

I've done one small animation project in Maya and though pretty easy to get into, Maya just has so many features that you easily get lost. And I really didn't dig the way you had to constuct shader-networks in the old versions (2/2.5)... But then again much has changed since then and Maya should be even easier today, as it has matured over time. You can't beat it's NURBS modeling tools PERIOD! Maya's NURBS tools are just so powerful and they are the "only" thing I miss in Lightwave... that and of course construction history.

But hell... I've seen impressive images/animations from artists using all of the above mentioned applications... So just go with what you feel at home with, and what your experience and bank account can handle.
I wouldn't really recommend Maya to a 3d beginner... Try Lightwave!!!

[EDIT]
Hmnn... Chip, I just checked your website...
You might wan't to remove that splash pic
by Liquid!, before you get flamed to death. http://www.100megspop2.com/chipartz/

- Ko

[ October 22, 2001: Message edited by: Ko ]

[goldnarmz]

Ko: what i mean is it make MAX's useability 10x better with the free plugins support, otherwise without it i dont think i could get by with max alone, and in no mean was i comparing between different softwares...SORRY!

also if your looking for a NURBS modelling software a very good alternative is Rhinocerus 3d 2.0....it may not have alot comfort/shortcut tools that maya has, but it makes up with cheaper price and easy to learn....

if your looking towards polys well there are tons of great softwares out...if your a beginner in subd a good introduction is Nendo..its cheap,powerful tools and easy to learn, but like rhino3d it doesnt have animation tools and rendering tools.

both softwares can be downloaded (demos) from their respective sites.

[ October 22, 2001: Message edited by: goldnarmz ]

[chip_artz]

guys thanx for this plethora of knowledge....I wish i had a pc for for 3dMax but I'm Mac-ed out right now. So is there Maya for Mac? cause this Lightwave is hard and I need a good tutorial. even tho Maya might be as complicated to a newbie like me i'd rather learn the industry standard and then branch out and find my niche.

[Ko]

goldnarmz: I see And that's exactly what I've heard... You need to get a lot of expensive plug-ins to expand your toolset to that of other similar packages. That was at least true for older versions of Max. I know next to nothing about v4.

chip_artz:

Maya4 is indeed out for the Macintosh,
but you'll need a fast G4, a good OpenGL compliant 3d accelerator (GeForce3 or Quadro DCC) and last but not least OSX (10.1)
You'll also need a three button mouse.
http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/WhatWeDo/maya/mac/mac.shtml

And you can't really talk about an industry standard for three-dee software... but Maya definetely is a strong contender in the character field.

But I would really recommend that you sit down with Lightwave, and learn the basics of 3d, before moving on to more advanced software. It sounds like you're a beginner with 3d, so taking on a beast like Maya, really isn't recommended.

This is my best advice, and you really should follow it :P

And you can get a lot of lightwave tutorials and sample files from places such as:
http://www.flay.com/ http://www.presetcentral.com/

Do a www.google.com search and you will find more...

- Ko

[jonaz.dk]

I'm not going to discuss what software package is best. It's subjective.

personally i've tried alot of 3d software.
Lightwave 5.6, 6
Maya 1,2,4
Max 2.5,3.1, 4, gmax
Rihno 1.0
Cinema 4D XL
Softimage 3.7

Most of them are well capable of producing great looking pics and animation, if you know what you are doing.

but personal prefrence is still, and will for quite some time... MAX!

[LordArioch]

I find modeling more comfortable in Lightwave than in Max, although UV mapping and character animation is kind of a pain in Lightwave. I haven't tried Maya.

[BB]

I've used Max for a couple years and loved it especially Character Studio. Used Cinema 4D for a couple projects and it drove me nuts.

I recently switched from Max to Maya without any difficulty for my new job and think Maya is amazing.

Here is a rundown of there strongest uses of some 3D apps and what I've seen them used for...

Max- Mainly Games and some movie use. Great Plugins for effects. Character Studio rocks.
Softimage- Mainly movies and Game Companies. Loosing it's strength in the game industry.
Lightwave- TV and Game companies. Nice renderer. Strong for TV because of bang for the buck.
Maya- Everything under the sun. Not so nice Renderer, but very powerful everywhere else.

I would recommend Max if your interested in Game Developement. Maya is really starting to focus on Game developement companies too now and moving in on Max's territory.

Maya of Softimage if your interested in Movies.

That's what I've seen. Good luck!

[keyth]

i started in maya and have only experienced maya since then. my instructors tell me that maya is the current leader in the business world.

but this seemed difficult for me to believe b/c another instructor told me that there were more jobs in max.????go figure.

i think that if you learn whatever you have. employers will notice and teach you whatever they work in.

honestly....just focus more on being creative w/your images. the market is so saturated w/every tom, dick, and harry that a really kick ass image in lightwave will get you a job w/a company that only works w/max/maya.

hey, my first reply. hmmmmmm

[Catfish]

quote:

---

i started in maya and have only experienced maya since then. my instructors tell me that maya is the current leader in the business world.
but this seemed difficult for me to believe b/c another instructor told me that there were more jobs in max.????

---

You only have to look at the lists of films that Maya is used in to see why it's viewed as the current leader.
Max might be viewed as more popular because it's cheaper, & so open to smaller companies to work with for small-production tv graphics, or working with games - It is extremely good at working with low-poly characters.
Having said that, it's worth noting that as graphics hardware gets more & more powerful, you no longer need low-poly counts. Doom3 is being produced in Maya.