3ds max 5 free trial?

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21

really?? i tried AM once and found it crappy - bad interface (looks like MS WORD with a 3D window), and i’ve heard that it crashed quite often… (ok i admit i tried it only short, and i didn’t like it at all. i’m sure it’s a powerful piece of software, but with zero “sex appeal”) however i tried motion-builder, too, and was amazed by the animation capabilities. it works like real puppets and behaves in a very intuitive way… well my two cents, too :slight_smile:

@tracer - i’m quite sure there is no LW demo. there never was one. maybe they’ll make one, as all the major players in the business have a trial/demo/free version (MAYA PLE, XSI EXP, 3dsmax 30-days-demo).

i don’t recommend LW. it also has a powerful feature set, but workflow is a pain in the a** sometimes. those guys still have two separate programs, one for modelling/texturing, one for animation, and this can really break your concentration. apart from that, even simple things like viewport navigation or object movement seem tedious once you’re used to blender. …but try it if you can, build up your own mind. it gotta have something, so many ppl out there use it…[/quote]

theyre is a lightwave demo go onto there site and download the lightwave 7 update this will run in demo mode until patched

22

Search for Lightwave DE or Discovery Edition it’s the old PLE stlye lightwave only there’s a face limit in Modeler I think and obviously a render limit…I think it’s for version 7. I found it by searching the Newtek user discussion forums at www.newtek.com

23

Lightwave IS a pretty good app. I personally like it a lot better than MAX.

These days, though, I’m becoming an XSI convert.

So if you’re trying out software, give Softimage|XSI a spin. There’s a free 30 day trial download of XSI-Foundation, with no weird polycount limits or watermark stuff.

At $495 it’s a hard deal to beat (except for Blender, of course :wink: ). For a limited time, they’re also include a $200, 5 DVD training set for free.

24

Most of the programs have “learning” style programs

Maya: Maya PLE
Softimage: Softimage Experience
3ds max: gmax
Lightwave: Lightwave DE
Houdini (!!!): Houdini Apprentice

They’re limited in output, but for the most part, functional, permananent, and free.

25

Your experience with AM depends highly on which version you were using. 8.5 was very stable, 9.0 was supposedly pretty bad, presumably since it was a total rewrite. v11 is supposed to be stable again and has even more advanced features than ever.

AM’s character animation tools are very well thought out and more importantly, robust as they come. If someone said Hash’s character animation facilities can stand toe to toe with the best in the industry, they wouldn’t be wrong.

Motionbuilder does a lot of neat tricks, but it’s full body ik setup is nothing new. Nichimen/Izware beat them to it over 5 years ago with the skeletal animation system in Mirai, the big brother of Nendo both of which inspired the creation of Wings. Animanium from Sega(!) does this sort of thing too, but it’s implementation kind of sucks.

I was able to simulate this sort of behavior with blenders constraint system to a certain extent, but it eventually proved to be of limited usefullness.

Cheers,
Zarf

26

Wow, it seems a lot of people are liking this XSI app. Is it just because it’s cheaper then the rest, or does it also make better products. If money wasn’t a problem, what would be the best app?

27

The reason that I left Animation Master was because I tried to make certain models that A:M did a terrible job at. Some cases you need to have a sharp triangle-shaped surface. Whenever you did that with A:M the texture map and normal would fold over to create a black spiral crease in the middle of the patch. Sometimes on a smoth surface a 5-point patch could be used to replace a 3 and 4-point patch, but whever I created one or loaded a model with one A:M would crash. Having black lines and other wierd annomalies was unacceptable, and caused notable artifacts in my motion peices. A:M is built mainly for organic modeling, and when I tried to do anything inorganic I had terrible difficulty.

A:M is built for character animation. And yes, it kicks Blender’s trash when it comes to animation. When I first started using Blender I was dissapointed that it didn’t have raytracing until a few months later a new version took care of that.

So far, everything that I liked and used in A:M has been replaced by new feature in Blender. A:M does have some really nice features that Blender doesn’t have yet, but those are features that I probably won’t use, until I start making full-length movies starring fuzzy creatures.

28

hey, tr@cer

XSI rocks so hard, it’s not even funny. The animation tools in particular are the best that I’ve ever used. In my opinion, they’re better and more robust than Animation:Master’s tools.

I always wanted my own seat of XSI because I got to see what Softimage could do on some past projects at Disney. The recent price drop is freaking amazing because it allows me to actually afford that personal seat.

Version 4 of XSI - Foundation is VERY full featured: don’t let the sub-$500 price tag fool you. In fact, Foundation is the most DEEP 3d package I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. Every day, I come across some new thing in the software that makes me say, “Oh, that’s COOL!”

Oh, and don’t forget that XSI has the tightest MentalRay integration out there.

The most mentioned missing piece in Foundation is a decent fur/hair shader, but I’m betting that a third party will introduce a cheap or free plugin to shore up that shortcoming very soon. Somebody already wrote and posted a free script that gives access to most of the automated rigging features that are only supposed to be available in the more expensive versions of XSI.

I’ve owned a lot of apps, including LW, MAX, A:M, TS, and a little bit of Maya on some past projects. For my personal workflow, XSI kicks ALL their butts. The only two other “rich” 3D apps (that I have experience with) that I would recommend with any enthusiasm are Messiah:Studio, and Blender, both for varied reasons. Messiah because of the killer animation tools and the powerful renderer, and Blender because of the lightning workflows, efficient memory friendly architecture, and the fact that it’s a good stable “all-around” package that can do most, if not all of what you need in 3D for free.

I also dig Wings3D as an alternative modeler.

However, remember that all of this is just subjective opinion. Download and try everything that you can to find

29

Hey, such a concidence. I model with Wings since long ago, and could be allowed to use in jobs as main modeller. But I also purchased XSI, mainly for its character animation power. Yep, I always wanted a seat of those packages, and the Foundation version allowed it.

I am not digging a lot of it now, as I only checked very well its joint pining workflow, ik etc, and directx animaiton export, even in my x viewers to ensure good work in game engines, and was so amazed how accurately the free x exporter worked. Really wanted to find some time to check the dx import though, as most othe rpackages I have and use (Ultimate Unwrap40$, character fx 15$, Blender with Ben x exporter ) do export anim, bone and weights info in x files, so it must be fun to import an animation also from other packages , though I doubt I’ll go in that direction.

Yup, it’s really, really good, really a lot of depth, too. Is totally new UI for me, and I have used loads of UIs, including Blender…

I’m too lazy to see the DVDs, but I’ll end up doing so. All learned now is been just playing-guessing with it.

I am in projects where in the stage of modelling and UV mapping, and for now I prefer wings3d and ultimate unwrap for that… When in the stage of animating, I’ll use it. I always use what I need and for what I need…IE : was in game jobs but only learned the part of Max I needed…these packages are huge, so I only learn what the boss needs, or the projects asks for :wink:

As for pleasure, if weren’t so forced to work in other stuff to try to make bucks, I’d be playing with it all day :slight_smile:

Man, adding pinning objects with a key is just so cool…

I don’t actually need the automated rigging thing, too used to make stuff by hand in way more spartan proggies like Character Fx…

The hair limit thing get me worried, though…besides game hardware and power is growing every minute, and at some point all will be baked or calculated real time, is the fact that I also like doing high end rendering , not only real time 3d graphics.

So, your post was very interesting, as I am not into any XSI comunity (purchased recently, and anyway, I’m too many 3d related forums already) and did not know the possibility of someone doing a cheap hair plugin…as I actually don’t miss a bit of all the other features ripped (maybe syflex cloth, but that I can fake it more or less with bone sand physics(or even without them), or I did so in other packages) , but I perhaps will with hair.

Anyway, I’m trying to help a bit here and there to ppl to use blender for open source or indy comercial games. Somehow, I love the idea of a free package for everyone. :slight_smile:

BTW, I suspect…at some points there seem top be inspiration on XSI for certain Blender features, but i could be wrong. That would only speak really well about Blender.

if you post in this forums if a cheap hair plugin or addon is published, that’d be great to know :slight_smile:

30

hey, I was wondering what max can do that blender can’t? I love blender and I would die for it if need be, but my roommate likes max better so we are always fighting about it. I would like to know why max is better.

31

Ok, ill tell u whats better about lightwave,3ds max and maya that blender doesent have!

Well blender is great its quite a professional app but maya,lightwave.ect have way better rendering power. More tools that are very usefully like hair and fur tools. It also has extreamly complicated but good uv mapping and way better animating tools!

Sorry but blender can keep up with some apps but i have lightwave and alll those and i still do lots of my modeling in blender! If you are not willing to spend time learning lightwave, maya.ect dont bother then because dont go spending outragous amounts on programs that your not gonna learn/wanna use!

But blender is climbing to the top its probably the most powerfull free 3d modeler!

32

hey blende can you go on msn i got summit to ask you

33

Your experience is pretty typical I think. It’s interesting to note that there are several prominent AM users who only use it for animation, and leave the modelling and rendering to another application.

The black spiral crease in a middle of a patch sounds like an anomoly that technically shouldn’t occur as long as each CP has a valence of 4 and the splines are connected properly, but I have encountered such oddities as well. However if the model is built properly these distortions should be minor, whilst what you are describing sounds pretty major. Regardless the newer versions don’t suffer from this sort of thing if I understand correctly.

Also the 5 pointed patch crash makes me think you were using v8.x, in which case the crash was a probably a problem with the realtime display. If I recall correctly it could be fixed by changing some direct3d settings in the display drivers tab of the application.

It’s interesting to note that Blenders ‘Actions’ ‘Armatures’ and NLA editor were inspired by A:M. Whether or not that was a good fit could be an interesting topic for debate.

Cheers,
Zarf

34

the only reason why 3ds is so expensive is because its being used a lot by pro game makers i.e. makers of COD and ubisoft(makers of prince of persia)
i would just get a crackerd version and pay for max after i have a job and stuff that way its not really illegal cause you pay after youve mastered it

35

It’s just illegal until then :).

36

Lol well anyway you can make a lot of money out of it so i guess thats another reason why its expensive

the only thing i dont get is how games take 10 mil dollars to make

37

WHY games cost 10 mill??? Lets crunch some numbers.

Publishing rights… if its a high profile game with famouse people or characters… like matrix or xmen… some companies have to “bid” for the “right” to even make that game… which at time can easilly run into the millions.

Advertisement… TV spots… 30 seconds in prime time costs prime dollars… not to mention the salaries of the writers… the announcers… the actors all that MADE that comercial… they get paied too. Dont forget the price for radio spots… and the employees fees… and magazien adds… the cost to the mag to allow the advertising… the artists that created the ad.

Distribution… you think all those fancy boxes and CDs make themselvs??? nope. you have to pay for the materials… the programming of the cds… the artists that creat the covor designs… and the trucks that ship them to your stores… most games usually ship at least 2 million copies… so that easilly runs you into a few mill dollars.

Programmers… designers… and all the people that actually MAKE the game… beat a game… especially an rpg… and look at the 300+ people it takes to make that game… ranging from simple art… to designing the manual… to multiplayer programming… the musical score… and paying any voice actors that might be in the game.

its not back int eh atari days ant more where 3-4 guys can spend a few weeks and toss out an interesting game… no… its basically an interactive movie… with alot of the same workers and problems that a 40 million dollar theatrical production takes… and its just not cheap.

38

lol ya but the salary of the people that actually make the games is nothing compared to what the game costs i mean an engineer doesnt make more then 6000 a month right?

anyway we were talking about max? :stuck_out_tongue:
i would wait a while cause 7 is coming up and there’s a trial for that as well

39

yes there prob will be for 7 but doubt it will be for 98

40

$6000 a month? Better at least double that if you want to even approach my current base salary as an engineer.

Multiply that by 1.5 to 2 to cover each employee’s overhead (insurance, supplies, hardware, software, office space, administration, etc.) and even a small dev team can burn through quite a bit of money in the 1.5 to 2 years that it takes to develop a decent game.

However, with the booming mobile market, there’s now a new need for tiny “old-school” development teams. A little company composed of just 3 or 4 people can make a killing in mobile games.