I have found a place (thx HEADCHEESE) that sells mainstream 3D packages for ~$US250. So my question is… Which one? What would you reccomend?
EDIT:Somehow two lightwave options. Please ignore the second one. Somehow two maya options to. THEETH! please help.
/d_M
how much is it? how much are you willing to spend?
with the quality of work you do digital_me id look into buying a mainstream 3d app. you said in the school thread that you were in 8th grade, so am i. i got lightwave under a student license for $295. instead of spending money on a application specific app go for a wider software.
All the mainstream apps run about the same for students. look into it.
Where did you get lightwave? Vue 5 Esprit is $US220.
/d_M
oh wow. id forget about Vue espirit 5 and go for a mainstream app. if you like blender’s workflow and have adapted to it then Lightwave will be the best choice IMO. here’s where i got it mine. all together it cost 304 USD. but that was with the book “Inside Lighwave [8]” (which i strongly recomend) and 2 day air (
im impatient).
here’s the link : http://newtek.academicsuperstore.com/
thx. I will strongly consider this.
/d_M
Ignoring for the moment that this is almost certainly NOT legit…
I would probably recommend in this order…
Maya
C4D
Lightwave
3Dsmax
3Dsmax I have no knowledge of, only a passing knowledge of Maya, even less with lightwave and a fair enough amount with C4D.
I think that maya is your best bet though since it very very powerful and feature rich. Theres some majorlly high level tech in there and you even get a seat of Mental Ray with it. C4D is very very cool and fun to work with, but it dosn’t let you get at the guts of the architecture like maya does (at least it didn’t in r6, I don’t know how r9 has changed).
Cheers,
Zarf
Why isnt legit? there are certain elgibiblty requirments but Digital_me meets them.
I have no experience with maya but i did download C4D and it was too much like a MS program. Lightwave as a very industrial feel to it similar to blender. digital_me, it depends if you wanna adapt quite a bit to a new interface. Maya has more powerful features, yes but how many of them will you use? from the student stand point i dont see how you could want more than lightwave. The interface is so much like blender. it took me 1 week and a half to get used to Lightwave.
Lightwave has a much different work flow tho (in a good way) it has two different parts: Modeller and Layout.
Modeller is where you model, determine surfaces, apply general colors and add skelegons (which act as polygons but later in layout you convert them into bones)
Layout is where all the animation, texturing, lighting, applying dynamics (cloth, soft body, hard body) and adding particles (Hypervoxels. great for smoke and fire, and partigon. great for mist and dust)
these different parts really improve my workflow so i am not jumping from texturing to modeling and the such.
I would like to add one more constraint to the list (and one more candidate) What If I only have $700 dollars to spend on a legit/non-academic license. My options the way I see it are:
What would you go for?
XSI foundation
It’s perfectly legit and legal as long as you meet the requirements.
I also legally obtained a full version of LightWave 8 under a student license here for only $249.99 (without shipping, of course).
I’ve also downloaded Maya Personal Learning Edition (which is available for free from Alias’ website), but I haven’t done a whole lot with it with school going on. Not to mention that LightWave and Blender are still keeping me pretty busy.
I have the latest Maya PLE, and I can say that I don’t like the interface at all.
HEADCHEESE: I must ask if Lightwave has the same kind of community that blender does.
Anybody know anything about 3DS Max? I’ve heard wonders about it’s particle system, and CAD style modeling.
Right now, Lightwave sounds like the best option.
/d_M
not quite as quite quick to reply but still a helpful and nice community, particles in lightwave are amazing. ill post a example later on tonite
I agree with you on that one. Many of the buttons are colorful, representational icons that can be difficult or impossible to interpret. I would say that the colorful buttons make the app look quite juvenile, but I suppose that others may find the colorful interface welcoming.
From my experience, I haven’t found any LightWave communities quite like the Blender community. This applies to all commercial apps, not just LightWave, but that’s just because Blender is so different. Anyone can just download Blender and start playing with it, so we get a lot more beginners and casual hobbyists over here. For commercial apps, you’re more likely to find a greater number of experienced professionals. They’re still just as friendly though, I assure you. 
If you like polygon modeling, then don’t go for maya.
Lightwave is probably your best bet.
On the render Xsi has mental ray. Maya has mental ray to but not as tight into the workflow as Xsi. Maya can do Renderman. But not at that price, and it’s not user friendly.
For animation I like Maya, anything and everything is animatable. Cludgy interface that always needs user adaption (at least it’s possible), if you can’t be botherd with that, leave maya alone.
If you like a little scripting, Maya (MEL) and 3ds are great. 3ds has a user friendly scripting language.
Dynamics: I’d say maya, but full license needed on most of this stuff. (hair, cloth, fluids etc)
Games: 3ds has a big foot into games. But also good connections to CAD and architectual renderers.
Subdiv surf: Lightwave / Xsi(?)
Curves/Nurbs: Maya
So,… take a pick… But don’t let the looks of the interface fool you. If you work, you’ll be looking at the 3d grid most of the time, right?
Yes, but the interface still has to be usable, otherwise it gets impossible (or very hard) to do things. I find maya’s to be extremely difficult at times, and just plain strange at others.
Well, since I do most of my modeling in polys and subsurfs it sounds like lightwave should fit my needs. Now I just need to russle up the rest of the cash. Thanks for all the advice everyone!
/d_M
It’s perfectly legit and legal as long as you meet the requirements.
I also legally obtained a full version of LightWave 8 under a student license here for only $249.99 (without shipping, of course).
I’ve also downloaded Maya Personal Learning Edition (which is available for free from Alias’ website), but I haven’t done a whole lot with it with school going on. Not to mention that LightWave and Blender are still keeping me pretty busy.[/quote]
Sorry but the fact that this is an educational reseller was not specified in the original post, so it was not unreasonable to think it seemed dodgy. I have certainly seen shady characters selling ‘legit’ copies of pro software for ludicrously low prices on the net before. I’m perfectly farmilar with student software, I have a student license for the whole Adobe CS suite and a license of Zbrush2 that I obtained from studica.
Cheers,
Zarf
AFAIK the C4D interface is completley customizable and you can make it look pretty much however you want. I have a copy of XL6 on OSX and I bet I could make it look pretty close to lightwave/blender
As an additional… I cannot believe I would ever hear anyone who liked the dual program paradigm that lightwave has going on. Take blenders modal nature and multiply it to the nth degree and there you have lightwave. Whatever floats your boat though 
The char anim tools in Lightwave are supposedly not up to snuff though but the renderer kicks serious butt.
Cheers,
Zarf
Yes, but the interface still has to be usable, otherwise it gets impossible (or very hard) to do things. I find maya’s to be extremely difficult at times, and just plain strange at others.
Well, since I do most of my modeling in polys and subsurfs it sounds like lightwave should fit my needs. Now I just need to russle up the rest of the cash. Thanks for all the advice everyone!
/d_M[/quote]
Lightwave dosnt support n-gons for subsurfs, and its subdivision surfaces are not based upon catmull clark (at least they didnt used to be) so beware. That would be a deal breaker for me.
Cheers,
Zarf
Either Maya or Cimema 4D, 3DS max has a lot of wierd stuff with the editable mesh and poly and junk and Lightwave seems to be troubled as I read before in CGtalk.
I do love my recently purchased xsi foundation. The wings+xsi combo is wonderful. And I have no money yet to buy a 17 or 19 tft, as this thing requires seriously 1280x1024 resolution. Anyway, as all can be accessed and customized by shortcuts, and u can build ur own layout, no probs.
I am -yep, incredible- using the animation for characters in 800x600, in a 15" sony, just cause I like to have it at 100 Hz. I use an special layout , and i setup certain hotkeys which are the main I use all th etime.Anyway, that’s how I work with practically all packages.
Where I am really finding it great is in character animation. But probably, while I don’t think Blender will catch xsi in that, I think Blender in a pair of releases more (as some features I like I have not seen them planned) will at least be worthing it better than xsi if u put it with the money issue (that is, will provide some ways of work that people who animate really love) .
The gi rendering with metal ray 3.3 is sweet…but remember, NO HAIR.
Not sure if with Cinema 9 u have it. As I think it was an apart module, shave and a haircut, I think. Still, I think I like more xsi UI, but it also is a beast on its own…u may not like its ui.
And the video learning doc is…simply great. the book can come handy, but a bit too basic, often.
for 500$, I think it’s a bargain. As is a price more of an ebay scam, knowing the power of the package.
BTW, I am more and more less in favor of midcost tools, when Blender is out there. I think actually those are the really in danger ones (not the highend) I wonder how these companies see the lightspeed evolve of Blender… maybe they improve their tools even more/lower prices, so , we get the advantages, hehe.