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Also several of the big name products have started offering free trial editions, which would be a great way to get a feel for them. Maya has one, and I know there have been others, although I don't know which are still available.

The program that I use at home is trueSpace. It's very robust for the price ($595 for the latest), which might make it a good solution for a project on a budget, especially considering the low-end pricing on the older versions. For instance, tS3 is only $99, and it was pretty good.

Same reason you can't have Photoshop for Linux, or Microsoft Office for Linux: because the vendor wouldn't make any money off of a version of their software for Linux.

Yet you can buy Maya for Linux, which costs just a hair more than Photoshop or Microsoft Office. You can buy Star Office, but most people don't, because OpenOffice is nearly the same quality with the definate promise of improvement. There's also Abiword. Gnumeric is a top-notch spreadsheet program that I've come to prefer to excel. There's more like this. There's really very little incentive to buy an office suite when you can get better for free.

In other fields, the Free alternatives tend to kick the hiney of their commercial counterparts. Let's try a few, okay? Pan, a newsreader based loosley on Agent. Pan is the only newsreader to score perfectly on the GNKSA Evaluations. Compared this to its commercial basis, Agent's score really sucks. Then there's Quanta for HTML editing. VIM is fine for most people, but if you need that Dreamweaver-like crap, Quanta does it without getting in your way. And it's REALLY good. Oh yes, it's Free with a capital "EFF."

This is a silly arguement to make against "Linux." This is Capitalism 101. Good products offered under better conditions succeed while inferior products do not. Maya is wonderful under Linux, and there is nothing else in its league available on a Unix-ish (OS X, Linux) platform.

Oh, yes. You can also buy numerous games, of course. Neverwinter Nights in particular will be releasing for all three major platforms in a single box. We'll see what this does for sales.

And the lack of a viable window manager (X-Windows does NOT count)

Moron. The X windowing system is not a "window manager" and plenty of advanced graphical applications work just fine on high end Unix and Linux systems.

printing solution,font solution,

Idiot. Both problems have been addressed already. Try again.

color management solution,
Hypocrite. The lack of a "color management solution" for Linux is caused almost entirely by the fact that Adobe and companies like it hold critical patents on the software needed to implement these features. Another bit of evidence that the ability of corporations to patent software is holding back widespread innovation. Once again, this is NO EXCUSE for Adobe.

Sounds to me like they're making excuses while everybody else seems to be having no trouble making their products work under MacOS X.

Maya (possibly the preeminent 3D animation app) is available under Linux. It's just out of your freebie pricerange.

There's also a free "Personal Learning Edition" available, but it's only for WinNT/2k/XP or OSX. So contact Alias|Wavefront and tell them you want to see it for Linux.

Blender really isn't the end-all/be-all of 3d apps the Slashdot crowd makes it out to be.

Maya (possibly the preeminent 3D animation app) is available under Linux. It's just out of your freebie pricerange.

There's also a free "Personal Learning Edition" available, but it's only for WinNT/2k/XP or OSX. So contact Alias|Wavefront and tell them you want to see it for Linux.

Blender really isn't the end-all/be-all of 3d apps the Slashdot crowd makes it out to be.

Yes. Alias/Wavefront. is a high end profesional package. And it runs on Linux.

i'm a cgi student at the moment, and i talk to industry professionals once in awhile, at siggraph and such. i have a split opinion on the matter of software piracy/software protection. several companies are offering student versions for free, or with discounts(softimage, photoshop).

one of the reasons why software piracy is still present is that these companies cripple their software so much that none of the content generated with it can be put onto a professional demo reel. maya recent strategy, the watermark on all renders, is an excellent work around this issue; it offers all features, plus an employer is likely to appreciate your integrity if its clear that you followed the rules.

in addition to student version's increased availability, software companies are funding more and more schools. softimage xsi has an excellent strategy: train more xsi drivers, market needs xsi, xsi sales increase. everybody wins.

i don't condone thievery, but i also don't condone highway robbery. much of the software seems is in a price range that a production studio may view as nominal, but as a student is much too expensive. i've heard the "it costs money to make these programs, you know" argument a thousand times, and frankly it doesn't cost $10,000(alias wavefront maya 4.0 unlimited) a package to make ANYTHING. these high-end graphics companies are creating software for a high-paying demographic. i believe that they are gradually learning the harmful effects of creating an elitist market.

software piracy probably won't ever go away. too many people like free beer. there's alot that can done to minimize the blow. creating a new student demographic and marketing a seperate package solely for them is a great way to do this.

Actualy, Alias-Wavefront just announced a fully-functional non-comercial version of Maya that is freely available. (Requires NT/2K/XP or OS X)
Check it out HERE. The download site has been really busy lately, but its definitely worth the wait.

Actualy, Alias-Wavefront just announced a fully-functional non-comercial version of Maya that is freely available. (Requires NT/2K/XP or OS X)
Check it out HERE. The download site has been really busy lately, but its definitely worth the wait.

Come on, that link is almost 4 years old. Go to the official site and download the latest version for free. It is not open source but lack of that does not make it non free. It is a good product. I have used the Linux and the Windows versions and it is capable of amazing things.

Alias|wavefront is supposed to be releasing a free (for non commercial use) version of Maya soon. I heard it will embed a watermark in your work. But still, having access and getting exposure to software that costs thousands of dollars is well worth it.

Come on, that link is almost 4 years old. Go to the official site and download the latest version for free. It is not open source but lack of that does not make it non free. It is a good product. I have used the Linux and the Windows versions and it is capable of amazing things.

Alias|wavefront is supposed to be releasing a free (for non commercial use) version of Maya soon. I heard it will embed a watermark in your work. But still, having access and getting exposure to software that costs thousands of dollars is well worth it.

Cryptnotic

http://www.aliaswavefront.com/freemaya. This looks too, too cool. A free, non-crippled version of Maya for home use. You can't use it in any commercial setting, and there will be a maya watermark in the videos it produces, but even so, to have such an amazing app available for free is something truly awesome.

(I'm not sure at all of the platforms supported, though... I'm keeping my fingers crossed.)

Graphic design, 3d modeling, animation, etc.

Yah yah yah you can POVRay it.

If you can type out the friggin scene mathmaticaly.

Uh...what about Maya? I mean, it's only the leading industry standard in 3D modelling/animation. And it runs on Linux. See this Alias|Wavefront press release if you don't believe me. The fact is, Linux is now considered a better OS for 3D work than Win2k (faster, more reliable). In my view, nothing beats The Gimp+Maya combination (now if they could only put out the equivalent of Illustrator for Linux...Adobe, are you listening?)

Yes, Objectiv-C is (truely) object oriented, but is very much unlike C++, which is "object oriented"-like. Well, you may disagree about those definitions, but they use objects differently, actually in an incompatible way. Carbon OTOH doesn't care if you use procedural languages like C or (Real)Basic, or an OOP wrapper with languages like C++. That's why, if you want to use C++, you have to use Carbon for programming - just like Alias|Wavefront did with Maya

-Legion

Eeehhh, Alias Wavefront ported the Maya batch renderer to Linux and announced it at SIGGRAPH 99. And of course if you are looking for a reneder farm for Maya, there is also Phortorealistic RenderMan from Pixar (couple it with RAT: RenderMan Artists Tools) which is also available from Linux for a couple of years at least.

Maya itself has already been ported to Linux (v. 4) and to Mac OS X (V. 3.5 I think).

Check it at the Maya press releases page:

The students want to use Maya because it makes them more marketable. My boss and I would like to move away from a commercial package so the students would focus more on content rather than software proficiency. . . My boss and I have talked about at the end of our software license contract moving the whole lab to Linux and using Blender and gimp as our primary tools.

Are you INSANE? You have an animation lab with software such as Maya and you want to switch to Blender and Gimp? Sure, those are decent packages if you're an amature on a low-low budget, but if I were a student interested in computer animation I'd raise a huge ruckus if some open-source advocate switched the lab from Maya to those inferior tools without a really, really, really good reason.

This isn't a troll. A few years ago I was seriously interested in computer animation at one time and got to wet my feet with Lightwave and Alias|Wavefront (before it became Maya). I still play around, even though my object modeling skills have stagnated. I've tried nearly all free and inexpensive commercial 3D packages (including the latest Blender as of about 3 weeks ago) and none can come close to even early versions of Lightwave. Unfortunately that does matter, as inferior tools put a low ceiling on students' creativity.

That video was fairly impressive at the time, I believe it even won some siggraph awards. The audio seemed a bit unsynced with the lips at times and the face lacked a certain realism. Beyond that I would be very interested to see a feature length film reviving a star I never had the please to watch during his life time.

If anyone wants to see the video mentioned here and in parent you can find it here

I don't know how many graphic designers on the mac there are out there, but someone HAS to mention that MAYA (you know the extremely badass 3d system used in final fantasy, toy story, shrek, et al) was recently released for the mac for the first time just a couple days ago. This is a MAJOR advantage for the mac.. A real reason for me to switch from NT based systems. At least now I'll have a decent photoshop to work with maya on. (on my sgi, I have PS 3. blech.)

Microsoft is dying? Wow..thats news.
You know with SGI completly owning(both in script kiddy sense and www.m-w.com sense (b.)) the 3d Graphics market ( Alias~Wavefront , SGI's beast of machines)
I'd wonder how you could say the pionears of realtime 3d could be dying.

What a world...

Well, I doubt you'll see much from Alias/Wavefront as open source anytime soon :-)
Still, it'll be nice to see some good modelling packages (other than Blender) on Linux.
But we might see some of the other software, developed by the studios/FX shops, used for modelling and rendering, released as open source.
That would be nice.

Uber, tell them that their target audience: geeks, prefer the latest open source browsers, and that it would be a good idea to have a plain XHTML/CSS version of their site with no javascript/pop ups.

I am Jack's shame in admitting to sometimes using IE: Blue bug eyes, glassy bug-eyed, dead brown.
--
mrBlond (I don't email from Malaysia)

Uber, tell them that their target audience: geeks, prefer the latest open source browsers, and that it would be a good idea to have a plain XHTML/CSS version of their site with no javascript/pop ups.

I am Jack's shame in admitting to sometimes using IE: Blue bug eyes, glassy bug-eyed, dead brown.
--
mrBlond (I don't email from Malaysia)

Uber, tell them that their target audience: geeks, prefer the latest open source browsers, and that it would be a good idea to have a plain XHTML/CSS version of their site with no javascript/pop ups.

I am Jack's shame in admitting to sometimes using IE: Blue bug eyes, glassy bug-eyed, dead brown.
--
mrBlond (I don't email from Malaysia)

Having seen the movie twice, I'd say the part that looks the worst is the zoom in ok Aki's eye during dream sequences.

Although (James wood character) is much better in this regard, compare Aki's eye to the eyes in the desktop backgrounds from the Alias|Wavefront site.

right. what those games needed was a way to issue complex commands quickly, without taking your hands off the input device (or eyes away from the screen).

and for the very same reason, gestures have become an integral part of Alias|Wavefront's Maya (the successor of the infamous PowerAnimator). the gestures take a bit to learn, but once you've got them wired you'll never look back. i know a few artists who have completely removed all of Maya's menu bars and buttons - no need to clutter your screen real estate when everything is available by hitting blank and a few strokes with your pen/mouse. needless to say, their productivity has improved dramatically, and they keep complaining about having to use 'traditional' menus in all those other applications.

Alias|wavefront's PowerAnimator (and later Maya) use something quite similar, and very powerful. When you click/hold with a certain combination, (left+right buttons?) a "sundial" of choices (8 menu items arranged radially around the cursor point) appears. Moving over each of those provides a sub-sundial of choices around that spot.

The really cool part was that (like any good HI component) the menu choices only popped up if you waited long enough to need them (to refresh your memory), but the actions you performed gesturing with the mouse would take place if they weren't there. So if you knew that North-then-SouthWest was where you had stored a particular command, you could make this gesture with the mouse without waiting for the menu to appear.

On top of all that, the menus were user-customizable. Really, truly, a power-user's interface designed to make you as efficient as possible. And this was back in...1996? 1997?

Disclaimer: I remember this in Maya 1.0, which was the last version I used. I assume it's still in there.

PalmOS did this earlier

(you can access the various modes with F2,F3,F4 etc, or just use the pulldown menu at the top-left of the GUI)

You can have a free evaluation version of Maya here

Furthermore, I saw some threads about the Final Fantasy movie, about how realistic it is. Well, look over the trailer and guess how heavy the characters are. The sense of weight is well, there is no sense of weight.

This mistake is commonly made in many animations, 2D as 3D. Just take a look at the chariot scene in Dreamwork's Prince of Egypt. It looks like the chariots including horses are less than 20 kilo's each.

They used to be plugins , but now Maya Cloth is part of the Maya Unlimited package: Maya Cloth Softimage has cloth simulations available as a plugin. Here is one I found: Fabrix for Softimage

Alias/Wavefront has plugins for Maya that simulate hair/cloth, and has had them for quite some time. I've seen demos with hair/cloth turned on that are quite stunning. Unfortunatly I can't seem to find the link on their webpage Alias/Wavefront, but they have a demo movies section. In particular, watch Bingo and look at the small girl's dress. This is an old demo, but I think they used an early version of the cloth plugin to make it (which is why the dress looks a little plasticy).

Alias/Wavefront has plugins for Maya that simulate hair/cloth, and has had them for quite some time. I've seen demos with hair/cloth turned on that are quite stunning. Unfortunatly I can't seem to find the link on their webpage Alias/Wavefront, but they have a demo movies section. In particular, watch Bingo and look at the small girl's dress. This is an old demo, but I think they used an early version of the cloth plugin to make it (which is why the dress looks a little plasticy).

I was looking around the Alias/Wavefront site and found this Taste of Maya thing, an evaluation verion of maya. I wonder if they'll offer this for linux? Also, does anyone have any screen shots of this program under any platform?

• Maya
• Houdini
• Realsoft4D
• (others?)

Check out Maya for MacOS X.

Looks to me like Macintosh is (finally) taking some bold steps into the high-end 3d/production market.

A friend of mine at the Alias|Wavefront offices here in Toronto told me about today's announcement of Maya for OS X...sounds pretty tasty!

Wheee... games. Big Deal. I already have an OS that does that. Windows.

What I don't have is an affordable STABLE OS which runs Alias|Wavefront's Maya software on an Intel platform. At work I use an Octane SE which only crashed once in the last 6 months [and that was due to an hardware failure]. At home I have to use NT.

However with Alias/SGI [ http://www.aliaswavefront.com] moving towards Linux for their product base... proper open gl support is the main remaining hurdle for full ports of graphics software to the linux platform. Linux Maya Renderer and Composer is already gearing up for release, I was talking to two alias engineers at Toronto's Post-Siggraph party who claim the only thing really stopping them from doing a full blown Maya/Designer/etc ports to linux was a lack of a fully complaint Opengl system. Which of course would be coming along eventually but they were not allowed to comment on that aspect of development =). Nice to see things panning out..

Considering SGI is partially backing away from NT and is on the linux bandwagon.... they need to get opengl on linux for their use ASAP.

Houndini's [http://www.sidefx.com] linux port uses Xi's OGL implementation for their display.. since it requires the use of hardware overlay planes. [I was just told that this wasn't the case with newer versions of the software]

Perhaps we'll start seeing some serious Linux graphics applications hitting the market in Siggraph 2000. I can't wait.

Regards,

Oblagon

Especially over a "Ge-Force" killer (which of course uses benchmarks from unreleased hardware).

First off I'm a bit weary of websites that only evaulate cards by fps tests in video games. I usually distrust most benchmarks .. except for perhaps INDY 3D.

Not everyone will want to play games.. in my case I do 3d Animation and modelling in Lightwave and Maya. Ask any 3d user about ATI's track record for stability and opengl support under NT with any high end application. I had many friends and co-workers who got a ATI card only to return it in short order and buy something along the lines of a Oxygen VX1.

Applications like Lightwave and 3DSmax seem to be more forgiving regarding 3d cards but soon as you introduce Maya or Softimage to the mix.. forget it.. ATI doesn't cut the mustard unless they pull a large rabbit out of their hat.

On a related subject.. I did confirm with my local alias rep that Alias|Wavefront is testing the GeForce 256 for Maya/Alias certification. (no I wasn't told which ge-force card they were testing). This certification will be significant.. as the Geforce will be more than a "gamers" card .. especially when the quadro version of the chip ships later on in a few months.

For me.. its an easy choice... go for the card with has a few fps faster framerate in quake and incoming? Or a card that thats practically just as fast in games *AND* can run all my 3d applications faster then most of the high end 3d cards on the market [using Indy 3D].

== It seems the URL for Indy3d is down.. its http://www.indy3d.com you can compare your cards to a Onxy2 IR if you wish :) ==