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Maya and 3DS max definately rule the Games world, followed closely by MotionBuilder and then XSI.

Blender is probably used a lot in indy development, but i suspect that a far greater number use pirated copies of Max and Maya. (they may claim the assets were created in blender for I don't want to get sued reasons....)

You're history of 3DS Max is slightly off. Max was published by Autodesk, but developed by Yost. Discreet Bought Yost, and max was then published by Kinetix. Discreet was evetually bought by Autodesk.

Autodesk already had owned discreet for quite a few years before it bought alias/wavefront a couple of years ago. So Autodesk never really made any mistakes - they never owned Max until about version 2 ish.

I appreciate you seem to be a fan of Truespace, but in all honesty it's not as serious a contender in the games industry as you seem to believe. (What about Xsi? Modo? Endorphin? Motionbuilder?).

Ok so it has python scripting, but then so does max, maya, xsi and motionbuilder.

I also doubt it's anywhere near as customisable as Maya. And i'd also that calgari's marketing bumpf is a load of rubbish. see this.
Max does not have a fully customisable interface, however you can completely re-write the maya interface - so why do they say you can't customise it? deleteUI $gMainWindow if you really want to...

They claim XSI, Max and Maya don't have generalised node editors? Are they taking the piss?

XSI doesn't support multiple rendering engines? You've got to be joking right? Renderman / mental ray ???

Physics based characters only in Truespace? Pardon? XSI has awesome physics support (with multiple engines), and Maya/Max has the freely available nima plugins to do ragdolls.

and i could go on....

short thread at http://www.caligari.com/.

Does this mean we'll see a 3d desktop on Blue Crystals(R) 7.5 I wonder?

or even worse a 3d virtual MS-Bob

Andy

http://www.caligari.com/ yah.

It's about $600 for the latest version, and fun to use. I like it anyway. No I don't work there.

Caligari

I highly recommend trueSpace (any version) from Caligari.
They've got a few Holiday Specials (for 3 more days), one of which is trueSpace4 for $99!

Another application that I recommend is Blender. It's free and runs on several Operating Systems.

I highly recommend trueSpace (any version) from Caligari.
They've got a few Holiday Specials (for 3 more days), one of which is trueSpace4 for $99!

Another application that I recommend is Blender. It's free and runs on several Operating Systems.

• Digital Character Animation by George Maistri
• The Illusion of Life
• Digital Lighting & Rendering

Although not mentioned often in the media, one of the most-kept secrets in the 3D industry is a relatively inexpensive tool called TrueSpace by Caligari.

First, note that this tool does NOT produce the kind of photorealistic images you get in lightwave, BUT what it has going for it is market-leading modeling tools and bar none the absolute most intuitive user interface on the market (this is not to say that the renderer is bad, the latest version now comes with a real nice third-party renderer which produces very nice renders).

I recommend you give it a try so it becomes your modeling program, and then export your work to render in Lightwave or whatever else.

Note that all the tools you mention Maya has (as well as Lightwave and the others) actually appeared first in many cases in TrueSpace (like the clay deformation tool, as well as many other "free form organic" tools.

The cool thing about it is that you actually create your objects and scenes in true 3D (but you can also bring top/bottom/left/right/front/back views if you wish), and the controls are simply awe-inspiring in easy of use and downright common sense (I have NEVER read the manual, and this something hard to say about any other 3D program out there). Oh yeah, everything is in real time as well, even in solid render mode!

This has to be the most-copied tool in the 3D world, and ironically the one that gets the least amount of credit. Check it out, I think they have an older version you can download as trialware for free.

On a side note, since you design GUIs, and come from a Photoshop background, I think you'll find this tool to be very intuitive. I myself use it for creating pseudo-3D GUI elements all the time, and then bringing it in into Photoshop for further refining.

that's right. you don't need to invest a life savings to get photo real images

...know that the renderer does not a quality scene make. It doesn't matter whether you use a best of breed render or a cheasy, not-so-great render. If you're a good artist who knows how to make good use of lighting, color, layout, textures, and so forth, you will produce photorealistic work. If you're a sucky artist (as most 3D artists are) and you have this misconception that a great rendering and tool kit is going to save you... well, your work will blow.

The shittiest 3D art I've ever seen (stepping away from the whole "it's art!" idealogy) was done with Lightwave3D. Some of the best I've seen was done with Blender and Caligari trueSpace (an off the shelf package for $100 in some places).

It all comes back to the artists. The software is just a tool. If you don't know how to hammer a nail in straight, a $15,000 hammer won't help.

I will advice you on the things your 3D Experiment Project should have:

1. A plug-in architecture, based on a very simple to use API. This way you concentrate on the basics, and hopefully then allow everyone else to develop plug-ins to extend the functionality. This will save you a lot of time.

2. Provide a tutorial to show how simple it is to develop a plug-in for it.

3. Use XML-based formats for your files.

4. Plan from the start for the program to be distributable, so one can render on multiple nodes on a network.

5. Check out the TrueSpace user interface. TrueSpace's output is not as refined as the big guys, but the 3D interface is bar-none the easiest to use (and it also support traditional 4-screen views). You can download a demo from there to check it out yourself.

6. Make it run on Linux, Mac OS/X, and Windows 2000/XP.

7. This is a long shot if you don't use Java, but if you program to the Java 3D API you automatically support OpenGL, Direct 3D, QuickDraw, etc, saving yourself a step in the process.

8. Include a scripting language for ALL internal functions and user interface commands and menus. That way a hard-core programmer has access to the low-level stuff, and a casual programmer can create simple scripts to automate a series of keystrokes and menu commands. Javascript could be great for this, or maybe some XML-based language?

9. Plan to include support for 3D glasses. They trully make modelling and animating a lot easier.

10. Include a utility to import/export to at least one well-known format, so people can get started right away experimenting with their 3D objects and scenes (Lightwave, 3DS MAX, Maya, etc).

What specificly would you like added/fixed in Blender to make it more competative? (besides a friendlier interface) BTW, Maya is something like 5 grand a pop IIRC. The Blender site is being restructured or something so they don't have much info on the latest greatest features of Blender, but the question is much like asking "How can I make truespace like maya. I don't see many examples of Blender animation so I assume the animation tools are lacking. How bout adding full IK/FK support with easy skinning? A dope sheet editor to mess around with keyframes? A graph editor? BTW, I don't know if any of this is currently there since I haven't looked at Blender in awhile so I'm just talking about what's generally important for me. Also, you can't just dismiss a friendlier interface - that's the NUMBER ONE thing that Blender developers should be working on. In ANY art based application, if you want actual artists using your software instead of software engineers and hobbyists, you have to make it practically invisible... this is ESPECIALLY true for something as complicated as a 3d modelling/animation package since there's enough to learn about working in a 3d environment itself without having to futz around with the interface of the program you're using. If I can't figure out how to rotate and pan and zoom around the 3d space in the first 5 min of opening the software without resorting to a tutorial (and this is after some experience using 3d software), then the interface is no good. Also, Maya used to be around 17 grand a pop or so and people still bought it. When you're making 30 grand off of each project, 5 grand for your software isn't much. I'm not telling people to go rushing out to buy Maya, just making a point that high end software is an investment.

Just recently I had a neighbor hire me to do a concept animation of a machine he was going to build. I used truespace 5.2. It was insanely detailed down to individual links on the bicycle
chain drive.

The poly count got so high that my P4 was going to take 3 days to render it. My computer could hardly handle moving around in the scene anymore. I told the neighbor I had brought the scene as far as it could go on my P4
and I couldn't go any further without a new machine. He gave me $2500 to work with so this was what I built.

Dual Xeon P4 2.0ghz
1 Gig RDRAM
Maxtor 80gig IDE drive
DVD-R(by his request)

The system definetly cut the rendering time down, to 24 hours,but something just didn't feel right about the new render time. I could
have bought 2 more p4 1.4ghz and accomplished the same for less. What really got me was when my friend rendered the scene on his single athalonMP 2200.

14 hours

A single athalonMP 2200 was smokin my dual xeon setup! Well, this is all it took for me to write off intel forever. Intel fuck you and your shitty CPU's, you've lost my trust forever!

Anyone that is even considering using a Intel solution as a renderstation, please don't waste the money. You can do a lot more with a lot less using AMD.

Posting anonymous as I used to work for Caligari....

My GOD that software sucks. If you ever had the chance to look at the source.... Total spaghetti garbage. Bandaid on top of bandaid.

Everyone that worked there refered to the company as caligoofy. Working for this guy was a nightmare.

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.