[KillMeNow]

i might try max again someday but for the moment i'm learning lightwave - thats the software i've chosen for now - once i can do everything lightwave has to offer then its just a matter of learn how to do it in another program but i will know how to model essentially thats far better than learning a new package everytime a new one comes out

[CougEr]

ermmm... not quite right there.
 Once you learned on a program it is extremely hard to switch to another. Patience has to be more than a virtue there.

I've been messing with 3D anim. for a good part of 12 years now, I think...
I started on Lightwave 4.0 on a 386.   hehe  watching grass grow  was more exciting.
 Still the passion was there and I continued to version 7b. I never really looked back. Opened 3D studio max way back, modified and rendered the "Dancing baby" and never opened it again after.

Because of need of terrains  which LW sucked at I stumbled on to World Construction set the beta version.
   WHOOOAAA!  that was it. chaos interpretation of polyrendering  was my ticket to realism never seen before and infinity zoom effects!
Using ligtwave to composit the foreground, matching cameras between the two programs  I was set!

a lot has happened since then characters  came in to the pictures  and Lightwave by now at the version 5 was still unable to deliver for me a simple system of manipulate the dreadfull BONES!  IK was also hard to understand, so Poser  came to be  only problem no matching cameras to lightwave. so compositing has to be done very carefully.

Now maya is here NT  based only (more stable) needs buckets of ram  uses as much open GL you can throw at and renders like crap.  renderman is needed for effective times and quality renders, still character creation is fantastic  so I use that for character animation.

For particle animation I don't bother with maya too hard the learning curve, Illusion takes care of that with a pretty nifty and sophisticated package.

Final editing of scenes is all done on the avid Xpress for quality and sound processing is often created with soundforge  from follies to full soundtrack mixing.

So you might say that I'm a jack of al trades and master of none, but all those application I can use for what I need and the results... well judge for yourself.
The fact that I studied film making and I'm a director as well as a tape editor/cameraman  could also be an advantage for me.



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Capt. CougEr!
  ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._
  `6_ 6  )   `-.  (     ).`-.__.`)
  (_Y_.)'  ._   )  `._ `. ``-..-'
 _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,'
((('   (((-(((''  ((((

Learn to play the Game and you're part of the way there.
Ignore them and you've truly mastered it.[/list]
OSIRIS STATION

CougEr's 3D anim archives

[KillMeNow]

i agree with you in prnciple but but but i consider myself more a 3d artist than a user of lightwave - lightwave is just my pencil or brush and the techniques mostly should be transferable  from one package to another ( i know that is easier said than done ) - so i'm still a newbie to 3d art hopefully one day i will be professional - att the moment i'm just mking animations - nothing special but experimenting with effects not really puting muvh effort into the modeling or texturing - but i still think practicing greating animations will be useful - am i making any sence???? lol probally not but for now lightwave satisfies my needs sure someday i will find soemthing that i need to use another program for but i'll bet even then if i knew how lightwave will probally be capable of doing - on the other hand i mightbe working with another programs and want to do something i could do in seconds in lightwave but cant in this other package - arghhh ok i really am rambling  =)

[wEvil]

In my opinion softimage XSI is a cut above the rest (or will be for Version 2.0)

its quite hard to learn, but since so much of the program is half open source (more or less) and its an entirely new extensible architecture it will pull ahead of the competition (maya) very quickly.

Sure, at the moment there are bugs, not all the features are implemented and the application footprint is quite large, but these will be sorted given another 10 months or so.

Im just sticking with MAX because its the second-most-flexible package out there until I can get on a soft XSI training course.

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Remember, when someone annoys you it takes 42 muscles in your face to frown, but it only takes 4 muscles to extend your arm and ***** slap them upside the head.

[CougEr]

My suggestion get a solid base on lightwave. Especially in lighting.  lightwave is legenday for good lighting now .  Radiosity and volumetric,  very very nice. Radiosity  and caustic   can lenghten your animation times x10  but the results are stunning.
After  you should be able to move on to other programs and platforms. Alies wavefront and Maya on CG I hear is pretty happening.
totally scriptable.
 


------------------
Capt. CougEr!
  ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._
  `6_ 6  )   `-.  (     ).`-.__.`)
  (_Y_.)'  ._   )  `._ `. ``-..-'
 _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,'
((('   (((-(((''  ((((

Learn to play the Game and you're part of the way there.
Ignore them and you've truly mastered it.[/list]
OSIRIS STATION

CougEr's 3D anim archives

[Nico]

Maya is more directed to character animation, from what I've heard. Is that true?

[phreak]

yes.  I believe the FF movie was made in Maya.  

I use gMAX which is like 3DS MAX r4 with the renderer and NURBS support stripped out (and its free). The only bad thing is that it saves as a *.gmax file which is its own file type


   

[wEvil]

Maya is geared towards Digital Content Creation, charecter animation and particles are its' best points however.

Maya runs on Windows NT-type systems only, no 9x/me.  maya also runs on IRIX and macosX

3dsmax is win32 (9x/NT/2k/XP)

SoftXSi is win32/IRIX/Linux (yes guys..it's certified on linux!)

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Remember, when someone annoys you it takes 42 muscles in your face to frown, but it only takes 4 muscles to extend your arm and *****  slap them upside the head.

[This message has been edited by wEvil (edited 11-12-2001).]

[Nico]

maya should run under XP too...