Folks:

  I'm thinking of getting a comercial modeler and possibly renderer. 
Currently, I have student status due to talking a UCLA writing course 
extension.

  It's a lot, but I could possibly afford 3DSMax, and I have to say I'm 
tempted.

  However, I like POVRayy's rendering so I'm wondering what moving to a 
comercial package would give me, or more accuratly, what' I'd lose.

  Do any of them do procedural texturing?

  Any advice?

        == John ==

Post a reply to this message

Wasn't it John D. Gwinner who wrote:
>Folks:
>
>  I'm thinking of getting a comercial modeler and possibly renderer. 
>Currently, I have student status due to talking a UCLA writing course 
>extension.
>
>  It's a lot, but I could possibly afford 3DSMax, and I have to say I'm 
>tempted.
>
>  However, I like POVRayy's rendering so I'm wondering what moving to a 
>comercial package would give me, or more accuratly, what' I'd lose.
>
>  Do any of them do procedural texturing?
>
>  Any advice?

Why not grab a free trial version and see for yourself?

There's a 30 day free trial of 3dSMax at 
http://www4.discreet.com/3dsmax/3dsmax.php?id=969#

There's a demo version of Cinema4D at
http://www.maxoncomputer.com/download_demo.asp

There's a "Personal Learning Edition" of Maya at
http://www.alias.com/glb/eng/products-services/product_details.jsp?productId=1900003


-- 
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure

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John D. Gwinner wrote:
> Folks:
> 
>   I'm thinking of getting a comercial modeler and possibly renderer. 
> Currently, I have student status due to talking a UCLA writing course 
> extension.
> 
>   It's a lot, but I could possibly afford 3DSMax, and I have to say I'm 
> tempted.
> 
>   However, I like POVRayy's rendering so I'm wondering what moving to a 
> comercial package would give me, or more accuratly, what' I'd lose.
> 
>   Do any of them do procedural texturing?
> 
>   Any advice?
> 
>         == John == 
> 
> 

You might want to look at Silo: http://nevercenter.com/ Very intuitive, 
great feature set, *MUCH* easier to learn than MAX and it outputs code 
suitable for POVray. Oh, and it's far less expensive than buying MAX... 8^)

Post a reply to this message

> You might want to look at Silo: http://nevercenter.com/ Very intuitive,
> great feature set, *MUCH* easier to learn than MAX and it outputs code
> suitable for POVray. Oh, and it's far less expensive than buying MAX...
8^)

I'd second that, bought Silo myself. It's one of the best subdivision
modellers out there, and bigger companies/applications are starting to copy
tools the folks from Nevercenter invented months ago... Drawback, of course,
is the lack of animation, you can only use POV-Ray's functionality to
animate stuff, and POV-Ray doesn't have support for keyframed/interpolated
meshes or such.

If you're (for starters) just into doing some CG-Still Art, Silo + POV-Ray
is a very cheap way to go. I also think you get some insight knowledge doing
stuff with POV-Ray, which Click&Go-Applications like Cinema4D or Maya won't
tell you about. IMHO you're a more powerful CG artist if you know of the
possibilities that are available to you, instead of relying on tutorials or
stuff some guys somewhere on the world encountered and used "by chance" in a
proper way.

And thus, Silo can give you powerful modelling experience, and POV-Ray
powerful rendering experience. For things like Compositing or Animation, I'd
have to admit that Maya/3DS-Max/Cinema4D might be better. And as Mike put
it, use the trial versions and choose the one that fits you best. (Note
though that 109$ for Silo and 0$ for POV-Ray is much less than something
around 350$ for a Student Version of Maya, if I'm not mistaken, and this is
especially important if you're just getting into CG and don't know if you
should rather focus on something which, after using your new App, you find
to be implemented better in a different App).

Regards,
Tim
-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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Thanks for the ideas folks


"Tim Nikias" <JUSTTHELOWERCASE:timISNOTnikias(at)gmx.netWARE> wrote in 
message news:429a2867@news.povray.org...

> And thus, Silo can give you powerful modelling experience, and POV-Ray
> powerful rendering experience. For things like Compositing or Animation, 
> I'd
> have to admit that Maya/3DS-Max/Cinema4D might be better.

Trial versions are a good idea.

I forgot to say what I want to use it for - mainly for 'sci fi' 
preproduction art direction for a movie I'm writng.  However, I do want to 
do some animation for the proposal animation  I'm using Poser right now to 
do animation and exporting via PoseRay, then combining with POVRay 
animation.  Poser seems to export to Shade pretty well but I haven't tried 
it.

I also have a scene where a tank busts through a wall, so I was looking for 
something like 'blastcode' or the 3DSMax fracturable objects.  I think Max 
can do that, but I haven't tried yet.  I messed around with Mechsim and it 
doesn't do what I need really.

I like POVRay due to the ability to script and 'parametric' objects, 
although it looks like Max will let you do that, or at least macros.  I get 
the impression Max has shaders also, which would be a big plus.  I don't 
particulary want to have to step up to the 'real money' rendering programs 
(i.e. Renderman) to get procedural texturing.

I also can use Mimic with Lightwave more or less directly, although I 
noticed that there are a couple of poser to Maya/Max export routines.  So 
maybe I use Mimic ->Poser ->Max instead of Mimic->Lightwave.

I'll try some of those trial links.

        == John ==

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Mike Williams nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2005-05-29 15:00:

> There's a "Personal Learning Edition" of Maya at
> http://www.alias.com/glb/eng/products-services/product_details.jsp?productId=1900003
> 
> 
I tried it, I realy don't like the gross branding stamped everywhere acros the
produced images.

Alain

Post a reply to this message

John D. Gwinner wrote:
> Folks:
> 
>   I'm thinking of getting a comercial modeler and possibly renderer. 
> Currently, I have student status due to talking a UCLA writing course 
> extension.
> 
>   It's a lot, but I could possibly afford 3DSMax, and I have to say I'm 
> tempted.
> 
>   However, I like POVRayy's rendering so I'm wondering what moving to a 
> comercial package would give me, or more accuratly, what' I'd lose.
> 
>   Do any of them do procedural texturing?

Most high level commercial renderers do support procedural textures of 
some sort - if they are as easy to use and flexible as in POV-Ray is a 
different topic.

What you will loose in nearly all cases is the ability to render any not 
triangle based shapes.  For a lot of people this does not seem a 
disadvantage but for quite a lot of situations it is.

Other things you would loose:

- the ability to use your software on any platform (and not just the 
ones supported by the software officially).

- the ability to customize your renderer, adding new features, fixing bugs.

- the scripting language - other packages offer scripting abilities as 
well but not all and not necessarily as well and intuitively usable as 
in POV-Ray.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/

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"John D. Gwinner" <john dot gwinner at cornell dot edu> schreef in bericht
news:429a403d$1@news.povray.org...
> Thanks for the ideas folks
>

I second that opinion from Tim Nikias about Silo in combination with
POV-Ray. Silo is a great program.


> I also have a scene where a tank busts through a wall, so I was looking
for
> something like 'blastcode' or the 3DSMax fracturable objects.  I think Max
> can do that, but I haven't tried yet.  I messed around with Mechsim and it
> doesn't do what I need really.

There is AFAIK an old include file by Chris Colefax that *explodes*  POV-Ray
objects. Would that help?

Thomas

Post a reply to this message

"Thomas de Groot" <t.d### [at] internlnet> wrote in message 
news:429c1a05@news.povray.org...
> I second that opinion from Tim Nikias about Silo in combination with
> POV-Ray. Silo is a great program.

I think someone said it doesn't do animations though - that would be a 
killer for me.

> There is AFAIK an old include file by Chris Colefax that *explodes* 
> POV-Ray
> objects. Would that help?

Not really - the idea here is that the tank is tearing through a hanger 
door, so I need metalic deformations.  I had the thought of messing with 
Mechsim, but at some point I just think it would be easier to buy something 
instead of building it :)

I got about halfway there by using Poser's cloth room simulation - it's 
faster than mechsim and easier to visualize what's happening.  I made the 
doors flat pieces of 'cloth'.  It doesn't quite look right though.

I did get some source code for a couple of fracturable object simulations 
which aren't bad, but it would take some effort to convert to POVRay.

        == John ==

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You might want to look into Blender also. It is free and open source. I also
find Wings3D to be a good subdivision surface modeler for use with POV or
Blender.

Blender has most of the features of Maya and 3DSMax but is not easy to learn
(IMHO). Blender has an unusual user interface so it takes a while to adjust.

Most high end 3D applications have procedural textures, I know Maya and
Blender have it.

Harold


"John D. Gwinner" <john dot gwinner at cornell dot edu> wrote in message
news:4299eadb$1@news.povray.org...
> Folks:
>
>   I'm thinking of getting a comercial modeler and possibly renderer.
> Currently, I have student status due to talking a UCLA writing course
> extension.
>
>   It's a lot, but I could possibly afford 3DSMax, and I have to say I'm
> tempted.
>
>   However, I like POVRayy's rendering so I'm wondering what moving to a
> comercial package would give me, or more accuratly, what' I'd lose.
>
>   Do any of them do procedural texturing?
>
>   Any advice?
>
>         == John ==
>
>

Post a reply to this message