Quote

Originally posted by the Necromicon:
**I'm not denying that is is costly to produe programmes, although if you think about it, at the most it would have cost about Ł500,000 - Ł1,000,000 to produce Maya. The cover the overheads, they would need only 100 people to buy Maya. They must have made an absolute killing, as there is definatly more than 100 registered users of Maya.
**

Oh you can't be serious.... Ł1.0 million is about US$1.5 million at current exchange rates, right? The average salary for a software developer is around US$75,000 per year. Actually that's low, but it's a nice number to work with. For something the scale of Maya or Lightwave, you'd need at least 10-20 core programmers. Let's say 15. That alone is US$1.125 million just for your core development team. We're talking on the scale of US$70-$100 million here, not $1.5 million.

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My signature is short and unobtrusive. I don't have a long sig to overcompansate for "ego" problems.

BTW, Necromicon: iirc, the United States, England, and anyone else who lives in a country bound by the Berne Convention all share the same baseline copyright laws. Of course a country can go above and beyond Berne, but they can't weaken it.

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My signature is short and unobtrusive. I don't have a long sig to overcompansate for "ego" problems.

Quote

Originally posted by foo12:
**Do you have a product matrix that compares the two, Marko? I wasn't aware that they'd stripped radiosity out of GO but, like you say, it shouldn't matter for most people, especially on hear considering maybe 3-4 people on the boards have actually heard of radiosity and can tell you what it does. (And what it does to your rendering times... results are purty, though.)
**

Wow, really nice picture! Often, the lighting is more important than the model itself

And yes, once I had a produkt matrix but all in german. I just checked the us-site of maxon and saw that it looks somewhat different, they don't even have SE there, strange. Let's go to the european section...
(http://www.maxon.de/index_e.html)

... hmmm, what a pity, they took away the large Table with the differences between the program versions. But you can still go to the produkt-page of each version and click at "feature" or "highlights".
There are many differences between GO and XL but one costs 10 times more, so this is nothing to wonder about

Regarding radiosity: You got me slightly wrong, even XL has no radiosity. This is probably the only thing a professional would miss in tis package. But I saw a workaround for this in a userforum which looked great. I'm currently learning a little bit 3D and had no time at all last month but if I recall correctly, this guy placed a light into a glas-object and created a lightmap which he used later for the final rendering.

And yes, the rendering speed...
Last year I played around with PovRay and turning on radiosity had some effect

Oh, one last word to matrix:
I can recommend Cinema4D if you want to buy a 3D-Program. Go is very cheap (200$ I think) and nice for starters. SE and XL are 4 and 10 times more expensive but you can upgrade to the next version and just pay the difference. So if you like this kind of work and need something better, you don't waste your money with the lower versions of C4D.
User interface and general feeling is much better than with Strata or Mechanisto.

my two pennies

- Marko

Quote

Originally posted by foo12:
**Oh you can't be serious.... Ł1.0 million is about US$1.5 million at current exchange rates, right? The average salary for a software developer is around US$75,000 per year. Actually that's low, but it's a nice number to work with. For something the scale of Maya or Lightwave, you'd need at least 10-20 core programmers. Let's say 15. That alone is US$1.125 million just for your core development team. We're talking on the scale of US$70-$100 million here, not $1.5 million.

**

Oh...maybe I'll just shut up then.... You win. But it's not going to stop me or anyone else stop pirating software, so what's your point.

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See Homer, that's why your robot didn't work!

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Quote

Originally posted by Marko:
Wow, really nice picture! Often, the lighting is more important than the model itself

Exactly. Those are all very simple models with lots of texturing. It's just the visible light and the radiosity that did it.

Quote

Regarding radiosity: You got me slightly wrong, even XL has no radiosity. This is probably the only thing a professional would miss in tis package. But I saw a workaround for this in a userforum which looked great. I'm currently learning a little bit 3D and had no time at all last month but if I recall correctly, this guy placed a light into a glas-object and created a lightmap which he used later for the final rendering.

There's also the old kluge of using an array of lights to fake soft shadows... wait a second, doesn't C4D have a rendering option for soft shadows?

**

Quote

And yes, the rendering speed...
Last year I played around with PovRay and turning on radiosity had some effect

**

I've read this topic, and I think I got the general gist of it:

You guys all wana pitch in to buy me Maya or Lightwave because I am doing graphics for a project that may make money..

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-Shade
AIM: Shade3742

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Hee hee. Communal software Anyway, what's the project if you can tell us?

Quote

Originally posted by ShadeOfBlue:
**I've read this topic, and I think I got the general gist of it:

You guys all wana pitch in to buy me Maya or Lightwave because I am doing graphics for a project that may make money..

**

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My signature is short and unobtrusive. I don't have a long sig to overcompansate for "ego" problems.

Quote

Originally posted by the Necromicon:
I don't see why you're againts software piracy either. I DO NOT pirate shareware apps as they are a reasonable price, and 90% of the time it isn't some faceless corporation pocketing all the cash. I do pirate commercial programmes because they all cost so much. Each programme must cost a fair bit to produce, although to cover the overheads they would probably only need to charge about Ł30. Why on earth do they insist on charge Ł300 +? Maya as well. WTF is that Ł10,000!!! Give me a good reason why I should pay Ł10,000 on a piece of software worth Ł30 when I could be donating that money to charity (which I regularly do).
(/B)

In my opinion Maya is way over priced for what it can do. Yes it is a better and more powerful program compared to Lightwave. It's like cars if you want to do the comparasion. Maya is like a Lamboghini Diablo and Lightwave is like a Poesche 911 Turbo. Both are good cars but have different prices. Are you willing to pay so much more for a Diablo when the Porsche will do 95% of what the Diablo will do. It's up to the buyer and his perception of declining returns. There can be a vast difference between a $100 3-D program compared to a $1000 program. However the difference between that $1000 program and a $10000 program is not that great even though you do get a little more with the $10000 program. You can get a student version of Maya but be warned... the student version is NOT the full version and have a number of more powerful tools diactivated. Still this student version costs more than the full version of Lightwave!!!! And if you want to upgrade it, you have to cough up the $$$$

The reason Maya is so expensive is because that is the price the parent company Silicon Graphics set the price at. Maya has it's roots is an early CAD program made for car makers. The price then for this CAD program was about $100,000. Even with that high price the program was still purchased by the car companies. So when the program was ported to be used as a 3-D program, Silicon Graphics thought they could sell it at that same price. They were right. The program was still bought. So why lower the price since people/companies were willing to pay that much! This was fine until Maya started to face more and more competition with lower prices and they were forced to lower their price and profit. This has been happening for a number of years and the price keeps getting lower until it will hit it's natural level. You have to remember the two different companies that produce Lightwave and Maya. The Maya people hold an annual hugh fancy party bash for companies and prespective buyers. However if you peek in one of these parties you will see that the people that get invited are NOT the people that use the program i.e the artist. The people that are invited are the number crunches, the software purchasers, the financial officers and the accountents. Artist are NEVER invited unless they happen to be the owners of the design house. On the other hand NewTek holds a number of gatherings (usually in LA or San Antionio) for the users of their software. Here you will find programmers, artists, animators and anyone affliated with the use of Lightwave. NewTek is a more "loose" and casual company while Silicon Graphics is very formal like a fancy restaurant that requires a tux to enter. It's little wonder as to why NewTek is a more popular company for artists to deal with. I prefer to deal with them too as I hate dealing with snobs!

If you are thinking of getting Maya, be warned that it was a program designed by programmers. Thus it is hard to master and use it properly. Actually it is very un-intuitive to use. Many things require you write a code or script in order to have that effect rendered they way you want it to!!!! I'm an artist not a programmer. That is why I use Lightwave.

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Quote

Originally posted by foo12:
**
There's also the old kluge of using an array of lights to fake soft shadows... wait a second, doesn't C4D have a rendering option for soft shadows? **

Yes, but they are faked
You can use a large array of lights to get soft shadows, but the "soft-shadow" option in C4D is a very fast way to simulate this. It's not physically correct but most of the time you don't see the difference.
Once again with PovRay, I rendered some test-picts with one light and with 16 lights. While the result was much better, it's annoying to wait and wait and...
C4D has a fast render-engine, compared with the demo-version of Infini-D, you can really see the difference.
You use Lightwave, right? I guess it has such features too.

Quote

**
The image you commented on was rendered at 12x18, 300 dpi, 4x oversampling. It took a week split between two loaded G3 400s:p
**

Ouch, that's a bit too much time, isn't it? I guess 12*18 are inches, right? But a week with two G3s??? I thought these machines would be faster
How much is it in Megabyte? 56 MB?

- Marko

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Quote

Originally posted by PyroManiac:
**
If you are thinking of getting Maya, be warned that it was a program designed by programmers. Thus it is hard to master and use it properly. Actually it is very un-intuitive to use. Many things require you write a code or script in order to have that effect rendered they way you want it to!!!! I'm an artist not a programmer. That is why I use Lightwave.
**

Hmm, you seem to know both programs, do you know C4D XL too?
"Amber" (the new release 6) is said to be a serious competitor for Lightwave and other programs of that price, and it's cheaper (2200$). Were you able to compare them and what's your impression?

- Marko

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(QUOTE)Originally posted by Marko:
(B) Hmm, you seem to know both programs, do you know C4D XL too?
"Amber" (the new release 6) is said to be a serious competitor for Lightwave and other programs of that price, and it's cheaper (2200$). Were you able to compare them and what's your impression?

I don't know Maya much at all. A few years back I had a choice of either taking Maya or Lightwave classes. So for the first few weeks I tinkered with both software to find out which one I prefer. I decided on Lightwave pretty quick.

I do not know C4D XL though.

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Quote

Originally posted by Marko:
"Amber" (the new release 6) is said to be a serious competitor for Lightwave and other programs of that price, and it's cheaper (2200$).

Umm.. that's $200 MORE expensive than the current version of Lightwave (6).

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Newton's law of gravity: Your warranty will be subject to void if the MessagePad in your possession travels exactly 9.8^2 meters per second.

AIM: evandrewm

(This message has been edited by Andrew M (edited 08-12-2000).)

Did any of this actually help to answer the original question? Who cares what's legal and what's not. If you're going to be dumb enough to distribute illegal copies of a program publicly, then you deserve your punishment. I don't support pirating software, but I could give a damn if other people are doing it. I'm not metallica and I don't need to waste my time with napster.

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"Holy F***! He’s got my ass!!” - A friend of mine.

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Quote

Originally posted by Marko:
**Ouch, that's a bit too much time, isn't it? I guess 12*18 are inches, right? But a week with two G3s??? I thought these machines would be faster
How much is it in Megabyte? 56 MB?

**

I had to start over a few times as Strata is not so good for huge renderings. 12x18 is in inches, and the original file size was closer to 62 MB to allow for overhead. (rendered RGB, but then shot straight into Photoshop and converted to LAB color. Final repo was CMYK.)

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My signature is short and unobtrusive. I don't have a long sig to overcompansate for "ego" problems.

Hehe. One guy asks what would be a good program to use for making ship graphics and some idiot goes and runs his mouth off because another guy is gib=ving something to someone else.

This makes me laugh. All I can say, is that foo, you are truely an idiot. Why don't you just stfu and get a life. Most of the people here are middle class ponces (I ain't dissing all middle class people, but I hate most of them with passion). However, some of us are actualy working class, normal people. ABout %75 of England is lower class. I saved up money for 6 years to buy a Ł450 audio program, which I now make money from. Most of you lot could just say 'daddy, daddy, pwease wiww wou buw mwe a wiwwle fingy wat costs $2,500? Pwwwwwwwwease!' and get what you want. Some people can't do that.

You must understand that for a lot of people life is harsh, and it's hard enough to get by alone without having to go into computer/sound/graphic buisness and not have the right tools. If you can't afford jack****, then how are you supposed to get richer? What people do in your younger life chronicly affects what happens in later life. If you want to be a 3D graphics designer and have ****, free equipment, how are you supposd to even consider it?

I'm sorry pal, I ain't pointing no fingers at none, but I think you're just a corparate big-boss wannabe who wants to protect authority. I hate all manner of authority (in almost every circumstance). Authority has caused me nothing but trouble. If you're so keen to back up laws and ****, then join the police force for hackers or somehting. Otherwise, mind your own ****ing buisness.

I have spoken, and I probably won't come to this thread (I don't visit this board much). I just can'r foresee any plausible answer from you to challenge me, so if you're just going to repeat yourself like you have in almost all of your above posts, then save it -- I don't want to hear.

Yo Jack.
~piSt

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You don't like me saying ######? ###### you.

quotes...

'Pissy drunk throwing up in the urinal.'
'YOU ######IN HOMO!-that's what I said at my dads funeral'

'I just throw up a middle finger and let it linger longer than the rumor that I was stickin it to Christina, cuz if I ever stuck it to any singer in show biz, it'd be Genifer Lopez, and Puffy you know this. I'm sorry Puff, but I don't give a ###### if this chick was my own mother, I'd still ###### her with no rubber and cum inside her and have a son and a neew brother at the same time, and just say it ain't mine.
-Eminem

piSt

I've already made my comments, and I shan't validate this piece of drivel with a reply. If you are of this mentality, there's very little anyone can do to change your mind.

Quote

Originally posted by Gavin-Hardy:
**Hehe. One guy asks what would be a good program to use for making ship graphics and some idiot goes and runs his mouth off because another guy is gib=ving something to someone else.

This makes me laugh. All I can say, is that foo, you are truely an idiot. Why don't you just stfu and get a life. Most of the people here are middle class ponces (I ain't dissing all middle class people, but I hate most of them with passion). However, some of us are actualy working class, normal people. ABout %75 of England is lower class. I saved up money for 6 years to buy a Ł450 audio program, which I now make money from. Most of you lot could just say 'daddy, daddy, pwease wiww wou buw mwe a wiwwle fingy wat costs $2,500? Pwwwwwwwwease!' and get what you want. Some people can't do that.

You must understand that for a lot of people life is harsh, and it's hard enough to get by alone without having to go into computer/sound/graphic buisness and not have the right tools. If you can't afford jack****, then how are you supposed to get richer? What people do in your younger life chronicly affects what happens in later life. If you want to be a 3D graphics designer and have ****, free equipment, how are you supposd to even consider it?

I'm sorry pal, I ain't pointing no fingers at none, but I think you're just a corparate big-boss wannabe who wants to protect authority. I hate all manner of authority (in almost every circumstance). Authority has caused me nothing but trouble. If you're so keen to back up laws and ****, then join the police force for hackers or somehting. Otherwise, mind your own ****ing buisness.

I have spoken, and I probably won't come to this thread (I don't visit this board much). I just can'r foresee any plausible answer from you to challenge me, so if you're just going to repeat yourself like you have in almost all of your above posts, then save it -- I don't want to hear.

Yo Jack.
~piSt

**

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My signature is short and unobtrusive. I don't have a long sig to overcompansate for "ego" problems.

Quote

Originally posted by foo12:
**I've already made my comments, and I shan't validate this piece of drivel with a reply. If you are of this mentality, there's very little anyone can do to change your mind.

**

Whatever man, but I wouldn't call my writing drivel considering you just threw a whole load of **** earlier that noone read. But whatever man, do what you want. If you can't understand the way I think then I suppose it's just you.
~Gav

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You don't like me saying ######? ###### you.

quotes...

'Pissy drunk throwing up in the urinal.'
'YOU ######IN HOMO!-that's what I said at my dads funeral'

'I just throw up a middle finger and let it linger longer than the rumor that I was stickin it to Christina, cuz if I ever stuck it to any singer in show biz, it'd be Genifer Lopez, and Puffy you know this. I'm sorry Puff, but I don't give a ###### if this chick was my own mother, I'd still ###### her with no rubber and cum inside her and have a son and a neew brother at the same time, and just say it ain't mine.
-Eminem

piSt