I have a problem: all my 3D illustration packages are seriously antiquated. When I got them, they were worth about $400 (or rather, package that I used primarily was), but now they might go for $0, according to my estimation of their capabilities running on a modern Mac. "They" consists of Ray Dream Studio 4 and Ray Dream 3D. And they both freeze my iMac when they start up.

So basically I'm wondering if there's anything out there that's suitably modern, and goes for a reasonable price. I'm a fairly light 3D artist, but I need to create the occasional ship for a plug-in and help with a Coldstone rpg, and I'm often hitting the limitations of my software - or I was before it stopped working. I'm basically interested in creating work that won't look like crap next to the good stuff in the EV Image Gallery, but I have not the budget nor the need for anything quite as advanced as Lightwave.

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Non cognosco quo modo dicere linguam latinam bene.

If you give it time, Strata 3D could be the answer. It can make real-looking graphics if you take the ropes seriously.

I personally dislike Strata, however. I've grown up with Infini-D (spectacular program), and am now playing around with Lightwave, Maya, Cinema 4D, and a bit of Universe (not complete versions). But for most folks, such programs as these offer a lot of explosives for the wallet.

Some say that Carrera is a good piece of software (similar to Infini-D), but has a problem with bugs. Bryce 5 is a superb program (just bought it recently), although it isn't too fit for anything other than landscaping.

Some of Strata's better (and more expensive) software may be the answer, but it all depends on your 3D taste. Play around with demos / trial versions, and see what you like best.

Live long and prosper.

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(This message has been edited by Captain Skyblade (edited 04-11-2002).)

If you don't mind the slow lerning curve, go with Martin Hash's Animation:Master (http://www.hash.com). Not a bad deal at $300, as it has several features usually only found in more expensive packages (Inverse kinematics, cloth simulation, radiosity, and fur to name a few). Problem is it's spline based, so it takes a while to get the hang of it.

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(/mindless babble)

Quote

Originally posted by LoneIgadzra:
**So basically I'm wondering if there's anything out there that's suitably modern, and goes for a reasonable price. I'm a fairly light 3D artist, but I need to create the occasional ship for a plug-in and help with a Coldstone rpg, and I'm often hitting the limitations of my software - or I was before it stopped working. I'm basically interested in creating work that won't look like crap next to the good stuff in the EV Image Gallery, but I have not the budget nor the need for anything quite as advanced as Lightwave.
**

I personally use C4D ((url="http://"http://www.maxoncomputer.com")Maxon(/url), ~$1700). I would fully recommend it to anyone. If that is too expensive, try Amapi 3D ((url="http://"http://www.eovia.com/amapi/index.htm")Eovia(/url), $400) which is a pretty capable application. You may also be able to find a copy of Infini-D floating around if you look hard enough...

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Lightwave acedemic version: $900
C4D acedemic version: $200

If you're not a student, too bad, those are nice deals!

Or find somewhere to download Strata 3.0.2, it's much better then Strata Base. I pretty much learned 3D on Strata. (actually, I learned on 3D World from Microspot, but that was not very good.)

Or go take a look at POV-Ray: (url="http://"http://www.povray.org/")http://www.povray.org/(/url)
It's got some very nice features (radiosity, photons, the best implementation of metaballs I've seen), and, for the most part, anything it doesn't have already (like IK), you can script in.

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(Insert Signature Here)

What do people here think of pixels3d?

l e g i o n

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I just bought Bryce 5, and I got it for $80, when it is supposed to be $250! You can get alot of stuff for cheap at academicsuperstore.com, but only if you are a student, teacher, or school. I have not checked on if they have any other graphics programs though. Hope that helps a bit.

_wirehead

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-a quote from Arthur C Clarke's short story, "A Meeting With Medusa"

Quote

Originally posted by LoneIgadzra:
**I have a problem: all my 3D illustration packages are seriously antiquated. When I got them, they were worth about $400 (or rather, package that I used primarily was), but now they might go for $0, according to my estimation of their capabilities running on a modern Mac. "They" consists of Ray Dream Studio 4 and Ray Dream 3D. And they both freeze my iMac when they start up.

So basically I'm wondering if there's anything out there that's suitably modern, and goes for a reasonable price. I'm a fairly light 3D artist, but I need to create the occasional ship for a plug-in and help with a Coldstone rpg, and I'm often hitting the limitations of my software - or I was before it stopped working. I'm basically interested in creating work that won't look like crap next to the good stuff in the EV Image Gallery, but I have not the budget nor the need for anything quite as advanced as Lightwave.

**

All really comes down to personal taste and comfort. Fortunatly, there are lots of demos out there. Strata and Cinema4D are both worth a look. Amapi too...you might be one of the one-in-a-hundred people who can adjust to its pecadillos.

However... Eovia has been working on Carrara and it is rumored to be much less buggy now. They also are honoring any version of Ray Dream for a $134 upgrade to Carrara Studio. Given that you already know Ray Nightmare, and you are on a budget, I'd suggest grabbing the Carrara demo first thing. (Eovia.com , what else?)

...
As it happens, I'm building all my models in Ray Dream Studio 5.5 Since I know it so well, I'm doing all the rendering in Bryce3D.

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You see a Grue.

Quote

Originally posted by Wyvern:
**Or go take a look at POV-Ray: http://www.povray.org/
It's got some very nice features (radiosity, photons, the best implementation of metaballs I've seen), and, for the most part, anything it doesn't have already (like IK), you can script in.

**

POV-Ray is absolutely free, and is at least as powerful as most > $1000 renderers. The bad news is, POV-Ray has no built-in modeller. Instead, it reads text files written in its own "scripting language." It's not quite as difficult as it sounds, but it does require plenty of practice. The good news is that there are modellers which can save in the POV-Ray scene format. The other bad news is that there are precious few of those modellers available for the Mac. However, if you can use POV-Ray, it will do just fine for you.

--Nathan

Quote

Originally posted by Mr. Lothario:
...... The other bad news is that there are precious few of those modellers available for the Mac.........

Aw, jeez, pass the milk! I know this all too well............

But hey, I can recommend some companion programs for creating those complex shapes. Meshwork seems to be OK, as long as you actually register it (I haven't gotten around to it, so woe is me). If you find it to be lacking in power, spring for Amapi -- it has mad modeling powers, and it exports to POV-Ray for better rendering.

Just don't complain about a lack of bump map support -- nobody will listen.

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NTi Ozymandias of the Red Shadow Organization

There has been at least one free version of amapi, but I never got it to work... I remember the installer wouldn't run at all.

I surfed the web and found that LW3D academic edition isn't nearly that expensive, it only seems to cost $389.95
(url="http://"http://www.academicsuperstore.com/market/marketdisp.html?PartNo=531022&nav;_id=&cat;_name=&Platform;=mac&qk;_srch=&")http://www.academics...m=mac&qk_srch=(/url)

Pixels 3.7 is now free, you might want to try it out. This version seems less buggy than the one I tried before and the renderer is quick enough, I haven't figured it out yet tho so i'm not saying anything.

ComputerLizard

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Quote

Originally posted by ComputerLizard:
Pixels 3.7 is now free, you might want to try it out.

.......... Where and how do you get it?

I got a copy on 3d world, the download is free
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user=appleabryant&templatefn;=FileSharing.html&aff;=consumer&cty;=US〈=en")http://homepage.mac....&cty=US&lang=en(/url)

and you can register it at
(url="http://"http://store.pixels.net/reg37")http://store.pixels.net/reg37(/url)

ComputerLizard

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"Please call us! We will provide you with any emergency." - (url="http://"http://www.engrish.com")www.engrish.com(/url)

Well, I'm trying out Carrara at the moment. My initial impression is that it sucks, but I'll have to fiddle with it some more. Ray Dream and Bryce do not mix folks... It's got a lot of convenient features, but also a lot of annoyances with an interface that seems to do everything in its power to take up space while making it difficult to grab things like scroll bars significantly present. I also can't stand the room setup. On the plus side, I've found that spline modeling is extremely quick and convenient, and split views aids object positioning enormously. Metaballs is slow, but it's mostly useless anyway (for my purposes), and I can't figure out what the vertex modeler is for, or how to use it. The room setup does serve to simplify things, which is nice, but the overall tool layout is still poorly thought out in that it's always in the way.

I'll be keeping an eye out for Infini-D and maybe Ray Dream Studio 5.5 (in the hope that the new version might have a non-crashing feature, in addition to being cheap now), but Carrara is now a possibility. I have about zero interest in POV-ray since it looks difficult to use from the fact that I have seen precious few of its creations that looked as things that can be done much more easily in other programs. I've tried a free version of one of those other programs (Strata maybe?), but it quickly found its way into the trash because it made no sense whatsover, and the interface was a pain.

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Non cognosco quo modo dicere linguam latinam bene.

Quote

Originally posted by LoneIgadzra:
**Well, I'm trying out Carrara at the moment. My initial impression is that it sucks, but I'll have to fiddle with it some more. Ray Dream and Bryce do not mix folks... It's got a lot of convenient features, but also a lot of annoyances wi...

**

My reaction to a spin of the Carrara demo was that it sucked less than 5.5 It has most of the same flaws, but it was just a little easier to move around.

I know what the vertex editor is and have used it extensively, and it stinks Soooo bad. Of course, Carrara didn't bother to fix that. Nor did it add more flexibility, or honestly, any of what other software considers basic functionality, to the other modellers. The particle system is cute, but incomplete, and the renderer has some fancy stuff that almost makes you forget that it renders slower than Bryce and it isn't even a ray-tracer.

The only possible excuse 5.5 has for its miserable existance is that, unlike all other versions of Ray Nightmare, it hardly ever crashes.

It also has never made me throw a CD across the room. Amapi has.

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You see a Grue.

I always see Ray Dream getting a lot of flak, but honestly I don't know why, at least with version five. Are you serious that it doesn't use a real ray tracer and that it's slow? In my experience, rendering ship spďns in Ray Dream is much faster than in Bryce, but the non-presence of ray tracer would explain why my transparencies and reflections never quite work the way I want them to.

Carrara update: I think I've pretty much hit the limit of its functionality, and so far I haven't been able to produce a rendering that didn't look like crap, but that may have something to do with not being able to specify render effects and a lack of preset shaders that I usually build on. It seems to be making a serious effort to make sure all my texture maps are blurry and distorted though, which is infuriating. I'll have to import some of my old Ray Dream work that looked good, and see if it really reduces the quality. The really irritating thing is that it doesn't come out and say it if there are demo limitations.

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Non cognosco quo modo dicere linguam latinam bene.

Okay, Ray Dream and Carrara are most certainly not fast on anything larger than a 100x100 for a complex model. I just tried to render a ship I was working on a long time ago in Ray Dream 3D in Carrara, and not only did it take years to render at 300x300 (just like before if I remember correctly), but it looked worse. My textures looked all muddled.

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Non cognosco quo modo dicere linguam latinam bene.

Quote

Originally posted by LoneIgadzra:
**Okay, Ray Dream and Carrara are most certainly not fast on anything larger than a 100x100 for a complex model. I just tried to render a ship I was working on a long time ago in Ray Dream 3D in Carrara, and not only did it take years to render at 300x300 (just like before if I remember correctly), but it looked worse. My textures looked all muddled.

**

That's unfortunate. I've been tempted to try some renders in RDS 5.5 to make use of things like particle effects and star filters.

I've been building all of my models in 5.5 I assemble the complete model and export as an .obj file, send to Steve Cox's freeware UVmapper to create a UVmap, paint up textures in PhotoShop on top of the UVmap, then import everything into Bryce to render. I have not had a crash or corrupted file since starting this project -- 5.5 is that stable.

Splines and booleans will get you pretty far. Unfortunately, Ray Dream does not like closed and complex curves, which is why I am looking into AM and Amapi.

BTW, both 3D and 4.0 are "Fat" and should run on an iMac. I suspect an extensions problem.

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You see a Grue.

I use ElectricImage from (url="http://"http://www.dvgarage.com")http://www.dvgarage.com(/url) . It's powerfull and at $200 is cheap, but it won't accept plugins. Bryce 5 is extremly good for landscapes. I also use Infini-D when I want sanity.

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