Advice on 3d authoring software

jrlogan1 wrote on 3/30/2003, 10:12 PM

I am looking for a _cheap_ 3d authoring software suite that has decent capabilities and a good interface. I only use vegas for personal use, and won't be doing anything entirely professional, but at the same time I take a lot of pride in my videos and want to be able to add some nice 3d stuff.

The question?: Will something like simply 3d 3 ($20) or ulead cool 3d ($45) allow me to do quite a bit, or will i need something pricier?

FYI: I am very familiar with vegas, of course, and use photoshop as well. I believe adobe makes some 3d software, but haven't heard what its called. Anybody know anything about it? Would it be worth it for me to stick with adobe to up my learning curve?

Thanks in advance.

Comments

Zendorf wrote on 3/31/2003, 1:44 AM

The whole 3D arena is a bit of a minefield for the novice, and like anything else it is "horses for courses". Here is my brief take on some software to check out:

The Good free stuff:

For modelling (polygonal box modelling style) you cant go too wrong with wings at www.wings3d.com

For a general all weather 3d app (modelling, texturing, animating, rendering, compositing) you will find no finer than Blender (blender3d.org)...it is currently undergoing a metamorphosis , but still works nicely and will be brilliant in upcoming releases.

Terragen is wonderful for 3D landscapes and looks more realistic (especially in the sky and atmosphere departments) than many commercial offerings ...but no model import or trees, etc and animations need to be generated via a script. I have used it for some tasty looking DVD-A menu screens.

Some promising also rans to look at are art of illusion (artofillusion.org) , hamapatch and jpatch(patch modellers).

Cheap 3d:

If you are just after some 3d titles or logo animations then Cool 3d or Xara 3d should suffice, though Effect3dStudio should look a lot more impressive for video work as opposed to web gifs.

If you want some purty landscape animations then you can't do better than Vue D'esprit for the price. You can also incorporate some basic character animation via the support for Poser (though this is better for stills).

A bit further up the scale is Animation Master...which is brilliant but fatally flawed (depending on who you ask!). It has the nicest CA tools around but can potentially frustrate you blind because of the way the company makes every customer a beta tester!

Better still ...you could get the brillant Motionbuilder from Kaydara at the ridiculous price of $99us (limited time) which is purely for CA (character animation) work and exports to lots of lovely expensive software, but cheaper software is slowly adopting the FBX format from Kaydara and you can still export Opengl animations (even toon rendered) from Motionbuilder...get it while it lasts.

Which brings me to the recent Mad-FX..another realtime open GL animation package which looks incredibly interesting (and cheap!) but I haven't tried it as I only have a Geforce2mx card and you need at least a Geforce 4. This is the way of the future especially with the new Gerforce FX cards..and no rendering time!!!

A bit more expensive are Cararra which is quite nice if you can get around the interface , but I would recommend getting the base package of Cinema 4D R8 from Maxon with will do everything , has a very easy to learn interface, fantastic renders and stability like we only know in the mighty Vegas4....also very nice if you own After Effects as the integration as second to none! And as I found over the years after collecting numerous "cheaper" 3d apps that in the end is better to pay a bit more for a quality, stable and fast growing app than get continually frustated with lesser apps.

jrlogan1 wrote on 3/31/2003, 5:59 PM

bump

JohnnyRoy wrote on 3/31/2003, 7:30 PM

I think Zendorf’s reply was fairly comprehensive. I use Ulead Cool 3D because its cheap, easy to use, and produces great results. Download the demo at the Ulead site and give it a try. You have nothing to loose.

~jr

Mikee wrote on 3/31/2003, 8:00 PM

http://www.blender.org

It's free, but very robust. Recently, the community "opened" the source by donating 100K USD. The interface is rather efficient once you get used to it, yet it is a *very* steep learning curve to begin with. (There are plenty of tutorials online to help you learn.)

Since it is cross platform, they've got a non-standard GUI. One reason I bought Vegas was the Windows-standard interface. Blender doesn't fit that bill, but it sure plays well with my wallet. Since you seem like a hobbiest like myself, I've got a feeling this program will work well for you. I doubt I'll reach its limitations.

It supports keyframe animation, radiosity, bones/armatures/skeleton, environmental mapping, motion blurring, toon shading, particle system and a host of other features. I've recently completed animating 2 things which are rendered to .png files with alpha channel and imported as an image sequence in Vegas. One is a plam tree "footer bar" that slides in from the lower left and contains information about the current scene/date. The plam is fully skeletoned/shaded with fronds flapping in the breeze, and a coconut that drops as the tree snaps into place. I took about 40hrs, yet much of that was learning. Its somewhat like the things you see on tv that accounce what's on next.

Another is a toon-shaded airplane which enters right, banks left, coming at viewer, as it reaches the viewer the camera shifts/rotates to follow the plane as it climbs into the sky, complete with rotating engine fans and smokey contrail. The sky/background is nonexistant/transparent and shows the video in the background. As the plane is closest to the viewer, it occupies the entire screen for 1 frame...that's where I cut (using vegas) to another scence. As the plane climbs away, the viewer sees the scene. Kinda cheesy for you pros, but it works for me. That was my second Blender project and it required 10 hours, with some learning.

Mike

silenttap wrote on 3/31/2003, 8:11 PM

I use Carrara Studio 2. I'm no 3-D expert, but I have produced some very cool aimations for DVD and CD-ROM's with C2. Very intuitive and feature rich.

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