So I’ve been looking into 3D software. 3D software tends to be a little on the expensive side.. well for serious 3D.  The price range seems to be anywhere from $1K to $6K…. a lot of money. The result is people don’t usually buy this kind of software unless they are really serious about 3D. And not only is it expensive in terms of money, but its expensive in terms of the amount of time it takes to learn this stuff. Indeed, in some cases people don’t actually learn all the software.. they specialize in specific parts.

From my point of view, the question is “what’s right for me.” What do I want from a 3D package? This then gets weighed against price.. and my perception of my own price sensitivity.

Modo 

My quest started with a program that goes by Modo. You can read Franklin McMahon review of Modo here. I’ve been hearing lots of good things about Modo for a while now. From what I’ve been able to gather, Modo might be the best 3D modeler on the market today.

The trouble with Modo, though it got some more robust animation abilities as of it’s last update, it has no character animation abilities. It also has no abilities for particle systems or….

Shit, I really need to explain some of this techno mumbo jumbo, ha? Ok, 3D animation is made up of various constituent parts.. we could call them disciplines.. let me try and give you a broad brush stroke picture of this:

Modeling 

When you do modeling, you are create 3 dimensional objects. That’s about it, though depending on how you want to slice it, 3D modeling could include rigging…  by “rigging” I mean the process of turning a 3D model into a kind of virtual puppet. This involves a process by which you define how a model can be animated. 

Texture Mapping

Texture mapping would be the art of coloring your model.. make in shiny, transparent, this that or the other thing.

Animation

Animation would be the process by which we move stuff around / animate it. You know “breathing life into the model,” or perhaps.. you basically create the performance.

Digital Cinematography

Digital cinematography involves stuff like…  animating the camera.. figuring out them camera angles, the framing, etc. It also involves how you light your scene.

Special Effects

By special effects I’m talking about “particle systems,” and “physics engines.” We could roughly call these “algorithmic animation systems.” This is animation driven by number crunching.. where you basically manipulate parameters…  You use these to create smoke, water, fire, fog… all sorts of fun things.

Wether or not the industry use these terms as I’m using them… well that’s another question.. I really just want to give you a framework for conceptualizing what I’m talking about.. so… back to software: 

Back to Modo

So modo is super duper uber groovy on the modeling front..  but you can’t actually rig up your models for animation.. though that’s not to say you can’t do animation in Modo.. but if you want to do the sorts of animation that involves a lot of character rigging.. you’re going to have to export your models into a another program.. that has such abilities.

So.. I think I could be relatively happy with Modo.. but there’s a point where I might like the special effects tools and the character animation abilities..  so…  time to look for what else might be out there. Oh yes, and we should mention that Modo runs at $895.

Cinema 4D 

Here’s the best review of Cinema 4D I found. As product lines go, Cinema 4D is perhaps one of the more interesting: You have a basic core program, plus a number of add on modules. You can ether buy the core app, plus whatever module might look good to you.. or you can buy a higher end version of the core program.. which is basically the core program with a particular bundle of modules…. and you basically end up with 3 tears.  

Ok, lets run through the modules:

• Advanced Render: Judging from the stills on this page, Advanced Render is the bomb. Cinema 4D’s rendering engine, without Advanced Render, doesn’t impress me so much.. but with Advanced Render.. yeah, I’m impressed.
• MoGraph: MoGraph is your motion graphics tool.. it’s digable..  and I suppose, though I’m not sooo drawn to it, it’s something I’d want to get into.
• Mocca: What’s up with these names? Mocca is your hard core character animation stuff.
• Hair: I probably shouldn’t have to explain this but.. Hair is a set of tools for dealing…  mmhmm, you guessed it, hair!
• Thinking Particles: Yeah.. particle systems.. 
• Dynamics: My impression is we are talking about.. a sort of employment of physics engines on animation.. 

There’s other modules to the Cinema 4D system.. but these are really the ones that interest me… so now lets look at the bundles:

• Cinema 4D:  $895. This is just the core app.. so you got modeling, animation, texture mapping goodness.. but none of the above mentioned modules.. 
• Cinema 4D XL: $2195. We got the Advanced Render, Mocca, and the thinking particles (to say nothing of net render.. why do you have to pay extra for that?)
• Cinema 4D Studio: $3495. Studio has all the modules of XL, plus Dynamics and Hair.. to say nothing of a less limited net render (your seriously making me pay even more for this) sketch and toon.

Ok, so lets review this a little bit… Basically I have to go to XL if I want to do what I want to do.. and I can go up to Studio if I’m really serious.. But I mean.. if I’m going to drop $2K, why not go all the way to Maya? I mean its as if there are all these categories we are interested in.. and in order to actually have our bases covered… we gotta really invest..  *sigh*

Maya 

I have an irrational desire of Maya. Maya grew up on SGI machines. SGI machines were computers that would cost you $100,000 or more..  and then, even after that, you’d have to spend a whole lot of money for Maya.  But then one day they ported Maya to the personal computer.. and the Mac.. and dropped the price of the basic unit to $2,000. Something about all this.. has always given me a perception of value.. that somehow Maya is worth a whole lot more then that.  However.. the cost of upgrading Maya to a new version, a yearly tradition, tends to be about $1000.. which makes it.. well every time a new version of a tool in my library gets to the point where it needs an upgrade.. I have to choose which tool is going to get the upgrade. If you have one tool that’s costing you $1000… at a certain point, that tool is just not going to be getting upgraded.  So I mean.. that’s really the big problem with Maya.

So here’s a review of Maya.

Maya comes in two flavors: Complete and Unlimited.

Complete: As near as I can tell, complete offers all the basics you want really.. for modeling, animation, character animation…. soft and hard body dynamics, particle systems..  Unlimited: Adds Fluid Effects, cloth, hair, fur, “live” and the Nucleus Simulation Framework (as described in the above review). The above review used a test computer that is fairly equivalent to the Mac Pro I’ll be using… Nucleus is basically about having multiple physics / dynamic systems interacting with one another… or at least thats how I understand it.

You can see the full feature list here, along with how they break down between Complete and Unlimited. You can watch video demonstrations of features here.

Ok, so actual prices..  Complete: $2000 Unlimited: $7000

To evaluate what might be the right choice, we might like to look at what we plan to do with the software, what are budgets look like, and what our future plans might be, and general expectations.

Expectations 

Serious 3D graphics.. getting to a point of.. not mastery so much as proficiency.. you’re looking at about a 6 month learning curve. (this is some complex stuff) Now I’ve done a fair amount of 3D in past.. just not at this level, so I expect that my learning curve might not be quite so steep.. Indeed I imagine that I’ll be able to produce results in fairly short order.. though those results will in no way be representative of the full potential of this kind of software.

My plan is to start by “creating stuff.” Stuff, in this case, being: characters, worlds, objects, and.. well, just stuff. The idea being to create a library of stuff, which I can then draw from.. for creating work.

What type of work do I want to create? I suppose this would fall into a number of categories:

• Shorts, of a quality worthy of animation shows. 
• Elements.. from special effects, to characters, to worlds to composite stuff into… for video projects
• Elements to be a part of multi media projects.. wether we are talking Flash / web presence stuff, or if we are talking about print material.
• At some point, getting commercial work / a career in 3D might be nice.

Of budgets and realistic thinking

At the same time as I say all this.. we should be realistic and remember that 3D is likely to be but one part of a broader media mix. So if the learning curve takes 6 months.. and only half our time is dedicated to this software, it’s probably going to be a year before I get through it all.. and the chances are high that it won’t even get have my time and energy.  So on some level.. when you think about how this fits into a larger budget.. You have to ask: what are all the tools I need, across the full media mix, and how important is 3D in all of this, and then budget accordingly. 

With 3D, I think we are at least in part thinking long term. Another words.. it probably makes sense to start out in a small sandbox.. and then work out over time. This, of course.. brings us to the subject of upgrade paths. I suppose the trouble is.. I want to at least start with character animation as a part of the mix.. So we are really talking about spending at least $2000 to start with. Aww, but wait, there is still a software option we haven’t yet looked at! 

Lightwave  

My understanding is that Lightwave fits into the same league as this other software, and yet is the cheapest we’ve seen yet. As I say this.. the impression I get is that Lightwave might be a little in the dark ages at this point.. which is to say..  It may have many of the same features.. particularly as pertaining to what we want to do.. but perhaps these features aren’t as mature of well implemented.. If nothing else, Lightwave appears to be a bit of an underdog in the 3D arms race.  When you take a look at the Lightwave web site.. comparing it to the sites for Maya and Cinema 4D, it just looks junkie-er.

On the other hand.. take a look at this video, produced by Lightwave “enthusiasts.”  There’s some very impressive stuff in there.. that looks as serious as you’d likely want to get.

What’s more, there appears to be a special upgrade.. for those using particular programs.. of which After Effects is included.. which indeed is in my tool set. This upgrade costs under $500! The full version is just under $900.

So for much less then the cost of Maya or Cinema 4D XL, I could get both Lightwave and Modo!

Here’s a review of the latest version of Lightwave. 

A few latter:

What bothers me about the Lightwave site is.. mainly user interface design. Not that any of the sites are exactly ideal from this perspective but..  If you go to system requirements for a Mac you get “G4 or G5.” Umm..  Apple has been on Intel machines for something like a year and half or more. The power advantage the Intel’s have over G5s, never mind G4s, is crazy huge. When we are talking 3D graphics we are talking about some of the most demanding applications, in terms of power hunger. As a result, you expect 3D apps to take advantage of computer advances faster then any other sorta application.. So to have, what is supposidly a major 3D app, talk about these old system specs.. with no mention of Intels.. is… scary. Not that you wouldn’t like software that does well on old machines.. but without mention, you’re kinda going “can this even run on an intel?” What’s worse is I’m buying a computer with 8 processor cores.. which is something that most apps don’t take great advantage of.. but you expect 3D apps to take advantage of… so all this left a question mark.. let alone the question of if Lightwave would even run on the new Mac OS!

So there were lots of details that were important to my decision making process.. that the site didn’t address.. to address them I had to head over to the lightwave forums.. where I discovered that things were better then I feared. Still, this leaves questions in  your mind as far as how well they have there act together… over at New Tek.. Still.. after looking over much, I’m left with the impression that Lightwave is a very complete package. It clearly has many of the features you’d be spending $2K for elsewhere.. or in my case, 4 times what I’m likely to spend. Plus, of course, there is a plug in architecture that allows you to add to Lightwave… so there’s room for future growth.

Back to Evaluations: Pipelines

On of the items on my to do list was “get professional work.” So one of the questions you must ask is.. how does learning one program or another effect your marketability? As I understand it, this brings us to the question of “pipelines.”

Major studios, believe it or not, are notorious for not using “the latest greatest” tools. Why? Because they have bought into certain pipelines: You have lots and lots of people coordinated on a project.. For special effects.. there can be zillions of elements that need to be put together.. and to manage the coordination.. well that’s in large measure the job of the pipeline. New tools, it turns out, often break the pipes. Indeed even new tools that are simply upgrades of the old tools!

All of this adds to the advantages a guerrilla artist can have over big media… but what about when the guerrilla wants to in someway join big media? Well as clearly as I’ve been able to understand these things…. we basically have 3 industries in question: Video Games, Film, and Broadcast TV. Film and Video Games.. it would seem.. have Maya as the dominant app in there pipelines.. where as in Broadcast TV we see Cinema 4D.

Lightwave.. I seems to not be at the center of many of these pipelines..  Still, it should be said, many film makers take the view that it’s best to have artists working with the tools they know.. and try to make the pipeline accommodate this. 

What will Matt do?

I don’t know that I’m quite finished reading reviews or trying to get through my evaluation process.. But I have to tell you.. at least for the moment, it’s looking like Lightwave.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 7:40 pm and is filed under 3D, Career, Media Arts, film making. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.