What modeling software has been used to create most products in the store?

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  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 104,297
    argel1200 said:

    Wasn't Modo created by some former Newtek (Lightwave) people? Can anyone comment on how the two compare? Sounds like Modo is favored over Lightwave's Modeler now?

    Yes, there are certainly a lot of similarities between LW (at least 9, the last version I have) and modo in the way things work and overall feel. Personally I think modo iss omewhat more consistent than LW, but that may just be because I came to it second and so was more primed to learn.

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,869

    "Also, the thing about Blender is that that cost is a gamble. With, say, Octane or something, I can download a demo and see how it works for me somewhat. With Blender, I can't see if it works for me really until I've put days of tutorials into it. It's almost like an app that has no demo.

    Now, it's a gamble that might really really pay off. Or not."

    Not lobbying for any modeling app I have and Older MODO 401,C4DR11 and and lightwave 2015


    But Im Not following your logic.
    With an octane Demo you will have what ?? 30 days to rush thru some tutorials before  its time to pay or say good bye
    the  time you have to get your head around blender is unlimited

    What gamble?? you have nothing to lose and unlimited time to poke around  and try things.

  • sura_tcsura_tc Posts: 174

    I don't follow the logic, either. But, since I don't consider myself a pro by any means, I believe I am missing things.

    For me, spending half a grand to few thousands on a 3D application wasn't a choice because I am just a hobbist. I don't make money off CGs, so inexpensive but robust application was my preferred choice. And, well, there wasn't much of a choice because there were only Carrare 8.5 and Blender. Carrare hasn't seen updates for more than half a decade, so I choked it off.

    So, Blender I chose.

    Because I started out with Blender, I do not understand the criticism behind the GUI. Unfortunately, I don't have any other experience to compare with.

  • spaltozspaltoz Posts: 24

    Thank you all for your inputs.  It helps me alot on how to approach modeling and what platform to choose.  This is great forum because it is the place where everybody can share their experiences with different types of 3D software that are available.   You are all awesome!

    Reggie

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,054

    Spending time on one thing is time you aren't spending on others.

    If you spend a lot of time learning Blender and, a month or three from now, decide it gives you screaming fits, that's 1-3 months you could have spent doing something else and developing other skills.

    Nobody really has unlimited time.

    Now, it depends highly on how much time you do have, other priorities, and so on. Also, if you flat-out can't afford even $100 on a modeling app and you can't easily translate your free time into money, that's going to skew things strongly in Blender's favor.

     

  • nelsonsmithnelsonsmith Posts: 1,337
    edited July 2016

    Spending time on one thing is time you aren't spending on others.

    If you spend a lot of time learning Blender and, a month or three from now, decide it gives you screaming fits, that's 1-3 months you could have spent doing something else and developing other skills.

    Nobody really has unlimited time.

    Now, it depends highly on how much time you do have, other priorities, and so on. Also, if you flat-out can't afford even $100 on a modeling app and you can't easily translate your free time into money, that's going to skew things strongly in Blender's favor.

    That's true, but it's also true for every other 3D software program out there.  There are people who've spent inordinate amounts of time trying to learn, Lightwave,  3Ds Max,  Maya, and all the other 3D progs out there only to find that they couldn't wrap their heads around that particular program.  The main advantage with blender is even after three months (which let's face it, at that point you're only going to be scratching the surface with any 3D program as far as competence) you're not out any serious money.  If some one seriously wants to be a PA, the fact is they're are going to have to learn one of them.

    Now my recommendation if you've got what it takes to really stick with it and devote the time, is if you're in college take advantage of the Academic discounts.  They allow for full versions of the software packages at a tremendously reduced rate, the only caveat being you're not supposed to use them for any commercial work wink.   The other option since for some reason people simply don't wish to give Blender any props, is that Lightwave, Maya and Max have trial versions that I believe let you use a slightly striped down version of the prog for learning purposes for 30 days.  They don't allow you to save anything, but they will let you become acquainted with the interface and where all the buttons and hotkeys are.

    But again even if you tried all the trial versions to make your decision you've still spent upwards of 3 months of your time.  When it comes to learning any software the time spent learning it, whether you discover you're a whiz at it or not is simply time you're going to have to write off.  There is no way around it, these are all complicated programs and learning them is not going to be measured in days or weeks, especially if you're new to the game.

    Post edited by nelsonsmith on
  • StratDragonStratDragon Posts: 3,253
    edited July 2016
    Mattymanx said:

     

    I honestly tried learning Blender first via a tutorial but I hit a snag in the UI that did not agree with my brain and that was the camera movement at the time so I jumped ship over to Hexagon and then later to Silo.  Blender is a very powerful all-in-one package but personally if you only need to use it for modeling and nothing else its overloaded and too complicated.

    I only use it to model except many of the simulation and animation tools can be appliled to modeling. Cloth animations have turned out to be invaluable to modeling clothing, bed sheets, curtians. Weight painting and scuplting tools and UVMapping, turned out Modeling could incoprarate things I never thought of and I'm constantly learning. The UI is fully customizable so if you get comforable with the tools you need you can build an interface that suits you, and I did like the proposal for a novice user interface which was shot down by the developers, I agreed this would have been helpful. The interface is terrifying when you first open it, I can't argue that, but did discover it was easer to use as is but not after sticking it out, and giving up and trying hexagon, and failing at that because of stability on four different systems and 4 OS's then resorting back to "I'm giving Blender one last shot", and THEN somehow it clicked. Hey, I can play the guitar solo to "Whole Lotta Love" on my Telecaster, but it didn't happen in a week either.

     

    and yes, the Camera, it is not the Daz 3D camera we can all move around in our sleep but it turns out the Blender Camera can do things the DS camera can not, but only after you succeed in wrapping your head around it.

    Post edited by StratDragon on
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,054

    nelson: But the suggestion is made, over and over, that Blender takes MORE work to learn to use than other applications, which are often considered more intuitive (at least before 3 months of tutorials).

    Most of the people who like Blender have said 'it was almost impossible to use until lots of tutorials, but now I find it very intuitive.'

    So the consensus is that it's not 'any 3d application is going to take 3 months to use' but that Blender has a higher barrier to learn than most.

     

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,869
    edited July 2016

    "But again even if you tried all the trial versions to make your decision you've still spent upwards of 3 months of your time.  When it comes to learning any software the time spent learning it, whether you discover you're a whiz at it or not is simply time you're going to have to write off.  There is no way around it, these are all complicated programs and learning them is not going to be measured in days or weeks, especially if you're new to the game."


    Agreed I for one am an "objective based learner"
    Meaning once I have a specific creative objective for a CG scene /effect/Animation I will then avail myself to the vast FREE repository of online tutorials and learn only what I need for that particular shot.
    who needs to actually "Master" any one program??

    Take After Effects for example.
    For my current feature length film project,there are many post effects
    that I plan to do and have no clue how to do them despite the fact that I have been a "user" of After effcts since version 4.

    No problem.. when its time to render that "wormwhole opening in space" effect
    I am going to play the tutorial video ,That I already have in my knowledge Data base,  over on my other laptop and go through step by step and create the effect I need for the shot

    Limited time Demos/trials are useless for us objective based learners who may go years before accessing a particular feature of a program ..if ever.

    Post edited by wolf359 on
  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,586
    wolf359 said:

    Limited time Demos/trials are useless for us objective based learners who may go years before accessing a particular feature of a program ..if ever.

    They're also useless for anyone with a real life.

    I had the 30 day trial of Modo, got about 10 minutes use out of it before it expired. How the hell am I supposed to decide whether to spend £1500 on the basis of that?? Useless!

  • Kendall SearsKendall Sears Posts: 2,995

    Just as I know/use many programming languages, I know/use many modeling packages.  In both cases, I tend to use the one that is best suited for the job at hand.  Just as I avoid using BASIC for programming, I avoid Blender for modeling -- both of them encourage bad behavior.  

    I am a bit of an OSS fanatic, I tend to want to use OSS whenever I possibly can, and Blender was no exception.  However, I found that the methodologies and workflow that the Blender UI encourages (this goes all the way back to the first OSS release of Blender) leads to extremely messy meshes.  For personal work, a messy mesh is OK, but when one is creating the mesh for a paid project, messy meshes become a problem very quickly.  At first I thought it was just Blender's UI and my own methods that led to problems, but as I looked around I saw that the meshes from other Blender users tended to be just as messy.  Then I started comparing the meshes I made using Blender with meshes that I made using other products.  What I saw was that the meshes that I created in Max, Maya, Hexagon, Shade, and others were not nearly so messy.  They weren't perfect by any means, but they weren't the mess that I created with Blender.  About the only other software that I found that encouraged me to make bad meshes was SketchUp -- which I very rarely use any more.   I also purchased/tried Silo for Linux, but there are some MAJOR bugs there and Silo is back to "unsupported mode" again.

    Something that I want to put out there is what really made me clean up my meshes was doing meshes for 3D printing.  Having to deliver a physical object to clients makes one re-evaluate how the mesh looks. smiley

    But back to the subject at hand: When I need something really quickly I'll usually find myself executing Hexagon under Wine. Then I'll load the object into any of a number of packages to do more advanced operations depending on the limitations of the software.  There is the exception of "really large" things I have to create, which usually require me to use RevIT and export from there.

    As a final note, I usually do "engineering" type modeling.  Things to exact scales and dimensions.  I don't do clothing, or humans.

    Kendall

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,644

    nelson: But the suggestion is made, over and over, that Blender takes MORE work to learn to use than other applications, which are often considered more intuitive (at least before 3 months of tutorials).

    Most of the people who like Blender have said 'it was almost impossible to use until lots of tutorials, but now I find it very intuitive.'

    So the consensus is that it's not 'any 3d application is going to take 3 months to use' but that Blender has a higher barrier to learn than most.

     

    If an interface can stop you, then 3D, at least in its commercial incarnations, is not for you.  Not because of Blender, but because at some point you will run into the obstacle of an interface that you 1. need in order to progress your art and 2. find hard to learn. 

    We do not often have the luxury of finding out which of all the available programs we can learn the fastest.  A lot of us picked one we had available to us at the time (because it was free, because it was cheap) and ran with it; a lot of us then added more expensive programs and did whatever it took to learn them in order to justify that investment.  This is why we use so many different programs and workflows.

    When I have a liquid $2k and don't need it for a car down payment or emergency upgrades or medical expenses or whatever, I will buy RealFlow.  I will buy it without the slightest doubt that I will learn enough of its interface to make it pay back what it cost, as I did with my investment in 3d Coat, in Zbrush, and in MD.  That is not an option.  I'm going to make it happen because I have to make it happen, and that is absolutely how this works for most of us.

  • Cris PalominoCris Palomino Posts: 11,915
    edited July 2016
    argel1200 said:

    Wasn't Modo created by some former Newtek (Lightwave) people? Can anyone comment on how the two compare? Sounds like Modo is favored over Lightwave's Modeler now?

    Yes, there are certainly a lot of similarities between LW (at least 9, the last version I have) and modo in the way things work and overall feel. Personally I think modo iss omewhat more consistent than LW, but that may just be because I came to it second and so was more primed to learn.

    When Brad Peebler struck out on his own, with several other NewTek people, to make Modo, he said it was because the architecture for Lightwave was dated and NewTek was not willing to go in the new directions they felt the software needed to go to keep growing.  They chose to work with a pipeline that let you build customized tools with some great tools such as the falloffs and action centers.  It's a pretty awesome program, IMO, though I still know Blender better than Modo (just cuz I had to learn Blender for some work I was doing and so used it much more).  The program I use most, however, is ZBrush, but this is not a dedicated 3D modeler.  It's a quite unique animal unto itself and I love it. :)

    Note the use of IMO (in my opinion).  That is key to any suggestions or thoughts on any piece of software.  You gotta try it yourself.  Try demos if the program costs anything.  This is because whatever anyone tells you regarding a program and the interface or ease of use is TOTALLY SUBJECTIVE.  You have to find what you grok with...if it doesn't gel with you, then it doesn't, move on and find one that does.  Peseverance can pay off.  That was how I learned Blender.  Only you can decide if you just absolutely loathe it, or if you just don't understand it, but spending time with it might get you somewhere.  You do have to give stuff the ole college try.  The more you learn about 3D in general, the easier it is to pick up other programs and just learn those thing that are ideosyncratic to them: where things are, how you navigate, how tools are the same but differ in name or use.  

    Under all circumstances, learn about topology and how that affects how well your model works.  Learn about UVs and how proper layout makes it easier for others to play nice with your product (if you plan to be a vendor).  There's more to this and everything, but first, find something you can work in and stick with it for a while to see if you can get over the learning curve.

    That's my very subjective opinion and recommendations. :)

     

    Post edited by Cris Palomino on
  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,869

    "So the consensus is that it's not 'any 3d application is going to take 3 months to use' but that Blender has a higher barrier to learn than most."

    Try telling that to these 10-11 year olds in the UK
    Must be a "Generational thing"

     

    Or perhaps they have not been biased By reading anecdotal horror stories from content consumers in web forumscool


  • ValandarValandar Posts: 1,417
    wolf359 said:

    "So the consensus is that it's not 'any 3d application is going to take 3 months to use' but that Blender has a higher barrier to learn than most."

    Try telling that to these 10-11 year olds in the UK
    Must be a "Generational thing"

     

    Or perhaps they have not been biased By reading anecdotal horror stories from content consumers in web forumscool


    Just because awesome things have been done with blender does not change the fact that the learning curve on Blender IS, and is ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE DEV TEAM, as beeing steeper than other packages.

    But yes, wonderful things have been done with it. Go look up Big Buck Bunny on YouTube, for example. If you DO learn it, you CAN do amazing things.

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,054
    Guys. What's with the 'tude? Jeebus.
  • 3delinquent3delinquent Posts: 355

    For me, Blender was as difficult to learn as I let other people tell me it was. A month to try something out is nothing when I consider the years I wasted before even looking at it. If I had been learning Blender all that time....? When I finally installed it and realised how easy it was I got angry. Half a tantrum later I faced up to the fact that I had been stupid enough to listen to only one side of the story.

    The other side of the story is Blender. It's not just a modelling application. It's a very complex and comprehensive collection of tools for almost everything CG. Like with anything you might endeavour to learn, if you are going to throw 101 in the waste basket and open the final year text, you should probably expect to be confused and frustrated. Blender is incredibly customisable and has multiple options available for almost anything you could want to suit your nature and workflow. 

    I would urge the OP to make a list of all the applications mentioned and do some research. Don't be afraid to spend as much time as necessary working out what is best for you. Hint - If you don't like right clicking, change it to a left click.

     

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,333

    I'm a ZBrush guy.  I have Blender and Silo and Hex but ZBrush wins for me.  Helps that it's got bridges that take you too and from Photoshop, DAZ Studio, Poser, 3DCoat (32 bit for now) (PS, 3DCoat JUST released a very snazzy upgrade) and a bunch more apps.  I think that was very smart on all sides to make these bridges as it makes the work flow allot more seamless.  ZBrush needs more work as it's missing some stuff still.  As mentioned it's not a dedicated modeling app but it now has a very ROBUST ability to model but with a twist and a good one at that.  I'm STILL getting my head around it all but the modeling functions have come in handy many times lately. 

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715

    nelson: But the suggestion is made, over and over, that Blender takes MORE work to learn to use than other applications, which are often considered more intuitive (at least before 3 months of tutorials).

    Most of the people who like Blender have said 'it was almost impossible to use until lots of tutorials, but now I find it very intuitive.'

    So the consensus is that it's not 'any 3d application is going to take 3 months to use' but that Blender has a higher barrier to learn than most.

     

    Not for me.

    I spent the same amount of time on Blender and 3DS Max; I love Blender, my student licence of 3DS Max is well over three years old.

    Some are prejudiced against Blender, because it was difficult for them; the thing is, find one that 'clicks' for you, and there is no telling which it will be.

    It is also likely that learning one will not always make it easier to learn another - quite the reverse at times. But learning more than one is a good idea, if a person wishes to use the best tool for the job.

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