Who here has tried Maya? I love Bryce but if I could afford a high-end prog it definitely would be Maya. I just downloaded the learning edition and with just a bit of playing around it has the ease of use of Bryce with all the things I'd like added to Bryce. It's layout is similar to 3DSMax (I've tried this one too, haven't tried LW) but a lot easier to navigate. Just thought I'd give my 2 cents on it. :)

I've go the Maya PLE also, haven't had loads of chairtime in front of it, but so far I like it AND It's becoming one of the most used 3D programs in the entertainment industry. AS

I have and will Play with MAYA more as soon as I upgrade my OS to WinXP I run Win98SE right now and I cant run Maya but I am chompin at the bit to play with it...I am already starting to save up for the full edition....

I DLed the learning edition and did the first three tutorials...pretty easy going. Been getting emails and calls from the local rep ever since inviting me to stuff. I think it is the easiest of the "four pane" modelers I've tried. I know that both EA games and Pixar require Maya expertise of their folks,

Microsoft wants you to be well versed in Maya for their game division...

I thought 3DS Max was used more... at least for the game creation, but somehow all i hear now is "Maya" ...

It's gaining ground quick. I'm playing Unreal Tournament 2003 right now, and it came with Maya PLE 4.0, for use with the games models, textures, etc. Also, came with a special edition of Right Hemispheres 3D paint program for Unreal's resources.(only) I live in Los Angeles, and I see a more and more 3D companies wanting Maya knowledge. (and knowledge of Nurbs) AS

The Max verses Maya verses Lightwave versus XSi (softimage) argument is one I've seen go round and round. I use Max and love it, Maya somehow feels more robust then Max, but the daddy of then all is the full blown XSi, costs over 10k though. Max plus character studio I think beats Maya, but in truth it's personal preference. Many studios use a mix of these packages, others have a decree to use a certain product, but there's not much in it.

Agent Smith.... Start playing with the Level Editor and you will start to realise how much fun game making is....

AS- OT perhaps, but do you find UT2k3 enough of an advancement over the previous? Been toying with the idea of picking it up and the info about the extras makes it even more intriguing.

I have both Ut and Ut 2003. Ut 2003 is very pretty but it needs too much speed, I have a 1 ghz/geforce 4 card and I have to cut back on some of the visual goodies, so it can run smoothly. Still hiccups but not too often. Even with some of the eye candy turned off, you still can see some nice stuff like caustics(reflections from water). When I get a new machine, it should run much better. If you have a video card that supports pixel/vertex shaders, you should see some cool stuff. Download the demo and try it out. One arena has grass, you don't see it in the demo.

what about cinema 4D? how is it compared to the rest?

Have been using Truespace and you can make models that can be loaded into Bryce.

I had gotten the Softimage demo. I was really put off by the fact you could only render 400x300, no bigger. That just is not big enough to see the results of what you have worked on. I will stick to Maya PLE and it's watermarks. Unreal2003 editor; just had recently brought this up to play with, wow...a LOT goes into that game, very extensive. I can't compare Unreal to Unreal2003, I've only owned/played 2003. But, yeah I run an AMD Atlon 1.5ghz, with a G-Force 4 64mb MX, and I run the game with the character detail turned down to make sure it runs smoothly. The Character Detail is the sweet spot, IMO, because all the players are running around so fast, you don't really realize that part of the game has been turned down, AND it really helped in the perfomance of the game. You could run Unreal2003, pretty small (640x480), but it looks best at 1024x768. And, yeah it has spoiled me on its gorgeous textures, lol. Cinema4D, when in the future I buy a more professional 3D package, but if don't have a lot of money, I will probably get this. I've been eyeing it for some time, it's very worth looking into, IMO. At least go look at it's gallery here, amazing stuff. I got the free Truespace 3, and am using that as a crutch to get myself past just modeling in booleans and into more traditional modeling. It's not the greatest, but it really suits my small needs for now. AgentSmith

Check out truespace 6 too.

Yes....(Truespace 6), very nice. Looks like Truespace 6.5 will have Poser file imports (or something like that) AS

I sent away for 6.5, when it comes in, I can let you know about it. Most of the stuff in 6.5 is animation related but they did some stuff for modeling.

I am currently running UT and Infiltration at 1280 x 1024 with almost everything on. (128 MbDDR G4Ti4200 on P4 1.8 w/512 Mb RDRAM) Will definitely look into, the goodies sound cool.

Speaking of games go check out www.taldren.com and check out their Black9 game that will be coming out soon built on the unreal engine.

UT 2003 is a great game, I've owned and destroyed all of the Unreal engine games except RUNE, from Unreal, to Wheel of Time, to Thief. to UT... UT 2003 uses the same version of the Unreal engine, roughly, as the Wheel of Time, which if anyone has seen was previously the best looking realtime-3D ever seen! But forget about all that talk, Unreal II just came out. It makes UT 2003 look like, well, fake? (grins) The game is the most visually impressive game ever made. I mean EVER! By Unreal 5, they will just have to call it "Real!". The only reason I bring it up is for history... UT 2003 came with the PLE for Maya, as well as the ridiculously inept Unreal Editor. Anyone who knows how to work that thing is a GOD! BUT, UT 2003 was, in fact, designed with 3DSMax, which is strange. Apparently, their parent companies had no problem making a deal with Alias/Wavefront when they went to production, though! The truth is, ALL of these main graphics programs are used all the time, everywhere! Everyone's seen LOADS of LW, 3DS, and Maya, and the rest, all the time. The LOTR movies contained more Bryce than real mountains, evidently! But in the end, you got to give it to Adobe, every movie ever made has their dirty fingers in it somewhere, it seems!

"Unreal II just came out" OHHH man I am on my way to get,I want the Editor...The thing with the editors is that if you use the standard textures that come with the game then your games will look like Unreal....So use your own maps and Materials. "The LOTR movies contained more Bryce than real mountains"Can you say this for sure?I have always been wondering about the first animation at Isengard where the camera pans down the tower then goes into the Crevasse... Anyways,time to go Frag something...

Aye, FoleyPro, I've been in the industry for too long, and my LW friends give me too much shit about being a Brycer for me NOT to notice! LOTR work was great, and that's the professional-aspiration level we should all be shooting towards. As far as the camera flying into Isengard? Nope, not too much Bryce there, if any. I was merely referring to the sweeping vistas and panoramas of mountaintops seen throughout the series. Having worked for years on snowboarding videos, and used Bryce to composite ridiculous mountain-scapes in otherwise blank skies, we can say for certain that it is MUCH more cost-effective to hire some shadow-dragon-guy to do fake mountins than to actually send more helicopters out to take more footage. And, with After-Effects, it's so easy, you'd laugh...! But I didn't mean to imply that EVERYTHING in LOTR was Bryce, merely the mountin scenes, and anything environmental in the movies... Gollum was NOT done in Bryce, he was Maya/Lightwave all the way (no 3DSMax on that one, sorry), and he's beautiful! We've all heard of Massive by now, but even that engine ended up in Lightwave for texturing/rendering! Unreal II is a trip. The important thing to keep in mind, and this REALLY should affect the way we build our scenes, is that as computers get faster and faster our Bryce scenes are going to become virtual reality. Imagine having a zero-wait-state render time. PC's need only be about 50 times faster to do this, which is how much faster NOW than they were five years ago. Mojoworld is going to be enmeshed in most of our games really soon, maybe even this year, but having real-time-Bryce isn't that far away! Keep this in mind... We create the demand for our own products, nobody else is going to do it.

Yeah, we will still be waiting in the future for renders because we are going to want to do more. Now if someone were to bring a future machine to the present, now that would be cool.

I get crap from Higher-end users too,I just tell them wait I will be known soon and then I will get a decent job in the industry and I will then be able to afford the full Package and then watch out....I really want to design my own games useing the Unreal engine,I have just been waiting and studying...I want to know if MayaPle will work on Win98SE?anyone know?

It certainly does! And it's a good thing, too... Sir Foleypro, I'd love to work on the Unreal engine as well! A long-time dream of mine. If you know ANYTHING at all about the editor, perhaps message me?

Attached Link: http://www.gamasutra.com

OK this is getting great....Awesome is the better word,And I had played around with the first unreal engine and I actually made a level without AI's but I did have Lighting and such and ramps and hidden doors,I thought oh man I am in heaven well now I have been waiting Knowing that a better engine was in the future and LoL here it is,I have actually started to watch Video Tutorials on the Making of the Levels by the top designers in the field and I know without a doubt that if I applied an hour a day I could pound out Levels with in a couple of months,I t is just saveing the money to buy the Games so I can use the Editor,Money is extremelt tight right now and with me loseing 20 hours of overtime a paycheck and I have 5 teeth that need fixing like yesterday,Ohhh gots to love Pain...I will start to save up as soon as I can.... ShadowDragonLord: I will IM you here real soon...

Maya requires Win2000/NT or WinXP.

Oh the link is to one of the Game designing sites I joined just browse thru and check out the links...Many Garagegames being made and you can join and become part of the designing team,I know folks are going to *itch about not getting paid well when your just starting out like I am and you try to get into the Gameing Industry you basically need a best selling game under your belt and i personally dont have that and the other way is to design a game and make it a raeality and the way to do that is to become part of a TEAM and sometimes that means NO MONEY....I am fine with that if the game is going to be good enough...

Have heard about folks getting jobs in the game industry by making good mods/addons.

Attached Link: http://www.3dbuzz.com

If folks want to download Video Tutorials on Designing Levels useing The unreal Engine and also useing 3DS Max and Maya go to this site join and go to the downloads section or even join an online Class.Also there is a nifty animation Program they are letting folks get the program License for use in one Year for just a 100$...Dang if my teeth and such wasnt so bad I would get it right now...So on my wish list is Motion Builder and it is #1 on the list...

Also there are links on the site to get to Unreal Tutorials find them and download them....