Bought Hexagon when it first came out. Played with it a little was impressed but not wowed. Shortly thereafter stumbled across silo. WOW! It was very intuitive to use. LOVE IT. Switched to Silo, haven't used Hexagon since. Silo, to me was just so intuitive, it just seemed to fit. Super simple interface, all it does is model beautifully, great symmetrical feature.

Problem is, I think Hexagon may be more powerful (can't wait to get silo 2 to compare), but because I found Silo so easy to use 'out of the box' I haven't spent much time with Hex and now think I'm too used to Silo to know if Hex is really easy to use or not.

Anyone out there used both Hex and Silo enough to compare and contrast. If so, would love to hear your thoughts on these 2 impressive modelers.

My story is almost the exact opposite of yours. Got Silo back in March and was a beta tester for Hexagon about the same time. Didn't have time to do much in Hexagon but I did sit down with Silo for a weekend in April. I took right to Silo, loved the interface. Around May I had to create a Space Shuttle model for work and picked up Hexagon again (almost like the first time actually) and worked in it for about 4 days. I agree with you about the interface not being as easy to get into at first but once I got into it I found it to have a lot of things I wanted that Silo didn't have. Being able to import Illustrator files is major with me and Silo is not scheduled to do that anytime soon, version 2 doesn't list it. The gist of all of this is that both are impressive modelers with good companies behind them. You can pretty much model anything in either one and both can be had at a great price. This is a great time to be a 3D artist. A few years ago the pickings were slim and expensive.

You are right about the state of 3D. In fact it is ruining me. To date I now own, Carrara 4 pro (Love it), Amapi (don't care much for it), Hexagon, Silo, Vue 4, Amorphium Pro (ahead of it's time, not up to date), and the latest and most ridiculously extravagant Cinema 4D R9.5 Studio bundle, and Macromedia Director MX2004. I am so enamored with all these toys (and now totally broke) that I don't know which one to concentrate on learning.

I have to say, been a Carrara user since v2 and bought C4D because I thought it would be the super version of C4D. Love C4D (studio) it is super powerful and fantastic. BUT. When I compare the cost of C4D with the features of Carrara per cost, unless you have the time to learn all C4D can do and into pro 3D, Carrara is still the best bang for your buck you can get. Although if you have the dough, C4D is awesome.

I can't help with Hexagon vs Silo.. I just bought Hexagon during the DAZ sale. I've been using Carrara since before it was Carrara (RDS 5 ;*>) and love the Vertex modeller, but like some of the things I see in Hexagon. Still after a week I can't quiet get the hang of it... I can't figure how to start a model... Can't get it to stop sweeping or extruding when I want it to.. etc. Now I wonder if I wasted my money and should have started with Carrara alone! Or maybe it's just me! mike

I think Hexagon is quite useful, but it has annoying bugs (numeric input fields do not work etc.). Hexagon has also cleanest cage smoothing. Silo is innovative and handles impressive amounts of polys easily. It might need some more precision tools. One thing every modeler should investigate is Wings 3D. By far the best subdiv modeler. And it is FREE! How good Cinema is in modeling? I have very old version 6, but I'm not up to date how the modeling side har improved. It has good booleans, but so have Carrara and Bryce... I am novice at Carrara, but I have found splines, booleans and general composition features in Carrara to be quite amazing. I do poly modeling in other apps though.

I was already using Amapi 7, so I knew how to use Hexagon's interface out of the box. I have Silo. I tried to use it once. I didn't like its interface. I see people modeling the same stuff using either program. I tried Wings3D once. I didn't like it's interface. I guess it's a modelers interface that does it for me or not. I've never used RayDream 3 - Carrara Pro 4 for modeling. Only rendering.

Lets see. Silo: An excellent subdiv modeler but a bit lacking in key features (illustrator import, spline modeling, etc) Overall I'd say that it is a GREAT piece of software. Wings3d: For free its great. But I've always found it limiting in its modeling workflow. I like the concept of manipulators and of icons for functions used often. Icons work well in conjunction with shortcuts and shouldn't be eliminated all together. That said for free it can't be beat. Hexagon: Probally the easiest to pick up. At least it was for me and its very powerful. The replicating functions and dynamic geometry make it very flexible. If I had to choose between the three I'd pick Hexagon. Another excellent modeler that should be mentioned here is Modo. It will likely be my next purchase. Its flexible interface, macros, and scripting functions make it a versatile tool. Plus the addition of rendering and texturing tools bring it up a notch in my book. I'll likely keep Hexagon in my toolset as it does a lot of things faster then other programs I've used. And of course Carrara's speedy rendering and other features will keep me using it for a long long time.

I also bought Silo and after Hexagon.I have the same opinion:i like the Silo interface more than the Hexagon one but i prefer the Hexagon features.Waiting for Silo2!

Message edited on: 10/25/2005 04:53

Hi, I haven't posted here much for a while, been too busy and yes there are 2 many 3d apps to play with : ) Hexagon is a "hybrid" tool, that is a cross between nurbs surface modelling and poly modelling. It has some great features, but for me, I think it still is in its infancy yet. The main issue, for me, is that the dynamic geometry features, while they initially impressed me, are still a bit lacking in terms of a full suite of tools and options. I like the tool, but I guess I will have to hope that version 2 or 3 will really add some of the features that I think it needs to really be a solid hybrid nurbs/polygon modeller. Silo/Modo/Wings are all pure polygon modellers. They are all great and have nice functionality, but where they fall apart is their support for curves and patches. This seems to have been a trend for a while, since many 3d apps have come to the conclusion that Nurbs are dead and only have cursory support for robust curve modelling tools and nurbs. Hopefully, the hybrid approach of hexagon will take root and more will see a new way of bridging the gap so that it is easy to model polygons to curves or curves to polys, whichever the artist is more comforable with.

Hey Dot! Its been awhile. Just a quick correction on Modo. They do support spline based geometry. For instance: Spline Patch Polygon Type True spline patch surfaces Command to convert face polygon to spline patch Pen tool creates spline patch polygons Plus the solid sketch functionality that allows for quick "sketching" out of geometry. Similar to zspheres from what I've seen. If I were to switch from Hexagon it would be to Modo. That of course requires money:)

Hey Nicholas, Nice to see some familiar faces, indeed. Modo is ok (I have both), but to me Modo's patching and curve types are really like an afterthought, tacked on at the last minute as opposed to a real solution for curve based modelling. My main gripes with the curve features in today's modellers: 1. Beziers handles cannot be changed once applied. Modo does give some semblance of editable handles, but they are a little quirky to try and manipulate (they look just like other points on the curve). 2. No control over polygon count in curve approximation. For example, when you create a curve in hexagon, it generates a control curve ( a poly line of points clicked) and a curve generated using curve approximation (another polyline with a set number of points between each control point). It would be nice to interactively control the number of points generated on the approximated curve both during creation and after validation. But anyway, I digress, Silo seems like a good poly modeller, but I have only used it briefly. It seemed like a cross between modo and wings to me.

Agreed. They are not as robust as they could be. Just wanted to clarify that Modo does have some support.

Nurbs are not dead! I think they could be on their way back with the announcement of T-Splines <- Google it! They seem to give you the power of Nurbs and SDS. As for Hexagon V Silo. I think I would prefer Silo. Hexagon has some really cool tools (that many others dont have) but what I do not like was the Amapi hang ups it has. Tools need to be validated, and sometimes what is going on is not quite clear.There is just too much interface in the way! I have not used Silo properly (only fooled with the demo) but the vids I have seen do look very cool. The topology brush looks amazing. Wings 3D is great. I think to really appreciate its beauty, you must use it hotkeyed as the right click menus do occasionally get cumbersome. I must say the most impressive thing about Modo is the slick marketing! It does look like a really cool app but the people marketing it make me thing that this thing just landed from distance outer space 2000 years from the future!

T-Splines will help out a lot in the fembot manufacturing field some day. Organic modeled NURBS could easily be stamped out in either plastic or titanium in China factories.