Quote - C4D looks attractive - add up the price though.
   CINEMA 4D R10 - Windows   In stock $895.00 $895.00 
   Advanced Render for R10 PC / Mac In stock $595.00 $595.00 
   Dynamics for R10 PC / Mac In stock $395.00 $395.00
   Hair for R10 PC / Mac Pre-order $395.00 $395.00 

Damn thing's almost as expensive as Maya list price and dynamic hair isn't even available yet.  My poor bank book :(

Well, if you drop Dynamics you can save ~$400.  This is not really necessary - and not the same thing as Poser cloth dynamics.  Clothilde is included with the MOCCA module and is cloth dynamics in C4D.

So... if you get Cinema 4D R10 XL bundle you get:

Cinema 4D R10 base
BodyPaint 3D (now part of the base!)
MOCCA (advanced rigging w/ Clothilde)
Advanced Render
Thinking Particles
Network rendering (3 seats)

*** Add module:Hair

That is $2195+$395 = $2590.  That's better than Max or Maya Unlimited (eh hem, Complete does NOT come with Hair, Fur, or nCloth!).  And the Hair module is indeed available for R10 - or do you want me to prove it (I have the R10 Studio bundle). ;0)

Rethink your comparisons. :)

Bodypaint is a part of the base?  That's worth looking into.

Is it the full version of Bodypaint?  Including compatibilty with other applications -- such as Lightwave?

Quote - None of them gave me a keyframed rig. Wich is what interposer does for Cararra and I hear it does the same for Cinema. If interposer does for Cinema what it does for Cararra - which I use, I have no reason to doubt it.

Cararra uses 'TransPoser' and Cinema 4D uses 'interPoser'.  No affiliation betwixt and between. :)

My biggest problem with interPoser is that retrofitting 'Poser' into Cinema 4D-speak (as it were) is not a generally simple task.  Cararra uses native bones/joints through TransPoser and might even be able to support master-slave dials (e.g.: JCM's) because it has old ties to Poser through MetaCreations and may be using the touted Poser SDK (which is what Reiss Studios and Vue use).  Not being a big company like e-On et al (just me), I have never got a straight answer on acquiring and licensing this so-called Poser SDK through Curious Labs or e-Frontier - so it's all scrounge and workaround.

I try not to make comparisons between BodyStudio and interPoser Pro as they are two different solutions.  BodyStudio is exactly like the old free plugins from ProPack - mainly unalterable Poser scenes for rendering in the target app where alterations can only be done through Poser.  interPoser Pro is more like Poser itself in that you 'load' fully rigged, posable, animatable, conformable, parentable, morphable figures - but to accomplish this required much work, 'rule breaking', and some unfortunate compromises for various reasons.

Quote - Bodypaint is a part of the base?  That's worth looking into.

Is it the full version of Bodypaint?  Including compatibilty with other applications -- such as Lightwave?

No, this is the Cinema 4D module version of BodyPaint 3D.  Funnily, if you get the full version of BodyPaint 3D (with other application compatability) you get the Cinema 4D base as well because the two have been merged in both instances.  So the differences are somewhat vague after this merger.  Best to read the differences carefully when at Maxon's site.

Quote - well, google sent me only to the sales page in rendo
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=53935

and searching on rendo I found this page
http://www.freehomepages.com/yangaimin16/
which is a non-rendering folder on a webserver somewhere.

LOL, never mind, you don't appear to have read any of what I wrote about having tested the plugins we're talking about here. Oh well, maybe someone else will benefit from it.

Thanks.......with that information, C4D has just jumped up a couple of rungs in my consideration over what I should plan on buying.

Buy BodyPaint -- and get C4D.  That's......great to know.

don't dismiss me connie, with your attitude. send me to a solid support site for the product. I am glad you tested them. So far so good. But where is the site for pomax?

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - And the Hair module is indeed available for R10 - or do you want me to prove it (I have the R10 Studio bundle). ;0)

No need to be confrontational - that was quoted off the Maxon site.  When you try to buy it direct, it shows:
Hair for R10 PC / Mac Pre-order $395.00 $395.00
Maybe it's only available through the bundle?

Good to know where dynamic cloth hides, it doesn't exactly jump out at you from the product page.  I wish their product literature was structured more like a business app's and less like a game brag sheet.

Quote - But no high-end app is going to fall into hobby-level prices.  Not unless if you've got some expensive hobbies.  Or unless if you've got money to burn on 3D toys.....which always helps.

I pretty much do, although I'd like to know beforehand if $2000 is going to get me a fun toy to play with (e.g. if there's some hope of passing the rigging between the apps).

Not being confrontational, but when I go there and select "Software" and then Hair from the US Online shop Modules list, there is no 'Pre-order' (same for UK and International) - which I checked beforehand.  The Hair module was released with R10 back in Oct/Nov 2006.  Maybe you are getting an older or varied link?

The cutsy names (Xpresso, COFFEE, MOCCA) can make it difficult to determine what these exactly are (Xpresso is a graphical script node system, COFFEE is a textual script OOP language, and MOCCA is, of course, the 'advanced' Character Animation module) and what features they contain.  They likes their acronyms for some reason.

I don't think anyone really knows why Clothilde was attached to MOCCA but Hair is sold separately (and not attached to this or some other module).

No animosity intended. :)

Quote - I dunno, I think Body Studio is great to start with but if you really want to take advantage of Max's rendering capabilities, you may want to manually set up your characater.

I have to agree with this,mr is a beast & you'll never get 'spectacular' results by just using whatever settings bodystudio imports it as...mr is the kind of tool you need to tweak a bit to get the most out of it..& just like Poser, mr doesnt have a make art button
while mr does come free with 3dmax I actually prefer to use finalrender or vray,(or even Scanline for absolute ease of use)

Cheers
Stefan

PS:does Bodystudio still triangulate the mesh on export?

quote: PS:does Bodystudio still triangulate the mesh on export?

I dunno; I could never get rid of the faceting.  I've stopped using it a while back. I've also become fed up with the high poly counts of Poser characters, so I'm creating my first SubD humaniod.

I use BodyStudio almost every day - have for several years - and am VERY pleased with it. It does exactly what it says it will do. And it opens to me a world of Max features and plugins for my work. I have a big multi-core machine and I've watched ram and cpu usage carefully - firefly stinks at utilizing the cpu. Other, 3rd party rMax renderers but down the house.

Regarding reiss not replying - they are a very small company and it takes them a while to get back with you. Have you tried email?

**

stonemason:** yes it triangulates.

jeff, do you bring scenes with dynamic hair and cloth from Poser7 into Max9? I am wondering how that pans out.

Well, i am going ahead.....
I'll be installing a month trial of Max in the next few days and I'll be taking a flyer on Body Studio. I realize my results may disappoint or require more tweaking than 'zero', but hey, I am flirting with Max and any tweaking will be part of a real learning curve for the entire platform.

::::: Opera :::::

Dynamic hair - no. Posers dynamic hair is such a pain that I never mess with it.

Clothing - yes. Works very well.

Overall I think you will be pleased with the new setup.

Quote - stonemason: yes it triangulates.

I thought that's what happens when something that was originally modelled to behave as a patch or a nurbs surface gets imported as an old fashioned mesh in Max.  
Am I off on that?

Quote - Cararra uses 'TransPoser' and Cinema 4D uses 'interPoser'.  No affiliation betwixt and between. :) 

Oh, oops!  LOL, you're right!  I got the names smushed into one. 

I feel like I need to clarify myself: Transposer in Cararra does what my friend says Interposer does for Cinema. My bottom line was that Body Studio doesn't do as many things as the above two products (which was confirmed by other users here).

Quote - I thought that's what happens when something that was originally modelled to behave as a patch or a nurbs surface gets imported as an old fashioned mesh in Max.  
Am I off on that?

Never mind, I answered my own question!     I need more coffee this morning!

Finally spoke to Josh at Reiss today. He confirmed the specific claims made for his product. The user can expect to get mesh, texture maps and dynamic simulations along with keyframed animation over to Max, at which point one can light and render. No rigging or morphs. He said 'basically you are lighting and rendering mesh with textures, already animated"

He also confirmed what several users above in this thread stated: the translation over from the Poser material room to Max does not include procedural shaders, such as AO nodes, cloth effect nodes like velvet, or any math, blend, noise.....etc.

At best one can expect that the actual .jpg texture maps from Poser will be found...and will have been attached to corresponding roots in Max.

Fair enough. If it actually does that, and I can work up the Max lighting and rendering with the result of getting a certain flow going, I will be gratified.

I made my purchase. Max is here also. It might be a gradual process for me to report back, I am slammed with other projects that terminate July 1. Also, I won't be reporting back until I get a little ways into the learning of Max lights and render.

::::: Opera :::::

This is a still from a 240-frame animation that is typical of my type of scene -- interiors with dark corners and interresting partial lighting, human model with good skin, dynamic hair and cloth.

This is a 700x800 pixel frame....I'm hoping to get this over to Max, back up to this level of quality, and realize at gain of speed that is worth the game.

::::: Opera ::::::

May I suggest checking out the Max training at Lynda.com.

It's a fantastic deal - 20 something bucks a month for a bunch of full screen tutorial movies covering every aspect of Max. They even have some free videos to watch so you can see if you like the style.

As for your rendered image, you will have NO PROBLEM reproducing that in Max.

Thanks for the link. You can bet I'll visit Lynda.

I'll be going over to 3DBuzz for training as well, starting backwards, of course! Lighting and Render. 

As soon as I downloaded the trial of Max, Autodesk began to feed me training links, also. My son won't be loading his full Max until he gets a his new laptop situated, so I went for the 1-month trial of Max.

Actually, the frame above is both wrong-shaped, oversized and over-resolved for animation, so it is not exactly a 'fair' test of what I'll be doing. But hell, I figure use a tough example!  Render time about 876 seconds for the above, as there are agressive settings.

::::: Opera :::::

Something very interesting when you're looking for render speed: the RT2 render plugin (there's a Max version). RT2 doesn't render on the CPU, it renders on the graphics processor, and is MUCH faster than any CPU based render engine.
One of the things that I'm trying to get tested at work is how the RT2 render engine works on dual graphics cards (SLI / Crossfire). We have machines with dual 7950GX2 cards (thats 4 fast GPUs in a single machine!), and I expect RT2 to be at least 100 times as fast as MR with similar settings on such a setup.
I do not know whether the RT2 render engine can render with the quality you want. But if it does, I guess it would be a great asset to animators.

On a side note, I'd really love to see a standalone Renderman-compliant renderer that renders on a GPU using OpenGL / HLSL shaders. Preferably as an open source project.

I will building a new computer later this year and am thinking of going high on the graphics card to accomodate two monitors, but more important snappy response in the working window as I move things around.  Your findings would be way-pertinent on that score...

My only issue on a really powerful graphics card is that when my gamer/designer son gets wind of it I may need to lock up my tower!

off to google 7950GX2 and RT2 render.......

::::: Opera :::::

Snappy interaction is almost as important as raw rendering speed. Most of my actual work time has been spent waiting on my graphics card.

I just moved to an ATI x1900 and Poser is a whole different program - much faster interaction. Posing is a breeze rather than, dial/wait dial/wait rotate/wait.

I was on a Nvidia Q4 750 - which was ok about 5 years ago. But the jump to the x1900 has significantly improved my production speed.

Poser on 2 or 3 moniters is also a real boost. Have you library open on 3/4th of the 2nd moniter along side your parameter controls greatly speeds up finding-loading-saving items, poses etc.

Make sure and get a card that has good DirectX performance - Max is much faster when using DX over OpenGL.

You also may want to read up on gaming graphics cards vs. workstation cards. One will give you fast rendering, the other will give you snappy triangle processing.
Not very many excell at both.

here's one article that touches on the subject:  http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-23018-Graphic-Cards-Workstation-vs-Gaming.html

OG - you mentione 3D Buzz. I received some of the best (app specific) Fundamentals and Advanced Modeling courses from them.

However I offer my humble opinion that you will get most joy out of ditching the conversion plugins and make your characters as "Max-specific" as possible. It will save you grief in the long run.

repllicand, thank you for your opinion.  not only have others in this thread said the same thing, but I am  almost sure others are thinking it!

It's just that I have this path laid down for me that might succeed in a workflow for an artistic enterprise that can fund my music composing and drama writing. I am nearly there in Poser. But it is too weak on the payoff end of things. 

It is very likely that getting my hands on Max, working with it for lighting and rendering, and encountering the limitations of this particular shortcut will simply make me throw up my hands and jump in the Max (or XSI; i am attracted to that program) lake with both feet.

I appreciate your wishing to save me grief; I may have to suffer some to take your suggestion fully to heart.

::::: Opera :::::

If you're seriously going big on the graphics card, be aware that the 7xxx series is the previous generation.  The 8800 is the big dog on the block currently.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/products.html
http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce8.html

Quote - > Quote - stonemason: yes it triangulates.

 

I thought that's what happens when something that was originally modelled to behave as a patch or a nurbs surface gets imported as an old fashioned mesh in Max.  
Am I off on that?

but poser models aren't patch or nurbs based..yet when bodystudio sends the poser mesh to max it triangulates it..that's the main reason I never got any use out of bodystudio

PJ's and Connie, thanks for the links. The response of shadow_29 at TechSpot was very detailed and eye-opening. PJ, lol, I was conversing with my son last night and he told me the 7's were dead and the 8's were great! I wonder if those are only gamer cards, though. More research on hardware later.

:: og ::

They're gamer cards, but they do OpenGL reasonably well, and DirectX VERY VERY WELL.  In my opinion they're a very serious option when thinking about Max (DirectX preview rendering).

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=8108755

Viewport Renderer

• DirectX® viewport shading displays materials as they would appear in other real-time applications.
• Support for all shader types is now available via MAXScript—including HLSL and Cg shaders—along with shader performance enhancements. Work with CgFX files alongside .fx files in the viewport.
• Maximize productivity and creativity with multithreaded viewport.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - stonemason: yes it triangulates.

 

I thought that's what happens when something that was originally modelled to behave as a patch or a nurbs surface gets imported as an old fashioned mesh in Max.  
Am I off on that?

 

but poser models aren't patch or nurbs based..yet when bodystudio sends the poser mesh to max it triangulates it..that's the main reason I never got any use out of bodystudio

You're absolutely right about triangulated mesh not being of much use. 
Especially if it's important to preserve the original (poser obj) topology!

For some reason, before I had my morning coffee yeaterday I thought max triangulated everyting that wasn't a patch or a nurb on import... then when I opened the figure I've been working on, I had all neat quads staring me in the face. Oopsie! I had a duh moment... 

I was doing something till wee hours the night before with showing and hiding edges examining how the cloth sims came out, and was seeing triangles everywhere (LOL, in my head).

Quote - PJ's and Connie, thanks for the links. The response of shadow_29 at TechSpot was very detailed and eye-opening. PJ, lol, I was conversing with my son last night and he told me the 7's were dead and the 8's were great! I wonder if those are only gamer cards, though. More research on hardware later.

:: og ::

Well, here's what I deal with...
At the office, the terrain modelling that we do is all triangulation of point clouds containing couple milion points each... the meshes I handle end up having several milion triangles. 3-5 milion on average. And I get to do almost no rendering at all, it;s all calculations and massing models.
Without 4 GIG of ram and couple of quadro series of workstation cards I couldn't lift a finger. Now, that's the higer end extreme, that you may not ever reach. 
That also depends on how body studio handles importing. What I've seen is that the imports aren't exactly sparing on the triangles since each animation keyframe appears to become it's own set of OBJ's. (if I remember right) I know pomax does for sure, since I used it more recently. I believe body studio does something very similar.

Quadro's have great capability for rendering stills and animations where you are rendering each frame and creating an avi or similar. It pretty much screams through it, but only with programs that are able to take advantage of it's features (like max). 

Where gaming cards seem to have an edge is in real time 3D graphics, where seeing a fully rendered low poly scene in a flash is important for gameplay, and testing the gameplay. 
In gameplay you often only see a portion of a scene, and it's effective loading gets done between the gaming engine, system power and graphics card power (to put it rather simply).

When a level modeller is creating entire model, and going through handling several levels of detail, building it all together in Max, this instant loading and rendering of a small portion fo a scene is not nearly as helpful as the ability to smoothly handle a number of triangles, as vectors or as massing model.

Having said all that, I'll give you an actual example: Working on a poser scene with couple of characters in it (500,000 triangles max) at the office with a 3GHZ-4gig system and 2 quadro cards in it, or at home on a2.5GHZ,  2 gig system and a 2-year old nvidia 6800GT, I can't tell a difference in making models and handling scenes. It's not significantly smoother or faster at the office. 

But, taking one of my work related projects with several milion triangles in it, and working on it at home, I can't do at all. Maximum I can handle at home is a project with 1.2 mil triangles before I crash and burn. At work, the largest one I had so far is 7 mil, and didn't crash. I did something silly trying to load couple of versions of a 7 mil triangle surfaces at onece, and did crash... so the limit is somwehere between 7 and 14 milion.

I haven't done a lot of animation comparisons between the two. When I need to render architectural or similar presentations, I set up several of the office and home computers into a rendering farm, and let them crunch at night. Often we create presentations that have up to 20-30 min worth of drive by's, and flyovers that take several days to render, so I haven't concerned myself with speed improvements less then 50% at the time.

If I can get more output from a two little more of the middle of the road machines then from one super duper latest one, I get the two middle of the road. The prices for the latest and greatest are often so jacked up that you can often get two for one.

Now, if I were practicing quake or similar gameplay for competition, or bragging rights, then I probably would get a $4000 or so gaming powerhouse.

Whenever I have my way, I get the machines from theese guys: http://www.xicomputer.com/

Quote - But, taking one of my work related projects with several milion triangles in it, and working on it at home, I can't do at all. Maximum I can handle at home is a project with 1.2 mil triangles before I crash and burn. At work, the largest one I had so far is 7 mil, and didn't crash. I did something silly trying to load couple of versions of a 7 mil triangle surfaces at onece, and did crash... so the limit is somwehere between 7 and 14 milion.

From your description, memory on the card is very likely a factor.  There are some 8xxx cards with 640 or more MB of display memory, what have you got at home?

Quote - From your description, memory on the card is very likely a factor.  There are some 8xxx cards with 640 or more MB of display memory, what have you got at home?

of course it is :)
We're talking about a difference of Nvidia 6800GS to a dual Nvidia Quadros, 5000 series on my CAD station at the office. 
On this computer (my secondary work machine), which I use while the other one is cruncing work related things (love the kvm switches :D ), with Nvidia 7800 the amount of triangles I can handle at once is larger then at home.

What I was getting at is that I didn't create a 'hobby' scene yet to exceed the abilities of my home machine, and I tend to use hi Polygon scenes.

Heh, heh.....my home machine is better than my office machine........by a pretty wide margin.  But that figures in my case -- because I'm not doing 3D work at the office.

My 4G's of RAM and my heavier video card both reside at home.  Along with my 3D apps.

My resolve has pretty much failed me:
http://area.autodesk.com/custom/?id=4547

:unsure:

Drooool!
I thijnk it can simulate drool too :)

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=7636671 

I read up a bit on this.  Remember that although it is ingenious - have to give Joe Stam credit for productivity while at the airport ;) - it is still only available in Maya Unlimited.  $7000 USD.  For that you can buy several of the top end 3D apps in their top forms with plugins to spare.

People like to drool over this stull - but you pay for it significantly.  You can get Cinema 4D R10 Studio with Mograph and several major plugins for about $4000.  Include XSI and LightWave3D or just 3DSMax and you are at about that price.  Maya Unlimited is geared towards professional studios and thus the price tag.

Drool all you want but if you don't have $7000 laying around to squander on this is it really worth the ooohs and aaahhs?  If I were in a professsional 3D biz where I was makin' the dough this would be a drop in the bucket investment.  But for hobbyists, this is either 'my inheritance has arrived' or 'I've a new credit card with a sufficient limit to pay for the next ten years'.

Think: Is it a worthwhile investment?  I can't see any advantages.  If you are aiming for a studio career, you could do better with Maya PLE (cost $0)...

Well, if you're a student, you can get it at a pretty significant discount (94% off).

http://www.studica.com 

Maya PLE produces renders with watermarks, the student version doesn't.  If $7000 is out of someone's reach, so is $4000.

They might put it in 3ds Max 10. They do own both softwares.
But there's already a lot of upgrades going into Max 10 though,... maybe 11.

Quote - Well, if you're a student, you can get it at a pretty significant discount (94% off).

http://www.studica.com 

Maya PLE produces renders with watermarks, the student version doesn't.  If $7000 is out of someone's reach, so is $4000.

Very true.  It all depends on your goals and means.  Although PLE adds the render watermark, you are free to use it for an unlimited time with all available features.  There is no better way to learn and master the software for 'goal-oriented' reasons than this.  If you are aiming for a career which requires Maya experience, you can't beat gaining the experience for nothing and then having the 'real thing' at your disposal when employed.

Otherwise, I don't see the point of investing $7K to get a great cloth sim if it isn't with profit expectations (unless one has enough wealth that it doesn't matter).  One has to live within ones means and Maya Unlimited is one of the costliest solutions in 3D (besides maybe Houdini).  Again, it is aimed directly at professional studios and the price reflects this.

Ya know, Endorphin is the ultimate figure dynamics solution out there.  Is it really worth dumping Poser's sub-standard dynamics for $9500?  If you are doing the next SpiderMan or similar movie with expected profit margins - yeah.  Otherwise, you'd better have a rich uncle.. ;0)

I think you missed my point - the student license of Maya Unlimited renders without a watermark, is fully featured, and (if you're a student) can be had for $370.  It is a perpetual license as far as I can tell (the one for 3ds Max at Studica definitely is perpetual).

And by the way they even have Cinema 4d XL for a similar uber-cheap price ($280)
http://www.studica.com/MAXONComputer/

although through that vendor, Maya Unlimited actually seems to be less expensive than a comparable pack of C4D + extensions.  This is all with the understanding that one meets their student ID requirements (thankfully, I do).

Do you think they'd accept a student ID expired in 1986? LOL

Quote - I think you missed my point - the student license of Maya Unlimited renders without a watermark, is fully featured, and (if you're a student) can be had for $370.  It is a perpetual license as far as I can tell (the one for 3ds Max at Studica definitely is perpetual).

And by the way they even have Cinema 4d XL for a similar uber-cheap price ($280)
http://www.studica.com/MAXONComputer/

although through that vendor, Maya Unlimited actually seems to be less expensive than a comparable pack of C4D + extensions.  This is all with the understanding that one meets their student ID requirements (thankfully, I do).

I gotcha on that - but you MUST BE A STUDENT (with proof) to get the benefits.  And almost every single Student License that I've ever encountered strictly forbids 'commerical use!!!'.  So you can use it similarly to the PLE version in every way except for the lack of watermark (and commercial endeavors).

At this point it is a matter of apples and oranges. :)  You can get a free version with a nasty watermark to stop from proliferating as pro-commercial work or you can get a student version without the watermark provided that you never use it for commercial purposes - or the lawyers pay a visit.  Autodesk is notorious for KGB tactics in such endeavors - don't know if that has changed but don't ever get caught using a student license for payed work!

If you are honorable - which I believe you are - you can get the student license and make cool renders for public display but not for private profit.  Once you are in position to profit from your work, you'll need to upgrade the license to full.

That's all that I'm saying. :)

Robert

I wonder if the publishers recognize "hobbyist-students." This is most of us....we are not in actual school, like Evan my son, but on the other hand we are not commercial and boy are we in 'learner mode."

I know for certain this is a gray area (hobbyist, non-comercial.) I guess their position is -- students (real, enrolled students) can and should get the student version. Others can work on the PLE version. This leaves the hobbyist out. So, without a specifically created category for hobbyist...we non-commercial people have three choices:

1. purchase the full edition
2. get ple, but your renders have watermark
3. find a legit student who will purchase a second student copy for you.

On point three, I was told by both Studica and Academic Superstore that Evan could purchase two copies, as long as one was perpetual and one was permanent.

I am about to confront this soon, because I am on a one-month trial of Max. I am facing $3500! I have a vendor here in Los Angeles who has told me I won't have to pay that much, but he has not quoted price to me yet, because I have not pressed it.

If I fall in love with Max, I would never use it for money-making without purchaseing full commercial license. I have no illegal software in my studio. But short of that, I confess I am tempted to have Evan purchase a second student copy, and I would work with that right up to the point of actually going commercial. I am still working out the morality of that, and in fact may attempt to contact Autodesk directly on this issue.

[update on my Max trial: I have not yet installed it; consumed with commercial website project for next week]

::::: Opera :::::

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=7679012

There are quite a few more differences between Maya PLE and the student version than the watermark.
Not being able to load any plug-ins seems like a biggie to me; so does all the disabled exporting  features.
The student version would give you a much better feel for what Maya could do in production.

I'll add one more thing to my prior post. When I discussed the above chain of thought with my vendor, RFX

http://www.autodesk.com/cgi-bin/nadealdis.pl?dealid=USD354

and after listening to my studio workflow and plans, he strongly suggested I take the one-month trial of SoftImage XSI as part of my decision-making process.

As I had already been to two user meetings and poured over the site and forums for XSI, I am already interested. 

He said my soup-to-nuts XSI seat, with hair and cloth and several render engines, would be less than $2000.

Of course, soup-to-nuts for XSI does not included their cute little facial expression module FaceRobot, which is $25,000 by itself!

::::: Opera :::::

P.S. Maya Nucleus....that is in development, right? Wonder if it will be "folded into" the current $7000 for Maya? Doubt it. Here's how the thinking goes: 'This module is not expensive for a movie production effects house, because frankly it is far less than the salary of one expert animator, and our claim is that the purchase of the license will certain allow you to hire one less animator due to its power." That's the exact logic told to me concerning FaceRobot, and you can tell that logic is in play on the page for Maya Nucleus. More power to 'em, it actually makes sense, but does not help us drooling artists!