Has anyone tried OPEN FX - free 3D app? http://openfx.org/about/index.php Thanks riv

I have. I haven't really gotten around to playing with it much, but one thing I did do was to completely render one of the sample aninmation scenes, and I was blown away by how quickly it did it. It was, like 500 frames, rendered at around 640x480, and took about an hour (maybe less) to render that as an AVI! I was impressed with the quality. A NURBS modeler with animation abilities--and FREE, no less! I did have some trouble with it failing to properly export some files in 3DS format, and I had quite a few crashes. Also, even some of the sample files failed to load. I wasn't thrilled with the interface, but I will say that as far as all the free, open source modelers out their, it's probably the best, with maybe Amapi 4.15 being an exception, since Amapi is mostly stable. I don't know of any other free NURBS modelers available, for that matter, for free, and I'd say it's well-worth the "price". I've come to really prefer NURBS modeling over polygon modeling, and ANYTHING that offers that and a 3DS export gets a high rating in my book. I did make a few "test" models, as well as exported some of the sample models (those that "worked"), and imported them into Vue for some test rendering, and Vue loaded and rendered all of them perfectly. Vue loves 3DS. :)

Thanks, just wondering myself... Just downloaded it and opened it to the kinda strange interface. I also like that it is free nurbs. Too bad to hear it crashes so much. Next Ill have to try a render and also bring something into Vue. Ive found 3dS to be the best for vue too. Guess Rhino is going to be the one to beat - regardless of cost.

I've never had any problems with Rhino, especially when it comes to importing into Vue. OFX is a good modeler, but I would recommend Rhino to anyone who doesn't need all the fancy extras that modelers such as 3DS Max and LightWave provide.

I've used the Designer part of it. The interface isn't that bad once you get used to it. I just wish there were more tutorials for it. Rich

I love Rhino, it's a very stable application. And it's very easy to get going with, and it imports and exports just about any 3D file formet you could need as well as full control over how many polygons the exported models will consist of. For the money nothing can beat it. It's got NURBS skills comparible to Power Animator which costs 15-20 times more. Anyone interested in Rhino should definately check it out and get the demo, it lets you save 25 times. I want to investigate OpenFX, I've heard great things about it,but is it stable? Is it a crash happy app? kaom

i use to have it on my pc but it was crashing so i removed it. besides the user interface is not bad compared to others(blender...) jp

It does crash alot.... I love Rhino too, and have been using it since around February. As far as modelers go, Rhini is ROCK solid. I've only ever had it crash twice. On both occasions I was trying to save a file as .3ds, with too many polygons. Evidently the .3ds format doesn't allow for more than 65,000 polygons or something like that.