One more thing before I go tonight.

I don't know if you're familiar with Blur Studio.  If not, you need to look them up and see some of their productions.  These guys produce some of the best animated 3DCG on the planet for cinematic game trailors and also short movies and special FX.  They were nominated for an Oscar for one of their shorts, and always continue to push the envelope of what is possible with 3D.  Up until fairly recently, Blur were famously using only 3dsMax as their modelling, rendering, and animation production software.  In fact, Splutterfish, who are the creators of the Brazil rendering system, was founded by a couple guys who worked for Blur, and Blur actually incorporated a lot of the features you see in the 3dsmax application today on their own, way before we ever actually saw them commercially available in the retail version of the app.  If it had not been for great studios like Blur and a few others (Animal Logic, Blizzard Ent., and The Orphanage), 3dsmax may have never been taken seriously for character animation at cinema level, because the app was never originally intended for that purpose.  Anyway, my point is this... Blur Studios recently incorporated XSI into their pipeline for character animation, and were one of those who originally helped dev XSI's high end Face Robot.  Maybe they did more than help dev the software, but that's what I read.  They still use 3dsMax for modelling and rendering, but now it's out to XSI for animation.  So although this may not interest you, it says something right there about XSI's great animation support and features.

Quote - To those commenting about the various modeling applications, zbrush, blender, wings, modo, etc., in a thread about the anticipation of acquiring one of three-out-of-four big players in 3D, namely Max, XSI and Cinema.....

Don't those big boys have tremendously powerful modeling built in? And inline/integrated, to boot?

Comments please.

::::: Opera :::::

P.S. To add to my quandary about this, my son who is in college for game design, a college that is 3DSMax-oriented, said to me "Dad, can we get ZBrush? Everyone at school is raving about it."

To answer some of the questions here, yes, the big boys have tremendously powerful modelling built in.  Lightwave and 3dsmax have long been known to have some of the best polygon and SubD modelling tools.  If you need evidence, just take a look over at CGArchitect and notice that most of the high end work there is 3dsmax.  Plus 80% or more of all today's high-end, low-poly game modelling, which isn't quite as low poly as it used to be, is done in Max (as your son is probably finding out now).  That said, Zbrush is a different world.  It has the ability to model using traditional SubD, but it's success and primary focus from the beginning was always on modelling using brushes and sculpting tools.  So artists who are used to that more natural modelling feel fell for it really quickly, because it handles a mesh as if it were virtual clay.  Zbrush is also used in professional pipelines for creating very highly detailed displacment maps to use in other traditional modelling applications, simply because it allows you to virtually and literally paint extremely fine surface deformations right into a high res mesh, and then use those details in their entirety on a much lower resolution base model, freeing up enormous resources, while still getting incredible results.

If your son is going to school to learn Max for things like game creation, that's probably why he wants Zbrush.  Zbrush is used this way to make normal maps, which in the gaming industry, are like the holy grail, making very low poly objects seem much more detailed than they really are.  Max can bake these normal maps and other information into a lowres model, which can then be exported for use in a game engine.

That's a real good deal right there.  XSI are trying to bite into Autodesk's total dominance in the industry, now that they own both 3dsmax and Maya.  I think Lightwave, Cinema, and 3dsmax probably have the strongest base of independent artists or hobbyists using their software, and XSI probably sees money in that.  Regardless, it's a great offer, and if I were you, I wouldn't think twice.  The only thing you might regret is that XSI is nowhere near as user-friendly as 3dsmax, and there isn't near the level of online support for it, in regards to tutorials or forums.  As a newby to high end 3d, you'd be almost on your own with the learning curve compared to the stong online support for apps like 3dsMax, Cinema, or Lightwave.  Something to consider anyway.

What is a 'mesh monger'?

Quote - As a side note -- I find it fascinating that so much useful information concerning various highend applications can be gleaned in the Poser forum.  By no means is that a negative thing: I think that it's very, very positive.  I just find it amusing........"highend" wasn't supposed to happen anywhere near something called Poser.     Yet "highend" seems to be happening in here more and more often.

With the advent of Poser Pro -- that state of affairs might become more and more the norm.  Good?  Bad?  IMO, it's all good.

There remains plenty for the hobbyist.  They might even find themselves........getting interested in doing more.

The difference with some of us is that we have no intentions of abandoning Poser as we travel elsewhere.  In fact: we'll plan on taking Poser along with us on the trip.

I got tuned into the Poser thing after a friend of mine suggested that making models to sell to Poser users might be a decent way to make extra cash.  I haven't decided yet if I'm going to take that advice, because so far I don't see evidence that it is.  Especially judging from the reactions in this thread, it seems anything priced according to the work someone puts into a model is too much.  There seems to be a strong reverse bias towards modellers here, in that modelling isn't viewed as an artform, but rather just something like being in the business of making 'supplies' for an artist.  This is contradictory to almost every other highend forum I've been too, by the way.  I'm not really interested in putting my heart and soul into a model only to have to sell it for $5.

Plus, I'm not sure Poser makes the best use of models in the way it requires them to be rigged.  The tri-axis falloff zone skinning Poser uses seems to play hell on the overall appearance of an otherwise good model.  That's why I'm interested in this Pro thing.  Maybe it will incorporate more industry-standard weight mapping technology, which I believe would be much better.

Quote - But I have seen the claim made -- on numbers of occasions -- that MAX needs an add-on renderer costing something in the neighborhood of $900 -- I don't recall for what purposes.  Please correct that information if it's wrong.

It's quite wrong in the fact that they claim you 'need' it..  MentalRay is about as good as it gets. The problem is in the user's knowledge of how to work it.  MentalRay is the same production-quality renderer used in Maya and XSI, and in fact XSI's core architecture itself is built around the MentalRay render engine, so that's how good it is.  There is no support for it in Cinema4d that I know of.

If for some reason you didn't like using MentalRay, then there's definitely a lot of other choices out there for Max, including Vray, Brazil, or FinalRender.  Vray is known to be much faster at rendering GI than MentalRay (at least without knowing how to use MR scripting to optimize your render pipeline, which most individual users don't know), so maybe that's what you've been reading about.

Many of the "plugin" renderers out there that are now making their way to other software did originally get their start with 3dsmax, simply because older versions of Max only provided scanline rendering, which was incredibly FAST for rendering still images or simple animations, but in itself wasn't really suitable for cenema-level production or Global Illumination renders, which the ArchViZ industry wanted/needed.  Cinema4D and Maya, for example, recently picked up FinalRender as a plugin for their software, and will soon join Max, Maya, and Truespace in acquiring the Vray renderer.  All of these incrediblly fast and high quality renderers got their start in Max.

For the person who suggested Max has a strange interface, I disagree there as well.  In fact, I turn around and say the same thing about Cinema.  Of all the highend apps, i think Max is the easiest to learn and use.  At least it was for me.  I never was fortunate enough to try all of them, but I did use Max, Cinema, and XSI for a short time.

As for buggy, well, I've heard this from some fellow Max users too.  If you're the type who likes to pile on all the tons of free plugins and addons available out there for Max, then you're going to eventually make it somewhat less stable.  Many of these plugins are not designed well, and cause crashes.  As for the app itself, it's always been one of the most stable for me over the past couple years.  I think I had one crash in the past few weeks, and yes, I was using a free plugin at the time it happened.  Go figure.

The toon effects in "A Scanner Darkly" was done with digital rotoscoping, in which they basically took live-action footage and applied a toon filter to it in a high-end proprietary video FX software.  It's like applying filters to a movie in Adobe Premiere or Autodesk Combustion.

The director of the movie talks about the process here:
http://www.highend3d.com/news/film/165.html

As for the original question, I would recommend saving up your pennies and investing in 3dsmax with either FinalToon or David Goulde's Illustrate plugin.  MentalRay also comes bundled with Max, and the toon shaders in that renderer have been used many times in production, so they must be good.  Same with Maya or XSI (they both use MentalRay too).

Otherwise, I'd go with Carrara.  Not as good, but better than Poser.

This is awesome! I have to ask, are the scenes with that red-eyed robot live action, stop motion, or 3D? Looks live action, but then some parts look stop motion or 3D. What software was involved here? Excellent work! Congratulations!

good stuff on that site. Thanks!

I get inspired every time I see a good animation. Doesn't matter what application or software was used, or if it was hand drawn or stop motion. If it's good, I immediately think about how it was produced, and how I could do something similar. I know many animators try not to look at other animations for inspiration, but this is what gets my creative juices flowing. Sure, things in real life are inspiring too, but mostly other people's works, when done well, get me excited about the craft.

Yes, you guys should definitely see if Carrara can do this. I personally wouldn't be without it for character animation, especially facial expressions. Think about it: some facial expressions in real life cause your skin to stretch, and some cause it to wrinkle more. If you could progressively blend different custom bump or displacement maps based on morphs, you have the ability to simulate real skin in animation much better. For example, when you pucker your lips, the cracks and bumps become much more pronounced, but when you smile, your lips get much smoother. Same thing when you scowl your brow. Some of these changes could be represented in the topology of the mesh itself, providing you have enough detail to allow for it in the morphs, but still, a bump map or displacement map isn't created to take these changes into account, unless you make several of them, and blend them as you morph. It just looks more realistic in close-ups.

Thanks for the reply, Kixum, but someone over in the 3dsmax forum turned me on to a plugin this morning that solved my problems, and saved my arse!! Phew, what a relief. I was seriously going to scrap 3dsmax if I couldn't get this feature to work, but all is well now. Thanks anyway though. Sorry to bother.

I just think it doesn't look right. I can't say exactly why, but something in my head is telling me it's not natural looking. Maybe it's the stiffness in all the other body parts, I don't know. She moves them up too slow or something. Same thing when she lands on her foot after jumping the air, her head is perfectly straight and never moves. Wouldn't gravity force her head to at least bob a little on impact? We're being picky, but maybe some of this will help you perfect the motion?

Nice work! I agree that the anti-aliasing in some spots was noticable, but overall this is solid.

Mirage is a kickass app. I use it now instead of After Effects, which I loath.