http://www.eovia.com/products/hexagon/hexagon.asp that looks really good! most of all a good modeller is all what carrara needs...

modo

Info, what sold you on Modo over Silo? The difference in price is pretty large. mdc

Shonner. You are a very good Amapi Pro user and I also notice that you play Half-Life. Have you tried Half-Life 2 and have you created any models that be use in Half-Life? Ringo

If you get Half Life 2, I'd suggest you download XSI:Mod Tool, it has a built in exporter (actually you have to download it after registering) for HL2.

Any news on the price for hexagon? And, by looking at the models created in Hex, I'm not sure they will look as smooth in Carrara. The demo model has very few polygons and still, it is smooth. Any thoughts?

Never Give Up!

I am impressed at the speed and ease of modelling shown in the demo for Hexagon. What took the demo a few min. to create would take me hours in the vertex room in Carrara. I also like the symetric modelling ability. I have a few models I would like to donate to the community if anyone is interested in setting up (better) bones and zones, then re-posting the models. What I'm saying is, I've created the models, I just suck at putting in the bones and bone effect zones. My attempts at IK are okay for legs, but the arms are giving me trouble. Do we have a forum here to share models? R.

Never Give Up!

You can post free stuff. -Kix

-Kix

Info, >what sold you on Modo over Silo? >The difference in price is pretty large. >mdc "Luxology is proud to officially welcome Digital Domain into the modo community. Digital Domain has introduced modo into the production pipeline and has already applied modo to several projects including the film "Stealth" and commercials for Disney, Heineken and Michelin. We are thrilled to have such a high-quality production facility on board with modo." Don't get me wrong. From the limited time I have spent looking at Silo it sure looks like a very good modeler and the price is right. The work flow, from what I have been able to see, are very different from Silo and Modo. And don't discount Shade 7 either. It has very good modeling and rendering capabilities, is FREE (LE version) with Poser, and its user base is growing by leaps and bounds. In the next couple of years I see Shade becoming one of the or the dominate modeling, rendering, animating programs. Its cheep, its pack full of features, produces fantastic renders, imports Poser, animates, has a long running history in asia making it the #1 3D application there, introduced to the west and user base growing at a rapid rate, etc., etc..

I found Shade incredibly buggy and unstable. I clicked a tool and it crashed, I inserted a object it crashed, I tried saving it crashed. I had so many issues that couldn't be solved via support I just gave up. I wouldn't recommend it. Plus from what I saw its modeling toolset was a bit limiting compared to Silo, Amapi, Modo, etc. Its a good start, and I do agree in a few years with some more development it could be a nice package. I wouldn't consider it cheap. The full version is around $1000 which looking at its feature set not sure why its so much more then the LE. Modo is way overpriced in my opinion. With tools like Amapi Pro that include the same poly functionality and also intergrated NURBS support. And then as stated Silo which gives you much the same power as Modo. And features like weighting are made into a big deal when well its nothing new, and I find their implementation of certain tools to be a bit odd and different in an akward way from the standard. It just way overpriced for what you get. I mean you can get Softimage for $495 and have the same toolset for modeling plus a complete animation package. Or even Carrara, Amapi Designer isn't completely on par with Modo, but at least you would have a full rendering, animating and texture suite. I'll likely stick with Carrara, upgrade to version 5 when it comes out. I mean if Hex supports obj export, I can export to Motionbuilder, (heck CS5 might even support FBX export for all we know, they have import why not export next) animate, import into Carrara, texture, and render. And I seriously doubt that Hex will cost close to a $1000 dollars. Heck I've upgraded all the way from version 1 to version 4 and I still haven't spent the cost of Modo with Carrara. I expect in the next few versions Carrara will give the competition a bit of a whiplash. If you look at the speed of their development compared to the competition they are finally catching up and they can only get better. Will Carrara ever be a maya? Doubt it, but possibly at the level of lightwave. All in all, I can see Modo being nice in a studio environment with maya, etc. Since it does support the pipeline, but for the cost, if I was a studio, I'd much rather just model in maya. I expect the price to drop. When you have complete packages for half the price it can't stay at even its current intro price for long. Info, I'd love to see some of your work. You have quite a collection of software I'd love to see what you can do! Brian

lol. Hope not. I've demoed Modo, and watched the videos I'm not that impressed. I say we just agree to disagree. Price vs. software its just not worth the price to me. Especially with all the free software and less expensive software that have roughly the same capabilities. I am shocked in the current state of the market how any of the big names can survive. Of course don't get me wrong, Modo has a lot of power, I mean the scripting ability, the flexibilty of the interface, and the way it works with edge loops are all nice. Just don't see it as my cup of tea for the price.

On 03/18/05 Nicholas86 wrote the following: I'm selling Truespace 5.5 with paks raypak, depak, anipak, and fxpak. Includes manual, and all original CDs (even have the original sleeves they were in! Exciting! Asking $300+shipping. I'm willing to take a good offer. Just trying to get my money's worth out of it. I'm also selling Motionbuilder 5.5 fully transferrable. Includes the manual, video tutorial CD, application CD, and clipart cd. Asking $600+shipping. Version 6 costs $995. If interested. Please PM me or email me at nicholas8681@hotmail.com Brian On 04/15/05 Nicholas86 wrote the following: I'll likely stick with Carrara, upgrade to version 5 when it comes out. I mean if Hex supports obj export, I can export to Motionbuilder, (heck CS5 might even support FBX export for all we know, they have import why not export next) animate, import into Carrara, texture, and render. And I seriously doubt that Hex will cost close to a $1000 dollars. So for you deep thinkers out there here is the question. What is wrong with this story? Hummm...

You know what else I find troubling? That with all the problems you were having with Shade there is not one message posted from you on the Shade forum. And that is from when the forum first opened up to the present -- nothing.

On the other hand there was another person who was just as radical about Shade not working either and he posted a thread on the Shade forum warning would be customers not to purchase the bug riddle program as it just doesn't work. This of course brought on a long discussion as others didn't have the same results. Well to make a long story short, here is what he has to say about Shade now:

On 04/14/05 D64Day wrote the following:

Greetings Shade 7 artists and soon to be artists,

In the past I have spoken against the Shade due to problems I was experiencing with my copy. Now that I have received and installed a replacement through the software vendor, there are no further problems. All runs well. It appears my anger and frustration with the creators of the Shade 7 program were misplaced. I see now that I chose to allow my ignorance and anger to lead me into writing and posting a very negative "review" of this program. For those who may recall my rantings I would ask this opportunity to recant my statements. My statments were harsh and made in haste. Even though I had spent nearly one month researching and attempting to remedy the problem, all that was needed was replacement of the disc. Now without any changes to my system Shade 7 functions correctly and beautifully. It has become a very necessary part of my photographic ventures and I look forward to exploring all of its capabilities.
Please accept my apologies for the rash behavior which I have displayed. I would like to return to the Shade community and hope to someday contribute something worthy of posting.

D. Day
aka: Ink Slinger

I didn't sell Motionbuilder. Actually decided to upgrade soon. Finances have gotten better, which was the reason I was going to sell it. I wonder on the relevance of posting about that? One freaky dude that you actually went through the effort to search for that post. Kind of makes me feel important that you went through all the trouble for little ol me. As to the shade forum, I actually did post in response to a thread that was having similar problems as mine. I experienced problems with the Shade LE trial, I redownloaded 3 times. And still experienced problems. Tried it on 3 different computers with different specs and experienced the same issues. Think it might have been the thread you posted about actually. Its funny how you didn't respond at all to the request for images or the like. Show us your talent? Maybe I'll respect your opinions more. As of now you just are someone who always brings in negative comments to a thread. Brian

yeah....LOL

Anyway. Hexagon does look like a decent modeler. Look forward to giving it a try.

InfoCentral- I have to side with Brian on this one point.... "As of now you just are someone who always brings in negative comments to a thread." Whenever I see a thread that has a post from you... sooner or later you go on tangients and negativity about others... can it please. Just my 2 cents...

Personalities aside, if an application does what you want it to, in a way that makes sense to you, and you can come up with the cash to buy it, what it costs is pointless. With everyone putting up a downloadable demo, the days are over of just comparing spec sheets put out by the companys sales departments. I might listen to what someone I respect has to say about a particular application, but Id still grab the demo before I take out the charge card. mdc So as to not contribute to the further highjacking of this thread; Hexagon looks like something I will defiantly want take for a test drive.

And away we go! 1.) This is the second thread that's driving off into the boundaries of the TOS rather recently. I would don't want to be doing that. 2.) The thread does have a lot of good points in it and there is a lot of information (even though it's personally spiced). This would be a great thread to have in the modeling forum. If the members who've participated here feel they would like to continue this discussion, I strongly suggest they do so constructively in that arena. I was going to actually move this thread to that forum but I don't think that's the best option now. Play nice. -Kix

-Kix