What about Strata 3d? Not having used it myself I'm just curious how it compares to Cinema4d...

I dont know too much about strata, but I do not that it isn't as widely used which is in fact fairly important.

Arggh!! I got a C4D demo and was very upset when I saw that it was missing a LW style Spreadsheet Editor, a LW style Graph Editor, a LW style Scene editor, and a LW (and Maya/Bryce) style motion mixer. No wonder I've always used LW for animation. And LW has astounding Poser intergration (C4D doesn't).

I've heard that Strata is cheap . (meaning, under $1000 ). Also heard something about bad IK. IK is easy in LW.

Like Camacho said, it's good to have multiple 3D apps. My setup:

LW...animation and movies, Hrypervoxels
Bryce...rendering and scene assembly, terrain
C4D...scene assembly, After Effects intergration, NURBS modeling, Maya-like world physics

Eeek gads! That's got to cost a fortune!

Just want to add my vote for Hash's Animation: Master.

I can't speak on Hash's support (as I've never looked for any) and the lack of an OS X version is annoying (though it works fine for me in Classic), but I oh so love the modeler. I've tried the other programs like Carrara and Lightwave and never really liked them, but the spline-based modeling of AM just clicks with me.

I got them as academic discounts (I'm in high school):

$249 for LW
$79 for Bryce
I'm using a free demo of C4D

The $249 academic version of LW is limited to noncommercial uses. (can't do anything with it that you'll be paid for; so Rageflight will be free; I plan to do it for uDevGame 2003)

rules like that (non-commercial versions) seem sorta silly. I guess that makes sense for demos, but if you pay for it than I think it should be yours to do whatever with. There are so many variables, like exporting from C4D for modelling to LW for animating to bryce and rendering it there, are you allowed to sell that? What if you change 2 points in LW and then switch back to C4D?

thats my humble opinion

Quote:Originally posted by Shivers
rules like that (non-commercial versions) seem sorta silly. I guess that makes sense for demos, but if you pay for it than I think it should be yours to do whatever with. There are so many variables, like exporting from C4D for modelling to LW for animating to bryce and rendering it there, are you allowed to sell that? What if you change 2 points in LW and then switch back to C4D?

I think the idea is that the educational version should be used to learn how to use the software and gain experience doing 3D work in general. Of course, there's really no way for the company to know what you're using the software for, and I doubt they'd really care if you use it for a $10 shareware game; restrictions of this sort are there primarily to keep a company from buying a 50-seat site license at the academic pricing and using it to make a $100 million movie.

yeah, but all the same, do not meddle in the affairs of lawyers; for they are subtle and quick to anger.

And I'm rather loving Amorphium 3 at the moment. Strange but cool.

We high schoolers can't afford $1500 software!

Quote:Originally posted by w_reade
yeah, but all the same, do not meddle in the affairs of lawyers; for they are subtle and quick to anger.

I agree, but unless there's a watermark (which there almost certainly is) or they recognize the Hypervoxels, (which they should) there isn't any way to tell.

Downloading the PC demo version of Strata 3D tonight (hopefullly, but if it's more than 8 meg, screw it) and will give my comments.

Wait, can't. My PC has no graphics accelerator.

Why don't you try Wings3d. It is fairly simple to learn and you can't beat the price (it's open source.) It doesn't do anything spectacular, but it's good for simple jobs. kiki was done in Wings3d, I believe.

The LW demo has a watermark but the edu. doesn't.