WHICH 3d Modeller to buy
Community Forums/Developer Stations/WHICH 3d Modeller to buy
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| HI all, I'm looking to buy a half decent 3d modelling app basically it's a toss up between Gamespace & Softimage XSI foundation as they both hang around the £300 quid mark. However, even though i like the look of the Gamespace+Level Editor Plugin - I'm still not convinced about that dicey interface and am not sure if modelling characters with it might result in an axe through my monitor. Which leaves Softimage XSI foundation, I like the idea of buying this as you get an actual box with cd & manual etc as opposed to gamespace's download only, BUT and its a BIG BUT, I have never heard of anyone using it and saying if it's actually any good?!?!? I tried to download the trial version but couldn't !?!?! has anybody got any ideas please |
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| For starters I would take a look at Silo (http://www.nevercenter.com). It's really, really good for modelling. |
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| Haven't you heard of anyone using XSI? Well, a lot of companies are currently moving from Max / Maya to XSI these days. Half-Life 2 models were done using XSI. Almost all the computer animation for movies is done with XSI. I am not a modeller, but I know a modeller which uses XSI and he says that it totally ROCKS. The cheap an cool alternative is Silo, IMHO. |
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| If all you want is 3D modeling then I recommend Wings3D, which is free. I use Maya for most of my 3D work, but I still routinely use Wings for a lot of organic modeling. For texture mapping get Ultimate Unwrap ($50, also VERY useful for file format conversion,) and use CharacterFX ($15) for animating. If you get Softimage you'll need Ultimate Unwrap anyway to convert to b3d file format. Have you looked in the '3D Tools Overview' in this forum? |
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| XSI is mainly picking up popularity in the movie industry, less so in the games industry. But if you have to choose between XSI and Gamespace there is no real competition. the basic version of XSI is a far better tool and will serve you better if your trying to break into the industry. |
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| Softimage XSI foundation - go for it! We have switched / are switching to XSI from LW at work, just got loads of those boxes and stuff. We did VERY hard and objective test run that had all the major packages before we decided what should be the next modeling / animation package after LW which have shown it's limits to us during these years... and although price was not an issue here the fact that XSI is pretty cheap after the recent price cut didn't hurt for sure! XSI modeling and animation are top notch, and it has for example DX8 .X exporters that would allow to get boned character to Blitz (after converting the .X to .B3D). I still like LW as a modeler, but XSI will be way better once I learn it properly, because it's a non-linear tool meaning that I can go back and change things... think PS layers or MAX stack here. And LW's animation tools have always sucked, but XSI is a dream if you need to animate things. It has even built-in character tool that generates "humans" that are perfectly even mapped for you - and if you want to have slightly or full elephant head to that character just use the slider to do so :) And it has loads of ready-made bone rigs that really work. Did I say that I liked XSI very much? |
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| LOl thanks guys, i think you have confirmed what i was kinda thinking anyway. Think I'm gonna go with XSI, cant wait to get stuck in thanks |
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| just downloaded the XSI trial, it seems amazing. Spent 2 hours playing with the face building tool lol ! Time to dig out that credit card and find a UK retailer |
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| I'm also busy trying out XSI, it's really fantastic... I,m just trying to figure out if it is possible to adjust the diameter of the bones. I'm working with a ratehr small mesh object and it would be nice if I could scale the bones down a bit... |
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| How is modo from http://www.luxology.com/ ? How does it compare to silo ? |
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| We checked Modo too... looks basically nice and promising, but it's SO WIP... Some day maybe, but not now, thank you. |
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| I have xsi and like it a lot...but each one must try first the trial very deeply... |
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| JUST ONE MORE QUESTION TO ALL YOU XSI USERS Im based in the UK and am just wondering if its better to order from the Softimage website and pay the added tax etc or whether to go through one of the 2 UK resellers and pay their prices. |
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| Dunno... we bought so many packages that we got a special deal... can't you just look up the UK software tax percentage and add that to the US price + shipping? |
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