looking for good 3d software

ok watmm, my 'flavour of the month' self has arrived at 3d art/animation as a possible nice way to kill time/design album covers/etc. basically i'm looking for a program that's good for abstract shit, i don't plan to make 3d characters or anything, just 'idm' stuff.

any suggestions?

Maya is generally seen as the industry standard, which is the only program i've really used. It can be a pain in the ass, but if you just want to make abstract shapes it shouldn't be too hard to pick up. There are other programs that are more focused just on modelling, like Zbrush and Mudbox, which are supposed to be very good. With Maya though, you get the whole package; modelling, texturing, lighting etc.

3D Studio MAX

An interesting look would be at Rhinoceros. An easy yet powerful program that works with NURBS objects (the difference between Maya, Max and Rhino is that NURBS objects are defined by mathematical curves and not polygons). If you do abstract this can be quite fun, since not knowing how certain mesh/surface commands work, can yield unexpected/abstract results.

interesting, i guess i'm more interested in something where i can just chuck a bunch of basic 3d shapes together, and twist them into my own shapes, that's how i used to do things in truespace years ago on my old crappy pc heheh. i basically just want to make really shiny idm landscapes with the hope of moving into the realm of animation synced to music.

i use cinema 4d, but only because its the only one i could find on torrent for mac

At work I use 3d Max and Maya.

Blender is apparently up and coming...

It's an open source 3d program.

http://www.blender.org/

Rhino is more for Nurb modeling, it's good for designing digital sculptures. I'd say 3dMax is the easiest to get started in, however I haven't tried blender yet.

I think there's also lightwave and cinema 4d but haven't tried either of those.

From what I've used (but not owned), lightwave is the most user friendly. But moving from lightwave to another programme is horrible. Generally though they all work pretty much the same, but the interface and such for lightwave is different to others.

there's the google one, dunno if it's any good but hey it's google and it's free (I think?).

  GORDO said:

there's the google one, dunno if it's any good but hey it's google and it's free (I think?).

Sketch up? It's pretty good, but requires alot of external applications. A friend uses it for architecture when he wants to rough up a home.

The google one is sketch up, it's easy to learn for noobs.

Maya had NURBs before Rhino even existed.

With both Maya and Max being owned by Autodesk now, the differences between them are shrinking.

Though I was trained as a Maya user, I would agree that Max is the easier program to learn from scratch.

Modo is also quite a good modeling software.

Zbrush and Mudbox do totally different things from the aforementioned. They are basically 3D sculpting simulators. Can be a lot of fun and the learning curve is small.

Blender is awesome, I love it :kiss:

  pera said:

Blender is awesome, I love it :kiss:

http://www.elephantsdream.org/

Short Film made entirely in Blender.

I hated Blender. After 2 weeks of fucking around I couldn't even operate the camera like I wanted it. And I'm an experienced 3DS and Maya user. So fuck Blender and it's weird interface and controls. If you want to do something different, do it better. Like Zbrush.

If your just after modeling/rendering, Rhinoceros. Very east to design with, inexpensive, nice render options. I never liked modeling stuff in Maya unless I was using their special tools. If you want to do animation though, Maya is the shit.

Sketchup. Easy and free, you'll spend more time actually doing your modelling instead of trying to figure out every single option and menu there can be with other software. You can render it with another software in the end anyway.

bryce 3d

Modey, if you can get ahold of an old school Mac OS9 program called 'Alias Sketch' it is by far the easiest and quickest way to make abstract 3d images that ive found (for someone whos uninitiated with 3d rendering progs)

  Awepittance said:

Modey, if you can get ahold of an old school Mac OS9 program called 'Alias Sketch' it is by far the easiest and quickest way to make abstract 3d images that ive found (for someone whos uninitiated with 3d rendering progs)

ok, how will i get that running on a pc?