hello! on the same sort of question that “favorite 3d pack”, I’m very interested by your advice on other 3d pack, 1-for easy to use and learn, animation package (has anybody tried Bongo?), and 2- what sort of rendering package is able to use the next normal displacement map of the future zbrush? only the very expansive ones?.. thank you for advice!
hi,i cant help you very much but maybe lightwave is very good,i dont have it but the animation stuff must be good in lightwave.a very good renderer is messiah studio.i was playing around with the demo of cinema 4d and i have to say that this program is very easy to use.what is bongo?check out the demos of the tools and see for yourself what is the best.i just can say that when i have some money i will buy messiah studio cause the renderer is unbeatable and for animation it will beat everything inclusive motionbuilder.
MotionBuilder supports normal maps right now and you can view them in realtime as you animate. It’s renderer isn’t as full featured as say Lightwave’s or Messiah:Studio, but then if you are buying messiah studio (animation and rendering) you’ll be paying more than you would for motion builder.
I haven’t tried the latest version of messiah for animation, since I evaluated both messiah and motion builder several months ago. I went with motion builder. The program is far more stable and user friendly I found, and it’s plugins were better integrated in the major apps (less hassle getting stuff to and from max, lw, maya). I had a character setup in minutes using it’s auto character setup feature. Plus it’s animation editing features are the most powerful I’ve seen in any package. If you are thinking of Lightwave, I’d wait till 8 ships in a couple of months. It has new IK and bone features that greatly simplify the setup process for a character.
If you are budget strapped, I think Blender also supports character animation, and is free. Though I haven’t really messed with it.
Hope I don’t sound biased towards motion builder at all… I had to make a decision on what package would best suit my character animation needs in an upcoming project and Motion Builder was the one.
3dbuzz has a huge collection of video tutorials for free download as well so they could get you up and running in no time.
Edit: Upon examining the bongo website, I didn’t happen to see any mention of IK in it’s feature set. This is a must have if you want to do character animation.
Also, keep your eyes on this site, coming soon…
Some of the demo videos looked really promising. I would expect it will be priced in the same range as MB or Messiah.
I’ve been very happy with LightWave (I bought it earlier this year). It integrates well with ZBrush and provides an excellent modeler and renderer.
If you consider it, don’t worry about waiting for v8 to come out later this year. If you purchase now it’s a free upgrade.
Yep, I use LW as my Main package as well. At home and at work. Didn’t know about the free upgrade though. I just got it for home use a couple weeks ago, but I was going to pay for the upgrade with the eyeon software bundle. Seems like a good deal.
Hey Gwot,
So you find Motionbuilder the better value than Messiah at the time? I was considering using one of the two with Maya, but not sure which way to go.
Cheers,
Shawn