Hey Lemo, have you ever tried Silo? If so, how would you compare the modelling in it to XSI?
lemonnado If you where to pick one freeware modeler that is the most compatible with the commerical stuff. What would you choose?
if you where to pick one freeware modeler
…than this little true gem of Wings 3D 
And he has now a crazzy UV Mapping maker 
And it is the doctor of the 3D models 
And if you see more ergonomic tell me 
Pilou
Ps You must have a mouse with 2 buttons + knurl (?) = more practical 
yeah wings3d…is a great little modeler for a free program it has everything you will need…haven’t tested the new uv thing yet but everyone seems to rave about it so far. Plus it’s very easy to learn…no aspirin or jack needed.
Ok I am giving wings a shot. I hoping it solves my Amophium 3 woes that I’m having with UV maps. I can get pretty detailed models with A3 but if I could just get my texture and bump maps I am doing in paint shop pro or Deep Paint 3d to line up right Things would look awesome.
I hoping I can import into wings, map out UV, take them into deep paint & get the detail and either render in wings or move back to A3. OH Sweet Zbrush! I should just buy you and stop messing with the demo!
Every Modeler which is good in exchanging models in .obj is basically alright. Except you are gearing up towards a specific Package then for a example a Modo/Lightwave combo would be beneficial. But of course… that’s not free.
Always remember… Geometry and UV mapping is pretty much all you can transport without loss in some way or another. Even basic materials like Phong/Lambert or Blin shaders are not transported in general without loosing information regarding specularity, transparancy or whatever else comes with this shader. You can usually be happy WHEN such information is arriving so you only have to tune and not to rebuild…
If you are new to everything… it really does not matter that much. Spend a couple of weeks with Wings till you know the concepts.
That limits you to modeling. Which is a good thing. Once you know your way around take a look at Blender. It’s a good representation of what a larger Package like LW/XSI/Maya/Max looks like. And all the experiments you do there are valid in the realm of the other apps. You will encounter the same thing all over agan in different applications. Some things are frustrating like the ways to move objects, move the viewport. EVERY friggin app has different hotkeys. ALL offer you to map those… BUT unless you set up a production pipeline DONT. Why? ALL your tutorials you get are rubbish after you customize your application. Customize when you have nothing left to learn about an app.
So, I’d recommend Wings. And as soon as you get the hang of it look at blender as it will introduce you to rendering and other issues.
That Journey will quickly bring you up to speed and enable you to make good decisions regarding commercial packages. Maybe even to avoid them in total for your purposes.
@BillRobertson
I have and like Silo. The difference to the modeling part in XSI is that XSI can eat heavy scenes. It also a tweak tool now and the best selections and snap tools I have seen. I don’t want to go into detail but it lacks nothing in that respect. A new tweak tool in V5 is rounding stuff up nicely. The coolest thing is the abilty to model while utilizing the incredible animation capabilities. I can draw a curve, duplicate objects along that curve with spacing of the objects controlled by the animation f-curves. So I can create the most complex Banisters for staircases or equivalent PITA geometry. If I add scripting (REAL EASY drag and drop expression building) I can quickly make a twisted rope which automatically corrects it’s geometry as I change the length and shape while modeling. THAT is cool stuff. It’s like making a magic rope… There are also tonns of free scripts around which do Greeble and other cool stuff. So you can have a space ship hull in a few mintues. So I’d say it’s Silo on steroids. I am not sure if Silo has it because I don;t use that geometry in either app but XSI is good with Nurbs Surfaces and has splines and bezier besides polygon curves… Nurbes and curves can be converted back and forth in an amazing way. And XSI has the best tesselation function I have ever seen when you need to make a polygon mesh copy from a nurbs surface and would like to end up with a result you wish to modify.
There is a free eval version of XSI called the Mod-Tool as it’s free for Valve or Epic game level developers. It can’t save in a regular format but in a proprietary format thus enabling you to play with it without a time constraint.
Gotta run…
Cheers!
Lemo
Thanks for the scoop. There’s a free trial of XSI, so it’s not economic constraints that has kept me from trying it, just not sure I have the time to commit to try to figure it out. 
It sounds like it has some nice bonues for modelling single objects, but where it really shines is composing larger scenes? Is that a fair summarization of what you’re saying?
Modeling rendering and animating are rather strong. So you can create rather large scenes. I was playing with it and as it happened I ended up having 6Mio Poly’s inthe scene. THAT is a lot. Max blows up with that amount but I don;t knwo what Maya does… Translate that into architectural dimensions and you have literally thousands of houses in the scene or hundreds of creatures… If you have the middle package then you also have the compositing app enabled and then rendering different passes to create those really stunning image results is as simple as 1 2 3. Define those pathes, plop them together in a tree like fashion, press a button and all is rendered and put together into the final image. You can tweak the compositinig tree in a gazillion ways while adding lens flare (or not 8-)) and glow and motion blur etc. etc… And of course… all is animatable and motion picture based. Quite a lot of stuff you get. Already with the entry package!.
And riging a character is as easy as importing your ZBrush Character, drawing a sceleton into it (pretty much like the ZBrush 2.5 demo shows with ZSpheres) and then press a ‘Envelope’ button and tatdaaaaa instant bendy creature. When the seams don;t fit. Open a weight paint window and smooth the influence between the bones simply with a brush.
And if you press an ‘auto’ button while bending your creature… you got your frist animation.
AND allthe operations STAY alive in a non linear operator stack. So you can go back to the first modifications of your character even when he’s all rigged up. You do not have to delete animatins and everything just to make the nose bigger. OR even add another nose…
TO master all the functions will take some time. But I started only using the modeling bit and then slowly gyrated into the other realms. That was supported nicely due to the fact that there are buttons you press for ‘Modeling’ or ‘Rendering’ or ‘Animation’ or’Simulation’ etc… which change the desktop slightly to optimize access to the special funtions unique to the task at hand. So when I am in modeling mode no rendering specific stuff is cluttering my workspace. However, I can still reach all that through sub menues OR simply pressing the Render mode button. Buttons are 1-5.
Give it a try when you can afford a couple of hours. It’s neat.
Lemo
Me,
I cannot find anything beating the much loved Zbrush 2.
Modo? I did try it.
Never.
For my purposes Zbrush is superior in any direction.
It permits to introduce structure into the structure, performing beautifully in building complex meshes, very suitable for human anatomy and biology.
Zbrush building balls are marvelous.
The interface is intuitively comfortable and functional. And much easier for a rank and file.
Zbrush Central is yet another amazing support.
Thanks dear all creators, helpers and participants.
Anatom
I just wanted everone to know that wings3d has help me uvmap my models made in amorphium 3 perfectly. It even helped me add material to them. This is something A3 lacks in ability. Now I can take them into deep paint and paint away.
I like the way wings does this so much I intead on giving it some time to learn and get rid of uvmapper classic off my computer and let 3D Canvas hide itself from my start programs menu again.
Thanks for pointing me to wings.
AS for modo I downloaded the demo to take a look at it. Thats about it. Will probably still by Zbrush as my reward program for when I feel my skill levels have grown above “NEWBIE”!
Yeah, one of these days.
One of the reasons I bought zb (a year ago?) was because of what they showed off on the 2.5 vids with teh rigging (more than a year ago). Of course so far it’s nothing more than vaporware, but hey, they got my $ already so what the hell.
Hey gottsbet, wings is hands down the best program to learn polymodeeling with. It’s uncluttered, free, and there’s lots of tutorials and such on the 'net amined at beginners that use wings.
I agree. Wings is the best entry. THEN if you think you have to be fancy, go buy Silo for 100$. www.nevercenter.com. Check out their forum. In the news section are some REALY interesting videos regarding the upcoming version.
Lemo
How about Maya? Doesn’t it has something like 3d sculpting in the polygon mode?
Don’t know Maya that well but all the large animation and multifunction packages are not having a good time when you have a lot of poly’s. So… even if you have cool sculpting tools… Nothing matches up with ZBrush. Even XSI with it’s Gigapolgon core is getting rather slow by comparison to ZBrush. It can load the stuff but then… zzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzZZZZZzzzzz.
Actually, Wings, Silo, and Modo are also going flat quickly once confronted with a large number of poly’s. ZBrush rules for sculpting!
Lemo
…add a modeling prog (because it’s french conceptors
Hexagon :eek:
Very powerful modeler! (like Silo but a little more strong) :rolleyes:
Pilou
yes, zbrush rules in polygon count. no doubt.
Silo does better than wings3d, which is one of the reasons I moved from wings to silo.
I can’t speak for the others.
I got Amorphium 3 $140.00
3D Canvas Pro $75.00
Deep Paint 3D paid $100.00 for
Thats $315.00
If you include the Wacom Intus 3 $200.00
My upgarde to Paint Shop Pro 9 $55.00 Thats $570.00.
with Wings3D, Blender (as long as the still make pain killers) I think I have enough to tinker with and learn how to model.
My next buy is going to be the stop goofing around program ZBRUSH!
No where on the web do I see art as good as I do here!
To go with Modo or Silo and put more money into this hobby and still not have Zbrush would be a poor choice. It is my next buy and if you havn’t bought it yet you should.
Now that my endorsement has been posted, Pixologic how about sending me a free copy of Zbrush! :lol:
I agree fully! Good Choices! And a good job figuring all that out.
But if you want a free ZB copy… then go and check out the competition! Not many taking part and there’s a real chance you can win one!
http://www.laborganika.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=116
Lemo
Z brush is a different app from all other modelers out there.
Nothing beats ZB in terms of organic modelling, and texturing is very good as well, even if you can’t do it directly in the 3d viewport.
Modo, and every other modeler out there , is what I’d call traditional modelling tools, in the sense you literally build up meshes with polygons, or also splines one exception popping out in these days is hexagon that , from the movies seems to have good sculpting capabilities AND traditional modelling toolset a la Modo, Silo.
ZBrush is great for doing high detail work on existing meshes or making quick “drafts” of ideas by adjusting existing meshes but I hate it for actually making a model. Im sure there are people out there who prefer the “scultural” feel of zbrush but Im not one of them.
What seperates ZBrush from programs like Lightwave, Maya, Max, Softimage… is that it is closer to a paint program in feel. Think Photoshop on steroids. The others are polygonal pased modeling systems, where you work with vertices, polygons and a completely different workflow. The best option is to get both. I personally use Lightwave or Modo to do the low to med res models, then take them into zbrush for detailing, then out into Softimage for rendering.
What you really need to do is get as many 3D app trials as you can. They kind of fit into groups workflow wise. I think that Maya and max are very similar in that they are iconic based gui’s which tend to try to be more user friendly (these drive me nuts). Softimage, Lightwave, and Modo are text based gui’s, so they are much cleaner interfaces. You also need to take into account the program styles. Lightwave has two seperate progams, so the modeling tools and animating tools are seperate. Max, Maya, and Softimage are an all in one. Modo is just modeling (until 201 comes out). So your best bet is to try these different programs, figure out how you like to work and take into account what you intend to use the software for. Some are better for photo real rendering, some for animating, others for modeling. Figure out what you want then team your modeling application up with Zbrush to add detail.
I hope that helps you. Another key thing to take into account is that if you are a student you get huge discounts. If your not sign up somewhere, get a student ID and then buy your software. For instance Modo is $99 (if you have a 3.0 gpa or better) instead of, what is it, $700. The other major apps can be bought for huge discounts at stores like www.academicsuperstore.com. Last I checked you could get a fully functional seat with any of the big 4 for under $300. You can even get zbrush at these places :).
Yeah so play around before you lay down the cash. There is a ton of variety out there and it can be a bit overwhelming to try and figure all of them out at first.
I cant even remember what this post was about. lol. Been typing so long. Hope this is what the topic was 