Hey Ptrope, what program do you use for your figures,because I want design some alternate costumes for TNG incorporating 24C with the GLC in the DC universe(Green Lantern Corps),any thoughts? Signed Buck Rogers
^ This is an easy one . I use Poser for my figures, a program that is designed more for static and animated 3D images, but not modeling (you buy or download figures for it); for the latter, you'll need a program like the several mentioned in this thread (Blender, Maya, Lightwave, etc.). Poser is relatively cheap at $249 from www.e-frontier.com, but DAZ 3D has a similar program, DAZ|Studio, for free (it will not do animation, however). For what you want to do, I'd probably try DAZ|Studio; you can also find a great deal of free Poser content out there, most of which will also work in DAZ|Studio, and if you have Photoshop or pretty much any other bitmap editor, you can create new textures, bump maps and transparency maps for existing clothing which can help you in your quest . I'd also suggest looking around at Renderosity, which has a large Poser community, with both a marketplace and thousands of free items, as well as fora and tuorials.
Thanks Ptrope I've downloaded the program,and it might long time before I try it out,but since its also available for the Mac I'm going to tell Mom to also download it too. signed Buck Rogers
Hi, i havnt posted anything in the art forum for ages and ages, been really busy since leaving college. Anyways, work has eased off a bit and i have had some time to tinker around with my old software and new ones. I doubt anyone will remember my TOS command chair project from a while ago, well, for that i was using Rhinoceros, a nurbs modelling software which has been mentioned in this thread near the beginning. Having not used any 3d modelling software for about 9 months, i blew the dust off of Rhino and installed it onto my new computer, which then prompted me to update, so i did. Now, the new Rhino is a lot different, some functions are gone which shouldve stayed but alas, more advanced functions have taken their place. The rendering is a lot smoother and quicker, the texturing tools have also been revised and are a lot better. Its still the basic no-frills nurbs modelling but it has been greatly improved since i last used it. I use it primarily for basic 3d sketching now, building basic, bog-standard models to see how a design might look once finnished, i then start from scratch using lightwave. I import the sketch from rhino into lightwave and work with it to get the final look etc. I have loads of really basic sketches, they all kinda look like the Klingon D-7 from TOS, no surface detail etc etc, very very basic. But, i now use lightwave or occasionally maya depending on my mood or what specific function i need for a certain render etc. But, if you want basic nurbs, go for rhino, its easy and you can get some really fantastic results (depending how persistent you are) Chris.
The first place I'd try is www.blender.org, the home of Blender; they have a great deal of resource material on the site.
also check out Sphynx's tutorials 'Blender for the Faint Hearted' [edit] oops forgot the url http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/dojo/
Re: A new version of a friend of mine's software has been released and he's giving it away for free. Here's the email he sent. trueSpace7.6 released Latest version now available Dear Caligari community member, Today is an important day in the 23 year history of trueSpace. We are releasing a major upgrade to our flagship product with trueSpace7.6, bringing significant improvements in modeling, animation, rendering and workflows, plus new direct export to Virtual Earth.Most of these you might already expect if you've been following my regular Captain's Blog posts at http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=893. What you may not expect is that we are making trueSpace7.6 available to everyone at no charge, in a giant step forward to bring high-end 3D authoring tools to all who want them! The new booleans in action, by Emmanuel Asset. trueSpace7.6 is far more than a SketchUp-style 3D architectural modeling tool. Instead, it provides a complete 3D authoring environment for any type of 3D content creation, whether that's images, animations, objects for games, or content or worlds for online interactive shared spaces. trueSpace7.6's modeling tools feature a variety of surface representations including full polygonal editing, subdivision surface modeling, NURBS, metaballs, and implicit surfaces. Those are supported by400+ modeling tools like real-time Boolean operations with full construction history so you can move subtracted parts of your design at any time during your work, or even change a subtraction to an intersection. trueSpace 7.6 also provides advanced surfacing tools like layered materials, texture maps, normal maps, procedural materials, UVE projections, real-time DX9 pixel shaders that include shaders to simulate subsurface scattering, reflection, refraction, smoke, fire, water, anisotropicshader, metallic paint, glass ¨C and those are just the real-time shaders! The animation capabilities are even more impressive.trueSpace7.6 supports key-frame and motion capture animation on fully hierarchical objects. Key-frame animations can be seamlessly blended with procedural animations and physical simulations, all of which can fully interact with each other. This means you can have a walking character animated by key-frames getting hit by a procedurally animated car and fly away in response to the collision thanks to physical simulation. Real-time renderings by Marcel Barthel. In trueSpace7.6 you can also create fully articulated characters and interact with them using full body IK with editable direct manipulation widgets for joints (including physical stiffness), and apply physics oranimated morphs for facial expressions. If you want to create a photorealisticimagesor a video, then the built-in Lightworks high quality offline renderer will give you spectacular rendering results including soft shadows, raytracing, global illumination in form of hybrid radiosity, image based lighting, caustics, tone mapping, HDRI, anisotropic reflectance,multi-pass rendering to Photoshop layers, motion blur, depth of field, lens flares etc. trueSpace's award-winning direct manipulation interface with its easy-to-use 2D controls and 3D widgets has always been highly praised by users and press alike.For version 7.6 we have streamlined many workflows in extensive collaboration with our Beta testers. The UI is context-based and fully configurable, including toolbars, panels, widgets, layouts and projects. With universal drag-and-drop you can simply drop your model from the 3D workspace directly into an e-mail, written document, etc, and vice versa, clicking on the object in an e-mail will automatically open it in trueSpace. There are also a series of advanced editors. In addition to the 3D workspace and modeling editors, there are a universal 2D node link editor, a script editor,a non-linear animation editor, a material editor, a UV editor, and more. Plug-ins are now accessible from the real-time 3D workspace and we expect to release truly amazing plug-ins for trueSpace7.6 in the near future, as well as stimulate 3rd party creation of independent products both free and commercial thanks to the availability of an SDK. Finally, trueSpace7.6 is the only 3D authoring tool on the market which will allow you do all of the above in real-time shared 3D collaborative spaces where members of the design or animation team can maintain real-time interaction from anywhere in the world. By Griff Wason. We are taking the unprecedented step of making these tools available to everyone for free in order to stimulate content creation for the present and future online 3D environments, and so that any artist out there with a dream can fulfill their vision without finding themselves trapped by budget limitations. This is particularly true if their vision includes emerging 3D online worlds, where free and unrestricted communities of web artists can collaborate on 3D projects and even establish new kinds of communities the likes of which the world has never seen before, way beyond simple chats in isolated 3D rooms or 3D islands. Above all, trueSpace7.6 will empower you to create anything you dream up, whether you want to make illustrations for National Geographic, design products for Rolls-Royce, create buildings for Virtual Earth, make advertising or training videos, architectural walkthroughs, innovative video games, or animated films.All of these possibilities are now open to you simply by downloading trueSpace7.6 and learning what its powerful 3D authoring tools can do for you! To download trueSpace7.6, visit the link below: http://cart1.caligari.com/web/Truespacemainreg.aspx Also, to aid in your learning process we have made all of our video courses, previously $79 each, available at no charge, and you can download those courses here. Another good way to learn is to join our active user community on our forums: (http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/index.php). At a time when other companies are removing their low cost products to make it even tougher to get started in 3D, it gives us great pleasure to enable all artists regardless of age or income to create 3D in whatever field they dream of. We hope you enjoy your copy of trueSpace7.6. Roman Ormandy Founder Caligari Corp cubicly, K'riq Sa Minister of the Church of Lucky Picks
Re: Pretty amazing... free... I didn't believe it (no offense intended) so I checked it out, and yes, 7.6 is free. Wow... just .... wow. This is pretty good software. I think that they must be thinking in terms of making their money from training rather than software sales? I noticed that the training is apparently going to be going for about $100 per "lesson," isn't it? Anyway, I'm downloading my copy right now. I haven't used this but I've seen lots of work done in the package (mostly in 3D World magazine) and it's certainly capable of some impressive results.
..... Yes Dear...No Dear... Yes Dear.... No Dear.... uh, thanks? I think. truthfully, K'riq Sa Minister of the Church of the Big Deal
Re: ..... Yes Dear...No Dear... Yes Dear.... No Dear.... true space looks pretty good just a couple of questions 1/ is it as easy as googles sketch up to learn and use. tried blender and for some reason couldn't get on with it. 2/ is it better at doing globes, circles etc
Re: Well, I now know WHY this has been done... and it makes sense from a certain point of view. Microsoft bought Caligari. And now Microsoft is giving this away for free. Why? Well, Microsoft has tied this into their "Virtual Earth" software, much as Google has now tied their acquisition of "Sketchup" into "Google Earth" (what used to be called "Keyhole" before Google bought it) Microsoft is trying to compete with Google in this area. Google did Sketchup... Microsoft does Caligari. So, yes, this is free. And when you read through the literature, they strongly encourage you to use the software to model your own home, or place of business, or whatever else you may find interesting, and to put it out there into "Microsoft Virtual Earth." Basically, by giving this away for free, they're trying to get the general public to create the 3D World for their own software for free. So, if you want to "pay" for your software, go model a few buildings for Virtual Earth and give 'em to Microsoft. See, I KNEW this had to make economic sense SOMEHOW. You just don't give away high-quality software for free... That said... I think it's a fair trade, all things considered!
Ahhh, that's right; I'd forgotten about M$ buying them. That explains the wording in the blurb - having worked with SketchUp, I couldn't fathom why they would even make that comparison in their promotional materials, as the two programs are worlds apart (no pun intended). Once upon a time, there was a plug-in (I believe) for trueSpace that rendered very similarly to SketchUp's sketch rendering styles. I haven't touched the program since about v. 4, though; I don't care for the interface at all.
It is an awesome interface Mr. P... I use to demo the software for Roman back in the day and trust me I am the true "Idiot Savant" when it comes to 3D modeling. It is very intuitive for a novice, too a med-skilled modeler, then you should be looking at jumping to Maya, Lightwave, or one of the more intricately nested, and more complex, and mainstream titles. I found it very easy to use almost point and click, however as you get better it does allow you to go further down into the intricate levels of object minipulation and rendering capabilities. I have not used the program for years, right after it left the Amiga Computer platform, and right now I need some stuff done I think I may fire the old P4 PC my mac is using as a table, and get 'er done myself. I need some basic 3D Architecual renderings done, most of the stuff is pretty basic, except for the ship meshes I need done. That requires someone who has that gift , and that ain't me. If you need a teapot, spinning in 3D with a proceedural texture map of Kiki doing the shimmy, I'm your man. demostratingly, K'riq Sa Minister of the Church of Ballywickangel
Rhino is an excellent full-blown Nurbs based program. With that said, a fairly big learning curve goes along with it. Recently, a program called MOI (Moment of Inspiration) has been getting a lot of attention. Most people call it a "scaled-down" version of Rhino as it has most of the more common nurb tools needed without the overhead that Rhino carries. It also has far superior Nurb-to-Polygon conversion capabilities so you can export clean to your other 3D-software package. I use it with Lightwave and it gives me the best of both worlds. Best thing is MOI is simple to use and understand and has no where near the learning curve of Rhino. However you still need to have an understanding on how Nurb surfaces work. It is different than poly or sub-d modeling. MOI sells for $195. A killer price for all it has to offer. Check it out http://moi3d.com
Autodesk has swallowed another one. Autodesk Signs Agreement with Avid Technology to Acquire Softimage Acquisition to Accelerate Autodesk’s Games Strategy; Complements Digital Entertainment and Visual Communications Offering; Lets Artists Choose their Passion SAN RAFAEL, Calif., Oct. 23, 2008 — Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) and Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID), announced that they have signed a definitive agreement for Autodesk to acquire substantially all of the assets of Avid’s Softimage business unit for approximately $35 million. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?id=12022457&siteID=123112
Avid has been hitting a few financial bumps in the road for a while and has previously offered XSI up for sale to two other companies that were not interested. It doesn't surprise me that Autodesk said yes. There are users that dropped Lightwave and/or MAX for XSI and some of those users are about to leap from an 18th floor window due to what some perceive as the coming death of XSI.....complacency with further development. Edited to add: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=kR7UWImpG54
Hey, Guys. I'm very comfortable creating bezier curves the Adobe way. I'm looking for a 3D program which will allow me to do this. Blender's curves are infuriating, and the Maya trial's are better, but still annoying. I don't want to learn a new method of creating curves when there's one which I can already fly through. Any suggestions? Thanks!
I don't know how the other programs create curves, but Lightwave has Bezier curves that work, in my experience, pretty much the same as those in Illustrator or CorelDraw.