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philip · 13-03-2004, 02:05 PM

I second the opininion that it all boils down to personal pereference. And what exactly you want to do with it.

If you want to break into feature film animation then for the love of god don't get Truespace

LightWave 8's new animation tools might change the weight a bit, but before I would have said try Maya and XSI (though XSI's price tag still is kind of hefty).
Now with a renderer like FPrime just around the corner LightWave might be the best buy for someone freelancing and doing mostly stills or ArchViz. Also, LightWave still is heavily used for TV shows like Enterprise, Firefly, Smallvile etc, notice that these are also examples of movie-level VFX.
LightWave comes with unlimited render node licences, so you don't have to buy a seat for every machine...
Then for me LightWave still has the best (poly-) modeler in the world. It's intuitive and fast. Simple things like the drag tool or bandsaw make your life so much easier.

For architectural stuff I had a demo of 3D studio Viz... just plain forget it! I honestly achieved better results when modeling in LW and rendering in LightScape. It's just sad this old proggie never got updated after v. 3.

I also have a seat of Maya and there's been a couple gigs I wouldn't have wanted to do in LW... also I'm dipping deeper into character setup and MEL scripting ATM and the possibilities just blow me away! Really. I scripted a character control window loaded with sliders for every control and an image of the character that'll let you select all the controls in 3 days, with absolutely no knowledge of MEL before that.
Since Maya is basically written in MEL, there's nothing you can't do with it. Then you now have access to one of the best renderers: mentalRay.

What Sod heard about the AA is kind of true. LW uses brutal force; "still not smooth? Well more iterations then." Whereas in Maya and mentalRay you have the choice between triangle, box, gauss, mitchell and lancosz, filter size X, filter size Y, min samples, max samples, contrast threshold for red, green, blue and alpha!
That'll really let you finetune your scene. Plus you can override these global settings and set the AA on a per-Object basis.

As for max, I can't really say... I don't like the UI

But if you want access to the most 3rd renderers, max might just be for you...

13-03-2004, 02:05 PM	#9
philip Tutorial Clown Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 817	I second the opininion that it all boils down to personal pereference. And what exactly you want to do with it. If you want to break into feature film animation then for the love of god don't get Truespace LightWave 8's new animation tools might change the weight a bit, but before I would have said try Maya and XSI (though XSI's price tag still is kind of hefty). Now with a renderer like FPrime just around the corner LightWave might be the best buy for someone freelancing and doing mostly stills or ArchViz. Also, LightWave still is heavily used for TV shows like Enterprise, Firefly, Smallvile etc, notice that these are also examples of movie-level VFX. LightWave comes with unlimited render node licences, so you don't have to buy a seat for every machine... Then for me LightWave still has the best (poly-) modeler in the world. It's intuitive and fast. Simple things like the drag tool or bandsaw make your life so much easier. For architectural stuff I had a demo of 3D studio Viz... just plain forget it! I honestly achieved better results when modeling in LW and rendering in LightScape. It's just sad this old proggie never got updated after v. 3. I also have a seat of Maya and there's been a couple gigs I wouldn't have wanted to do in LW... also I'm dipping deeper into character setup and MEL scripting ATM and the possibilities just blow me away! Really. I scripted a character control window loaded with sliders for every control and an image of the character that'll let you select all the controls in 3 days, with absolutely no knowledge of MEL before that. Since Maya is basically written in MEL, there's nothing you can't do with it. Then you now have access to one of the best renderers: mentalRay. What Sod heard about the AA is kind of true. LW uses brutal force; "still not smooth? Well more iterations then." Whereas in Maya and mentalRay you have the choice between triangle, box, gauss, mitchell and lancosz, filter size X, filter size Y, min samples, max samples, contrast threshold for red, green, blue and alpha! That'll really let you finetune your scene. Plus you can override these global settings and set the AA on a per-Object basis. As for max, I can't really say... I don't like the UI But if you want access to the most 3rd renderers, max might just be for you... __________________ Don't ever argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.