The Ultimate 3D Modelor DEATHMATCH! Part One:
3D Modeling and Animation is the cool new hobby, and everybody is getting into it. It’s an new age art form, your mouse is your brush, your screen is your canvas, and your modeler is your paint. But, just like how there are oil paints and water color paints and acrylic paints, there are many different modelers, all with their pros and cons to them, and all with a specific goal in mind.
Part one is about weighing the pros and cons of modelers that I’ve been able to try out and get a feel for, so, Mac compatible modelers that will run on my mac and have a free trial. Here are 5 of them:
Price: Free as in Freedom (and beer, or in my case, soda, although who gives away free soda? I digress)
Overview: Blender is the cheapest 3D modeler around, at a fair price of $0.00. Of course, that’s not to say it’s not worth anything more than $0, it’s a decent 3D modeler. It has it’s strengths and it’s weaknesses, and after a lot of getting use to it you can come out with some pretty good looking stuff.
Pros: Free! Big, helpful user base, can answer all of your questions. Easy to navigate (once you get use to it) interface. REALLY cross platform, as in, every platform I’ve ever heard of, including a couple I haven’t, like IRIS. Built in game engine. Built in compositor. Built in (very basic) Non-Linear Video editor. Very good fluid simulator. Good physics system (hard body and soft body). Good modeling tools. Lots of key combinations. Python Scriptable. Very Expandable.
Cons: Very Steep learning curve (aka. hard to learn). Missing basic features like keyframing of all values (it can only keyframe an objects position, rotation, and scale, many other editors can change all values, so you can have objects do things like change color over time). Many features ‘hidden’ in the interface. The particle engine leaves much to be desired. The ‘addon’ features like the game engine and the NLE aren’t very powerful and are very poorly documented. The material/texturing system is hard to get the hang of and often involves a lot of random tweaking of poorly labeled controls. Lack of a landscape system/editor. Renders aren’t exactly stunning in speed or quality (although they’re not bad)
Who’s it for: Blender is good for modeling and for simple animations such as theme songs. If you’re willing to take the time to learn it, it makes a pretty good ‘first 3D modeler’ because of it’s good support and, of course, price. Mostly, it’s good for quick little 3D renders (like theme songs), and for just playing around in 3D and seeing what you can do. Basically: you really can’t complain too much about it, seeing as it’s free :p
Price: $149 (Upgrade for $69)
Overview: The first thing I should mention is that Cheetah 3D is Mac only, and there’s good reason for that. It has the nicest looking interface of any modeler I’ve tried, the only one to really look like a mac app. It uses all of the apple windowing styles, a unified toolbar, a mac-style property editor, and overall it uses the mac color scheme. All of it’s features are just a click or two away at any time, and you can figure out how to use it in no time. But, the interface is only half of a modeler, the other half is the power. Ok, Cheetah 3D is no Maya or Modo, but it still makes a pretty good render. The gallery has some great looking pictures, mostly single objects, not full scenes, but still, it’s pretty good.
Pros: Excellent interface. Very easy to use and learn. Has all of the basic features you’d expect in a 3D modeler. Makes decent renders. Good OpenGL modeling interface. Good animation tools. Mac OS X integration. Good import/export. Customizable UI. Javascript Scriptable. Very good price.
Cons: Render is kind of slow, not THAT impressive. Modeling can get kind of slow, especially when you have a lot of objects in a scene. Lacks a good landscape editor. Lacks a lot of more advanced features. Mac-only (It’s both a pro and a con).
Who’s it for: Cheetah 3D isn’t exactly ILM’s modeler of choice, it’s not as advanced or powerful as many of the other modelers out there. You’re not going to make Star Wars with Cheetah 3D. That said, it’s powerful enough to make some pretty good looking pictures and simple animations. It’s the perfect ‘my first modeler’ because of it’s ease of use, interface, well rounded feature set, and reasonable price.
Price: Numerous versions offered, can cost anywhere from $99 to $1035
Overview: Vue isn’t about individual models, like most modelers are, it’s about whole big 3D environments. It’s got a great terrain editor, and amazing tools to populate that terrain objects such as rocks, animals, or plants. And we aren’t just talking about static models of trees, Vue makes every plant different, although derived from the same ’species’ (model). You can literally paint forests and valleys filled with grass and trees onto your terrain model, and then texture it using your own system, or using one of the many pre-made textures. Unfortunately the interface isn’t very good, and it lacks good modeling or animation.
Pros: Great terrain editor. Amazing ‘environment’ tools, to quickly and easily create large, natural looking scenes. Great plant system, makes every plant in an environment unique. Great sky tools, make realistic, volumetric clouds complete with god-rays and as many suns as you want. Really good looking water. Great material presets, good material editor to edit them or create your own. Really good looking renders. Multiple versions, starting as a pretty good price.
Cons: The interface is hard to get the hang of, not that well laid out, and really quite ugly. I find it hard to use. The more ‘conventional’ 3D modeler tools like modeling and animating kinda suck. It can be a bit slow.
Who’s it for: The way I see it, for most people Vue will be more of an addon tool than their main modeler. It makes beautiful environments quickly and easily, but lacks many of the most basic modeling and animating features. By itself, Vue is perfect for artists who only want to make a still picture of a scene, much the same way as painters do.
Price: $895 for Personal License (to use on any computer you own, $395 Upgrade)
Overview: Modo can render things that you literally cannot tell from a photograph. It’s modeling, texturing, and rendering systems are nothing short of amazing. Now, they’ve added some pretty decent animation tools to it. What’s it missing. *See Cons*
Pros: AMAZING looking results. Very snappy render speed. Very easy, powerful modeling tools. Great 3D painting tools (so you can paint textures and materials onto an object). Just about every modeling feature known to man. Pretty good animation tools. Good import/export.
Cons: The interface isn’t all that great, and I found it really hard to figure out basic things like making materials. It lacks particle and physics systems. Not all that many free tutorials, often you have to buy training material. Very Expensive.
Who’s it for: Modo was clearly not designed with animation in mind, until recently it had no animation engine at all. Modo is perfect for people who want to model amazing looking things, like product mockups, people, even whole alternate worlds. If what you want is really good looking stills, I doubt you’ll find a better modeler anywhere.
Price: $895 for the ‘Core Version’, up to $3495 with plugins ($235 upgrade, student discounts offered)
Overview: While most 3D modelers have a focus on modeling, with animation sort of thrown in there, Cinema 4D has it the other way around. It has great tools for complex scene layout, and easy animation, even on a large scale. And yeah, it can make it all look good. Of course, it has modeling tools too, and they aren’t bad either. It’s interface is well laid out, labeled, and documented, so it’s easy to tweak everything to be exactly what you want it to be.
Pros: Excellent keyframe animation tools. Excellent behavioral animation tools (automated ways of animating objects, like physics systems, premade paths, and other things like using an audio track to control values). Easy to use interface. Good material/texturing editor and manager. Nodal editors for movement, behaviors, texturing, etc. Good particle system Good object modifiers (things like clone tools that make setting up large environments easy). Good object/asset management.
Cons: The modeling part of it isn’t all that great, can get confusing. I’ve seen better renders. Good tutorials can be hard to come by. Really expensive.
Who’s it for: Cinema 4D can do a lot of things, but at it’s heart, it’s designed for animation. It’s been used in a variety of professional 3D movies, and I can see why. The great animation systems allow you to add realistic looking, highly detailed animations, and while you probably don’t want to use it to make photorealistic, highly detailed renders, you certainly could use it. This might be my favorite of the ones I’ve tried, although that might just be because I focus on animation.
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