What 3d/graphics software would you rec...

[Joe Carney]

You know Nuke has a PLE edition as well right?

In my mind at this point... despite all of the debates raging in the 3D world (because everybody is practically the same with a different interface)... the live action compositing race is over. Nuke hands down no question in my mind is the superior architecture.

No, they have a 30 day trial version. I know because I requested and downloaded it. The license key they sent me was for 30 days. I managed to get about 2 hours on it, given my schedule.

There is no time limit on Fusion. Both have lots of training material to download.

if you know of a Nuke PLE version with no time limits based on the current release, please post the info. I'm sure others would like to know that.

Joe C.

 

[Joe Carney]

The PLE versions offer a great way to experience these programs without the major time crunch. I can already see that this seems more like a combo platter scenario... IE modeling in MODO with some help from zbrush/mudbox and then somewhere else for animation.. maybe Vue Infinite for some outdoor landscape work...

Does anyone want to go into some detail about animation and what you like/don't about some of the packages... maybe a better way to say it is strengths and weaknesses.

Also- can anyone recommend any publications be it book/magazine/online that breaks down SFX work / compositing involving CG ... like a real nuts and bolts with real world examples... small shop possibilities... anything that can shed light on this side of the biz.

Thanks - you all are very helpful and I appreciate it.

I recommend cgtalk.com, lots of resources, links, publications and people who can answer you questions. If you are a Babylon 5 Fan, they have a series of articles covering the new direct to DVD B5 feature and how they used fan designed models from around the internet when it turned out Fox lost the 3D assets from the original series.

Another good site is vfxtalk.com which focuses mainly on the Post VFX market (AE, Fusion, Shake, Nuke ...).

There is also fxphd.com an online training school, they also have a companion site fxguide.com with weekly podcast about the vfx industry.

You are right, there is no one tool that can do it all, not even close.

 

[Jim Hoffman]

Hi Jeff. I heard some bad things about this. Maybe only rumors, but the last things I've heard was, that the crew doesn't exist anymore.

What's the deal - was Shake no good or just too hard to develop?? Not a big enough market place? are they incorporating it into FC Studio???

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Motion 4 - Nab 2008

 

[Paul Hazlett]

Motion 4 - Nab 2008

BINGO.

I think shake is going to be parted out as to what benefits where. some
cool tools inside FCP most for motion 4

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

No, they have a 30 day trial version. I know because I requested and downloaded it. The license key they sent me was for 30 days. I managed to get about 2 hours on it, given my schedule.

There is no time limit on Fusion. Both have lots of training material to download.

if you know of a Nuke PLE version with no time limits based on the current release, please post the info. I'm sure others would like to know that.

Joe C.

Ahhh but see that's where you went about it all wrong. The Foundry only gives a 30 day trial for 4.7.X But there is a 4.6.X Digital Domain PLE that was released mere weeks before the Foundry deal was announced. However if you didn't aquire it at the time I suppose it's probably pretty deep in the 'legal-gray' area.

 

[Joe Carney]

Ahhh but see that's where you went about it all wrong. The Foundry only gives a 30 day trial for 4.7.X But there is a 4.6.X Digital Domain PLE that was released mere weeks before the Foundry deal was announced. However if you didn't aquire it at the time I suppose it's probably pretty deep in the 'legal-gray' area.

Well...sh#t. lol.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

There's always a catch. Heh.

 

[Priyesh P.]

What's the deal - was Shake no good or just too hard to develop?? Not a big enough market place? are they incorporating it into FC Studio???

Hi Hoffman, I think the others were right. Maybe they're trying to turn motion into a full compositing app. That's what I heard, too.

I really, really hope there would be some vendor (I know it's only a dream) who would make an app with the capabilities of flame for the price of nuke. And please don't argument that standard hardware isn't fast enough. At the times of flame V3 there were offline boxes running on indigo2.
Compared to current standards that's not more than a calculator...

 

[Jim Hoffman]

Seems like a logical next step for Apple - we've already seen hints of Shake in the newer version of motion.

What are the advantages of Nuke?

 

[Curran Giddens]

What are the advantages of Nuke?

The main reason I am looking at Nuke is because it is "the industry's broadest support for openEXR." It has excellent 3D support as well.

Nuke's $3,500 price ($250 render node) is cheaper then similar solutions. Fusion 5 currently retails for $4,500+.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

What are the advantages of Nuke?

Speed, Interface, Features and the OpenEXR multi-channel workflow.

Nuke's $3,500 price ($250 render node) is cheaper then similar solutions. Fusion 5 currently retails for $4,500+.

Yes but Nuke has a $1000 a year maintance fee. Support through Fusion is free.

 

[Priyesh P.]

Speed, Interface, Features and the OpenEXR multi-channel workflow.



Yes but Nuke has a $1000 a year maintance fee. Support through Fusion is free.

JUST KIDDING! But your avatar looked to cute, I couldn't keep myself from doing it.

 

[Joe Carney]

I went over to the SoftImage site (xsi) and they are running a special on essentials for 1995.00 with a free upgrade to 6.5 (including haircut and fur and cloth) if purchased before Sep 6. Now that is a great deal. After that it's 2995 as kalone reported.

Even better is they dropped the price on advanced to 4995.

Just FYI.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The XSI essentials pricing is a steal right now. It's definitely the time to buy into XSI if you've been on the fence. The price is $2K off of Advanced too, if you need all of that stuff. IMO, Behavior is worth having if you'll be doing any kind of visuals with crowds or large numbers of moving objects. Advanced has also been boosted to 12 CPUs plus an additional 24 satellite nodes for MentalRay, so if you run a render farm, it's the way to go. The one other cost with XSI is to plan the $799/year for Essentials and $1339/year for Advanced for support. But that keeps you current on everything. I'm figuring that XSI will replace Maya as the de-facto standard in most areas within the next year.

SoftImage still has their same self-centric, encapsulated business model. But they did open up the XSI render API to third party developers, so we will start seeing additional render engines and render plug-ins.

 

[Jim Hoffman]

Do you need scripting experience with XSI like you do with Maya?

 

[Priyesh P.]

I've just read the feedback on Autodesk's Max 2008 and Maya 2008. To keep things short: Big dissapointments on both sides. OK, XSI 6.5 didn't deliver anything new either, but there (at Softimage) are things on the horizon that look very very promising. I'll just mention Moondust, CAT and Vray support. Very nice and highly interesting. But let's wait until things turn reality...

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

XSI doesn't rely on scripting the same way Maya does, or at least not for most common tasks. But you'll never get full use out of any 3D app without writing a script every now and then.

 

[Priyesh P.]

XSI doesn't rely on scripting the same way Maya does, or at least not for most common tasks. But you'll never get full use out of any 3D app without writing a script every now and then.

Yeah, that's right. I'm currently (to some extent) forced to learn Maya and it was nice to see how things can be customized through scripts.

 

[Joe Carney]

Do you need scripting experience with XSI like you do with Maya?

One of the reasons I was interested in XSI in the first place is it's support for commonly used Windows based programming languages like C# and JScript.
Since I have experience in C# it would of been a matter of learning the ins and outs of the XSI object namespace. Jscript has become very powerful too. It's also the scripting language used in Sony Vegas.

I would still be just a little bit wary. There seemed to be a lot of stability issues in early 6.x releases. You can get good answers at cgtalk and at
http://www.xsibase.com The folks at xsibase were polite and willing to answer my newbie questions.