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

[Albert Cheng]

As far as scripting languages go, you should go with Python. It's a great language that can be used for most any tasks, whether embedded in an app or not, easy to learn, and is becoming more and more adopted by 3D and compositing apps. Maya, Modo, Fusion, etc...

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

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...

I hear a lot of bitch-moaning about the latest max 2008 release but that's imo only because the marketing team completely dropped the ball.

When XSI released GATOR, Gigapoly etc etc etc. Everything was given fancy marketing terms and hyped up and it was viewed as one of the biggest improvements to the XSI product line to date.

Max included almost feature for feature every major XSI 6 release feature but just put it under a small bullet point like "Transfer UVW coordinates between multi-poly meshes. Aka Gator.

The speed improvements alone making Max supposedly the best performing viewport on the market is an enormous feature as does speed and stability with large scenes.

I'm working on a scene right now where the max file is >150MB has more than 14,000 objects, 250 .5k textures and has about 10,000,000 polygons. I can't work like I normally do on a scene even with layer management. If the viewports were 10 times or more snappy my productivity will scale accordingly if not more because I won't be tempted to get distracted whlie waiting.

Plus with a new system so that materials, lights and shadows are rendered in the viewport dynamically with directX proxies I'll need to render less something Lightwave users are sort of familiar with in respect to FPrime.

Max2008 is a huge release and there are a ton of other features which I didn't even mention that I'm super excited about (New Maxscript editor for one whee!)

 

[Priyesh P.]

Oh, sorry, a "little" detail I missed about max.
We guys over here in Europe were charged a "little" extra on top by the nice people of Autodesk.
The package costs 5057 Euro, that's 6816 $.
I've heard that it runs for roughly 3500 $ in the states.
That's a nice bonus...