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>>>The first thing you have to think of when you go into 3D is to check whether you're a modeling kinda guy or an animation kinda guy. Or maybe you're a director kinda guy.
>>>>

or a render kind of guy

I didn't get this one... what would be a render kind of guy?

On 2003-12-20 18:31, Nestor wrote:
I didn't get this one... what would be a render kind of guy?

a guy who sits around for hours waiting for his computer to render a graphic.....

so a poor guy you mean... cos I imagine that with our computers a complex animation would take several hours to get rendered...

several hours

ha, more like DAYS. Rendering DV quality video on a modern machine (p4-3ghz or above) would still take days. It's always a matter of finding the optimal settings of effects so you can get by with the lowest computational overhead. 40secs for 1 frame is going goood and light. If you add in lots of effects and fancy stuff, you can end up with anything from 10minutes per frame to several hours per frame. It's a race between how good the human eye can see, and how much of it you can fool.

By the way, putting 3D and music together is done by PD. There's a library for it that works with OpenGL for realtime graphics. It's definitely not a friendly package, but it's free and works quite well from what I hear. It's still a programmer's tinker toy tho. hehe.

Rendering is what makes your model animation and layout look good or like sh*** .
It's the most important process in 3D for seek of quality (well, all process are important).

Moreover, in the 3D companies I know, the have nods of more than 50 computer rendering network. On movies like terminator/star wars/Lord of the ring, the nods have certainly included much more computer renderning network.

and another thing is that, even if you use maya (the standard nowadays, and lightwave for rendering, with mental ray), most studios have their home made exclusive scripts (pixar, etc for known examples).
So scripting is also very important.

If I may just chime in and add another program to the list: Maxon's Cinema 4D gets a lot of good rep everywhere I read. (check http://www.maxon.net) And I think it's quite affordable too. $595,- for the bare bones app.

I have experimented with 3D modelling a few years ago, using Truespace and a cracked 3DStudio MAX but it takes a lot of time to learn properly and I just went on with other stuff. I'd still like to learn it one day though.

At the moment, I'm becoming a bit of an After Effects guru and for the project I'm working on I'm using the 3d features extensively. But AE is not a 3D modelling software, you can only place 2D pictures in 3D space. You can get some great effects with it though (check out some of my older projects: http://wdka.hro.nl/~0531557/Eagle's%20Prey%20UW.mov
http://wdka.hro.nl/~0531557/perspective ... 0small.mov
http://wdka.hro.nl/~0531557/perspective ... 0small.mov)

ok and while I'm pluggin my work anyway, check out the rest of it here: http://www.three-quarters.co.uk/underwo ... fsnake.htm
and here
http://www.three-quarters.co.uk/underwo ... snake2.htm
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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: King of Snake on 2003-12-21 11:39 ]</font>

I just so the first one, I will see the others when I have more time. I loved this first one, very nice motion circles and I also liked the music, I guess is yours.

Yes, Cinema 4D seems to be a good choice as well, tho no as proffesional as Studio Max. But for what I want to be capable doing, that would be more than enough. I don't know of a trial version, I'll check. Thanks for your links

actually the music isn't mine, it's the Underworld remix of Eagles Prey: Tonto's Drum.
I want to make a new version of this video because when I made it I was still very new to the 3D features of AE and I could do it much better now

Well, the music was nice... It would be nice to see what comes up using some of "your" music.

When you talk about AE, are you reffering to Adobe After Effects?

Cheers.

BTW: what do you do with this videos? It's just for fun or do you use them for some kind of live performance?

Nestor,

In case you didn't know already, there are free Learning Editions available of both Softimage and Maya. They of course have some features disabled, but you can still do A LOT. Keep in mind, these are not mere demos, you can actually save projects, render, etc.

http://www.softimage.com

http://www.alias.com

Personally, I prefer Maya. But as with audio software, many times it just boils down to which program is best for your style of working. Lightwave, Max, Maya, Softimage, Cinema 4D...they're all extremely powerful programs, and you'll find incredible art created with all five applications all over the web.

BTW, here's a great resource for Maya: http://www.digital-tutors.com
Lots of great tutorials!

Good luck,
JtM

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Joxer the Mighty on 2003-12-22 11:45 ]</font>

Thanks VERY much for the links... There I go...

Hi Nestor,

yes AE means After Effects, sorry for that
The video's were all assignments for my AudioVisual design studies. (which I'm currently in the process of finishing).
The assignment for the one with the Underworld soundtrack was to make a video with a strong connection between image and sound. I wanted to give each layer in the sound a corresponding layer in the image.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: King of Snake on 2003-12-23 04:48 ]</font>

Well, so you did it cos it rules... i'ts very nice indeed.