Hi there, im having dificulty finding places to buy houdini or maya, does anyone have any ideas?

cheers
andy

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Hope this helps,

thats great chris thanks

Andy, check into what's going on with Maya before shelling out any serious cash. I believe the software is no longer owned by Alias, but instead has been bought by Autodesk, and I think, but am not sure, that its being phased out.

I'm with Bert... In fact, unless you need some very advanced features, I'd check out Blender:
http://blender.org

It's gotten pretty amazing over the past couple years... And you can't beat that price! :)

Thanks guys, really helpfull posts.

cheers
Andy.

Andy, check into what's going on with Maya before shelling out any serious cash. I believe the software is no longer owned by Alias, but instead has been bought by Autodesk, and I think, but am not sure, that its being phased out.

Maya is in fact a product of Autodesk now. I don't think it's being phased out though, since they just released a new version just before they released the new version of 3ds Max. Its also highly prevalent in the film industry, and penetrating deeper into the video game industry. It has quite a large user base as well, and I think Autodesk would shoot itself in the foot if it ever decided to completely get rid of it. Anyway, If you are looking into purchasing Maya, I highly suggest going to the Autodesk site and downloading the Personal Learning Edition. It's basically a full-fledged, fully functional copy of Maya that you can download for free. It will render images with a watermark, but I think it's a great way to find out whether or not you want do dump a few thousand dollars on that software. Personally, I use 3ds Max and prefer it to Maya, but Maya does have some cool features. I don't know much of anything about Houdini.

If you want to do more research, I'd recommend heading over to the forums at www.cgsociety.org . It's just as big as this forum, only it's dedicated to all things 3D and more.

Personally, I use 3ds Max and prefer it to Maya, but Maya does have some cool features.

Good info Shawn, and yeah, I went to the Autodesk site and saw that they have released Maya 8.5. Alias used to have massive suport for Maya, but that seems to have all evaporated.

Andy, if you find yourself in a position to choose between Maya and 3D Studio Max, I would recommend going the 3DS route. I got into Maya heavily when it was version 5, and then eventually just decided it was too time intensive for me. One thing though, the support for 3DS seems to be a lot more, with most of the on-line models you can buy usually being 3DS. Other software programs can open 3DS files, but it doesn't always work seemlessly.

Thanks a lot to you both, effects is something i know very little about and im trying to understand how it all works, since im a "push it and see" type of guy rather than a read the manual type i like the sound of the free maya download.

Thanks again
Andy.

I'm with Bert... In fact, unless you need some very advanced features, I'd check out Blender:
http://blender.org

It's gotten pretty amazing over the past couple years... And you can't beat that price! :)

If I'm reading the features of this right it appears that you can do 3d text? If so, how are the results of it if you've used it?

You might want to buy 3DWorld mag for a couple of months before buying into any major 3D package as there are lots about and depending on how your going to use it will influence your final choice. I'm a Lightwave user myself but the likes of Blender are also very good packages. Maya is big on film production side of things where you have different departments tech directors etc 3D Max is big in the games industry but if your a one man band there is lot's of choice the big ones are, in no real order Newtek's Lightwave, 3D Studios Max, Maya, Softimage.

A word of warning look into the price of upgrades buying the package is just the begining

You might want to buy 3DWorld mag for a couple of months before buying into any major 3D package as there are lots about and depending on how your going to use it will influence your final choice.... A word of warning look into the price of upgrades buying the package is just the begining

I agree with Andy here. 3D World Magazine is terrific and worth every penny of it's rather high cover price.

From my experiences, I've known many people to purchase a copy of Lightwave as their first 3D package. It's the least expensive out of them all, but it can deliver some great results. I tried playing with Softimage a few times, but I find the learning curve a little too steep. I've had a similar experience with Maya, finding that it's user interface was quite confusing, even though it all seems to revolve around the space bar. 3ds Max isn't any easier to learn, and like most of these kinds of programs, may be rather intimidating at first. Especially since with something like 3ds Max, you can pick one small aspect of that program and base an entire career off of it!

Upgrade prices are important to consider too. For the amount of money you'll spend to upgrade to the next version of 3ds Max, you could buy one complete license of Lightwave! However, upgrading might not be THAT important depending on what you're doing. I know of several people that are still 4 or 5 versions behind the current version of 3ds Max that are perfectly content to stay there. It's all what you make of it!

Hi all,

first time poster :)

It's the least expensive out of them all, but it can deliver some great results.

Of course you meant - least expensive of the commercial mid range to high end 3D tools :) Blender has comparable feature set and is free (if you need volumetric smoke and flame effects though then Lightwave definitely has the advantage there...). There are also the cheap commercial 3D packages such as Truespace and Carrara that can probably meet his needs for this type of work.

To the original poster, you might have a look at this comparison chart

http://www.tdt3d.be/articles_viewer.php?art_id=99

Previous versions of it were, in my opinion, more accurate - Maya, and 3DS Max (among others) had 'grade inflation' in the past month (for instance the UV tools of Maya are scored as 'excellent' - previously they were rated 'good'.) However it gives a fairly general idea of where things are comparatively speaking.

Houdini isn't included yet - its interface is considered a weakness, its particles and effects are a strength, it has compositing, everything else I've not heard opinions of one way or the other.

If you go the Blender route see wiki.blender.org and consider picking up 'The Essential Blender' (I wrote the sculpt chapter...)

Tom M.
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