3D animation with DV

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Both of these programs are immensely powerful and complicated tools.

Both include scripting, MEL for Maya and Lscript for Lightwave, both are extensible and easy to learn yet powerful. (caveat: I was a prgrammer way before I was a video artist...)

Lightwave is pretty widely acknowledged as the best modeler out there. It also has the best built in renderer on the market. In fact I would say only Renderman is as good. That's a whole other post though.

Maya has flat out the best animation tools. Also, Maya includes a physics modeling system. This is ridiculously useful in any project using motion. I can work around LW's other animation weirdness, but I just hit a wall when I want to do physics. LW's motion designer is a joke put next to a real physics system.

When I jibber about animation, please understand I am not talking about flying a spaceship around, moving static objects like spaceships and chairs is easier in LW's animation system than Maya. (Until you need physics models...)

Maya's animation tools are great for dynamic softbodied objects. For example PEOPLE or ANIMALS. When you talk or flex your hand your skin changes shape, it folds and bunches up...etc. Maya makes animating that stuff....well I won't say a "joy" but it is very much easier.

Truth is that most big studios use BOTH of these programs. Lightwave for modeling and Maya for animation. They often tack Renderman on for rendering directly from Maya, though some studios go back into LW for rendering.

You can see the results of the combination on films like Final Fantasy, Star Wars Episode 1 and II, A.I. and anything from Pixar.

Animation being the weak point of LW there is a really useful plug-in for LW called Messiah that can handle animation better than the built in LW tools. I have not used it myself.

Messiah will eventually be incorporated into Messiah:Studio which will be a stnadalone 3D modelling and animation program meant to compete with LW and Maya.

Back to LW vs Maya: Price is a HUGE issue. Maya is $17500!!!! LW 7.0 is listed at $2495, but you can get a full version of LW 6.5b, including Aura 2.0 (compositing and paint) for $995 right now. Then you can upgrade to LW 7, or any subsequent version for $495....

Needless to say there is a clear fiscal reason I use LW in house. The fact is I do a lot more logo animation and other simple stuff intended for video destinations, most of the work there is in modelling and texturing. LW has better modeling tools, and texturing is on par between Maya and LW...

If you are an animator, then Maya is worth every single penny and then some. For now, I am not. I'll probably add Messiah or something like it to my workflow when I get there, because Maya is just too steep for me, for now.

Maya and LW both run on Windows and Macintosh. Maya also runs on Linux, and IRIX (Silicon Graphics UNIX version) Maya is far more in tune with my ideas for how my computing center will evolve, then again NewTek, maker of Lightwave, has plenty of time to change before my UNIX requirements leave it out in the cold. (For that matter OS X has time to become a better price/performance platform...and thus fit my UNIX/computing requirements)

[Note to Mac zealots, I LOVE OS X!!! Best desktop UNIX *EVER*. Apple hardware needs to catch up performance wise though...)

[Rhett Allen]

I live about 1 mile from the Cinemark Legacy and I work about 1 mile from the Studio Movie Grill. Pretty cool.
If you have a mouse with a left/right/scroll wheel that presses, it will work too (it is just not as comfortable). When you press ("ALT" windows) option and click the left mouse button, it will rotate the environment. ALT+middle button will shift environment right, left, up and down and ALT+left+middle will zoom in and out. Press and hold the space bar to show menu (it follows your pointer) and quickly tap spacebar to jump views (this works on the window you have the curser over). Just a couple quick tips to help you play.
Have fun!
Rhett

[Rob Lohman]

Ofcourse some sites don't let you. But usually they do. My
download manager can automatically grab urls for you, so
this will not cost anything extra. A good download manager
will be at least as fast as your Netscape. Why? Well, because
it is their purpose. Secondly. Your downloading something large
like 300 mb. This will take 30 minutes (for example). Now if
your connection goes awry after 29 minutes of downloading
you can start all over again. With a download manager you
can start at 29 minutes and only have to go 1 minute.

But use what your happy with! It was just a thought.

[Alexander Ibrahim]

There are a lot of things that go into how many good fast connections you can make over TCP/IP

The first of these is your TCP/IP stack.

If you care much about transfer speeds on the net, then get a Mac or Linux or BSD. Windows has the wors TCP stack of any of them.

Your browser can make multiple connections, you set that up in network options.

Netscape can resume broken downloads. AMOF it is a Netscape extension that allows this feature to exist in download managers. An "innovation" MSFT has yet to make.

That all sounds reasonable...so why I'd call the pissing contest silly ?

Because ALL TCP products can transfer a LOT more than 1.5MBps which is all the bandwidth you people have. Any TCP app should saturate a 10MBps line too. Most TCP apps can saturate 200MBps duplex fast ethernet set up properly.

I just did a test here with IE, NS anda download manager or two...they all ran the same speed across my TCP LAN, and to several sites on the Internet.

If you are an IE user get a DL manager for resuming broken DL's on large files. You can also use one more readily for grabbing "hidden" net content, like the QT files for movie trailers. Otherwise it is just gravy...move along.


So...go fix your software and stop buggering about your great download manager and/or NS browser.

[Joe Redifer]

1.5mbps is all the bandwidth I have? Hmmmm... doesn't seem to say that in my contract. I constantly outperform my friend's dedicated T1 line that he shares with no one. Of course I am not allowed to host sites with my line. :(

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Here I go yammering about the fact that appliations can use up any TCP/IP pipe you give them, and you choose to reply to an offhand generalized comment..

Bah...

Anyways...I had a chance to plug along with NS and IE today on a Gigabit LAN an acquantance installed...guess what.

280Mbps that is what. On copper wire.

Once I realized what we were getting...well I simply HAD to stream some D1 uncompressed video.

It is not the apps man.

As to your cable modem or whatever outperforming a T1...I would ask a bunch a questions about the network infrastructure of both your net connection and your friends (the person with the T1)

There is definitely somethign wrong if somebody has a T1 to themselves and is underperforming your 1.5Mbps Cable or DSL.

In any case you should get more than 500Kbps regularly from any 1.5Mbps service. It will be rare to get more than that, and you can often get less, depending on how many hops there are between you and your target, the latency of each hop, etc. etc.

Also, please realize that all sorts of issues determine what route your software will use to establish a connection.

Using traceroute try tracing the route to the same destination from the same machine 2-3 times in a row. During peak traffic hours on the net you may be surprised to find that your machine takes different routes every try. Even if it uses the same route, you'll notice the response statistics vary pretty wildly.

That is the internet and it ain't under anybody's control, much less that of some client software on YOUR computer. Imagine if you will a city whose rush hour traffic is in different places every day, at different times.

Now...if you happen to live in an area with faster cable and/or DSL connectivity, you are among the blessed. CHances are for web browsing etc you will smoke your T1 endowed friends regularly.

[Joe Redifer]

Interesting... you automatically assume I have either Cable or DSL! As for getting 500K on a 1.5mbps line, I assume you are referring to kilobits per second and certainly not kiloBYTES. Getting 500KB (big "B") is only 12K shy of getting 4mbps. When I download files from good servers, I have seen 3000KB (again, big "B") sustained. That's nearly 3 megaBYTES per second. Upload rates slightly faster and it is full duplex. Of course from other servers I'm lucky if I get 12K per second. It really depends. My pal has a real T1 line, (the $1200 per month kind). Yes, I have more bandwdth, but I am masked behind a couple of IPs, and am not allowed by the TOS to host an FTP or HTTP site of any kind. My line is "fiber to the curb" (FTTC). The speed is real and so is the bandwidth. T1 has certain advantages, it's not just the overall speed that matters. As far as surfing web pages go, the T1 and my line seem identical overall, since web pages are relatively small. But when my friend (again, the one with the T1 line) and I transfer uncompressed videos back and forth from here to Dallas during editing, the extra speed is quite nice!

Check out this JPG I took just for you. I did not doctor it in any way and this is from the internet, not LAN:

http://207.168.10.82/speedC.jpg

[Alexander Ibrahim]

You have an interesting arrangement for net access. Cool.

If you are having a net bandwidth pissing contest with me, its no contest, YOU win, and I am jealous...I would love to get 3000KB/s to any site...but it isn't in the cards for now.

Whatever data pipe you use, it has no relevance. Looked at your .jpg...neat, but so ? It tells me nothing of utility or relevance to the argument.

You also "corrected" a statement I did not make. My post clearly says "500Kbps" yet you feel the need to point out that *if* I meant "500KBps" I would be wrong.

??? Why even create the supposition ? Do you have some strange need for me to be wrong ? Well sorry, but I won't oblige you today.

None of what you said in reply to me addresses the argument I address, which is the value of one browser vs. another, or download managers in terms of net download speed..

I say again: It isn't the apps. They can all handle all the bandwith you are likely to have for use on the Internet. I don't care if you have an optical network with DWDM running directly into your system...10KBps or 10GBps the applications can handle it. (Well, OK maybe not 10GBps, but then again who here has a system whose hardware can handle 10GBps anyway <shrug>)

I absolutely HATE MSFT, but I hate them for factual reasons...and IE happens to be just as fast as NS when configured properly...for example the default install on Windows systems. Saying IE is slow just isn't true, so don't say it.

Now what does any of this have to do with 3D animation with DV ?

[Joe Redifer]

--"You also "corrected" a statement I did not make."

Not really, I assumed you were correct (please re-read my sentence). However I brought it up because many people make that mistake.

--"I say again: It isn't the apps."

Maybe so maybe no. But there is no reason why my IE runs at half the speed of Netscape when downloading files. If there is a configuration issue, please let me know what to check and I will address it.

--"Now what does any of this have to do with 3D animation with DV ?"

You tell me. I only stated that I downloaded the thing in 7 minutes with Netscape which has ALWAYS downloaded files faster than MSIE on the Mac. Then I went on to talk about Maya.

[John Locke]

Did you know the bwanatipo lizard of the Maldive Islands sheds its skin only once every three years?

So what was the topic here anyway?

[Chris Hurd]

Longhorns beat the Aggies. Let's just put it to bed.