Shopping for computer for 3D graphic and game design.
I have an idea for hardware.
Just want to see what people would recommend.


As for software, what is good software for 3D graphics?
The following have great 3D graphics I would like to achieve:
http://www.gotmail.jp/apps/privacy/privacy_e.html
http://www.goo-net.com/game/game-data/IL_DESTINO/destino_e.html
http://www.gotmail.jp/apps/bar_e.html

I'm pretty good with 3D graphics, but I know nothing about game development. Wondering what is good software for that as well.

Try GMAX, a free version of 3dsMAX. Does everything MAX does but without the rendering. Its great for realtime model creation and animation.

Cinema 4D, Maxon.
Vue D'esprit 5

They've both got the most excellent rendering engines and even for software three times the price deliver. You want the best, these are them.

C4D handles everything from modelling through to texturing, rendering and animation. Handles HDRI and caustics as well as a plethora of other rendering modes - seriously high end finish. It's intuitive to use and has more features than an army of Swiss penknives.

Vue 5 it's primary usage is as a terrain modelling application - but you can import anything into it and render relatively quickly. Nothing handles light quite like it. It's primitives modelling tools are rudimentary, but it's vegetation and, rock and terrain capabilities are pretty much limitless. For the scale of things you can do with this thing - most high end programmes don't even touch it.

Try GMAX, a free version of 3dsMAX. Does everything MAX does but without the rendering. Its great for realtime model creation and animation.
So shouldn't I use 3ds Max? Gmax is better than 3dsMAX??


Cinema 4D, Maxon.
Vue D'esprit 5

They've both got the most excellent rendering engines and even for software three times the price deliver. You want the best, these are them.

C4D handles everything from modelling through to texturing, rendering and animation. Handles HDRI and caustics as well as a plethora of other rendering modes - seriously high end finish. It's intuitive to use and has more features than an army of Swiss penknives.

Vue 5 it's primary usage is as a terrain modelling application - but you can import anything into it and render relatively quickly. Nothing handles light quite like it. It's primitives modelling tools are rudimentary, but it's vegetation and, rock and terrain capabilities are pretty much limitless. For the scale of things you can do with this thing - most high end programmes don't even touch it.
I have Vue Infinite 5, and cannot get it to render right on my current 2.8gh p4 hyperthread. 786 RAM.
I thought the infinite was better than the espirit, so that is what I got.
Is espirit better?
Why the hell do they even have gaddam different versions of a single software?

So shouldn't I use 3ds Max? Gmax is better than 3dsMAX??
3dsMax is very expensive around $6000au, Gmax is free. Max version is up to 8 and last time I used GMax it was V7. If you're not interested in rendering then GMax is the way to go.

Thanks.
$6000au?
Is that Australia?
I'm not sure if you know about filesharing
Here in America, we have high speed internet.
If you can get that in Australia, there is no such thing as software that is not free.
With high speed, you can do filesharing which means you never have to pay for software again in your entire life.

I have had dozens over dozens of software over the past few years. Most any popular software you can think of. MS, Adobe, Macromedia, AutoCAD, etc. I think I only paid for software once in the last 4-5 years. And that was only because it was the sequel to my favorite game, and the download caused to spend hours dealing with errors. I just went out and paid for the thing.

I most definitely need to do rendering although for some reason, I can never get it to render fast enough. It takes 10 years sometimes.

That is Australian dollars.

We buy all our software, because if our competition where to report us we would get a $40000 fine for each copy of illegal software plus confiscation of all machines running illegal software.


We have about 30 machines that we use as a render farm, we use VRAY to do most of our rendering, its very fast. About 3-4 times faster the MAX scanline especially when using GI.

If you can get that in Australia, there is no such thing as software that is not free.
With high speed, you can do filesharing which means you never have to pay for software again in your entire life.

I have had dozens over dozens of software over the past few years. Most any popular software you can think of. MS, Adobe, Macromedia, AutoCAD, etc. I think I only paid for software once in the last 4-5 years. And that was only because it was the sequel to my favorite game, and the download caused to spend hours dealing with errors. I just went out and paid for the thing.

I most definitely need to do rendering although for some reason, I can never get it to render fast enough. It takes 10 years sometimes.


That is terrible. :mad: At least get an edu. version, you cheap basterd. XSI is lkike $500 for modeling, rendering and animation- you cheap bastard.

I have Vue Infinite 5, and cannot get it to render right on my current 2.8gh p4 hyperthread. 786 RAM.
I thought the infinite was better than the espirit, so that is what I got.
Is espirit better?
Why the hell do they even have gaddam different versions of a single software?

:) ... For that last? Money.

No, Infinite does have a lot of features over the standard. I believe the EcoSystem features and the ludicrous amount of polygons the newer engine can crunch do make it an interesting choice to plumb for - but, frankly, although being able to produce almost literally fully forested vistas as far as the virtual eye can see - God invented alpha planes for a reason and the illusion of kilometres worth of vegetables is exactly what they are for in the first place.

Still, if you've got it, it should handle a machine of the sort of specs you're giving, if the problems with the rendering chances are the graphics card isn't getting on with it. If its a legit version your running, the updates are free and mandatory. If it's a cracked version you've got, much as I adore what these hacky-chappies do, whenever it comes to e-on software they have a tendency of not so much cracking the thing as taking a sledge hammer to it....

Try posting a failed render, perhaps we can noodle something out? Once y'do get it working it's generally as solid as a rock, but earlier releases do need the bug fixings.

One further thing may be of interest: both Vue 2 and 3 have been released as giveaways with various PC Magazines, fully functioning full software. Even though older, they still knock the pants off most rendering engines. A spot of googling might throw up an available back issue with them on.

In the meantime, if it's a legit copy, pester the b'jesus out of technical support. I did notice when I first installed 5 on my machine it just didn't get on with the onboard graphics card - I switched to an old Gforce 3 card I had lying around and problem fixed.

Hope of some use. A

Oh, by the way. I think GMAX is no longer being produced, seemed to remember reading somewhere.... ;)

Your right, gmax was stopped last october.

Rampantly inconsiderate of them, isn't it?

I'd been meaning to nab a copy m'self a while back. By the way.

We have about 30 machines that we use as a render farm...

What kind of animation work are you doing there? Curious minds and all that... ;)

Mainly architectural visualizations.

Ah, walkthroughs and so forth. Tres swish. I trust you charge accordingly for the client not allowing you to include the occasional city destroying monsters and the odd invasion from out of space - I know I do. ;)

That is terrible. :mad: At least get an edu. version, you cheap basterd. XSI is lkike $500 for modeling, rendering and animation- you cheap bastard.

Don't you wanna become a pro? save your money and become part of the family.

http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/1462/csvuepicmm0.jpg
Here is the render set to final.

The funny thing is that when it was in the main window on the bottom right, I rendered it to that window, and it came out perfect. Then I tried it again, and it came out like this.

Mmmm... Doesn't look too bad. Angle's not good, unless you've got an extra camera set up in there, I can't off hand think why you'd get a different shot than the one you set up in Main View...

Seems to be rendering though. Try it on ultra making a small main view render, try dropping the camera onto the landmass and having a out to sea and sky. Jack the render settings up to 600 dpi, shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. See if the same thing happens again.

How do you make it render faster? It's taking years. What a POS!

Render speed is defined by a number of variables. For instance the more faces that the model space deals with the longer it will take, especially if you are rendering both sides of each face. Notibly the more complex rendering systems will involve writing your own plugins so as to remove unseen faces and speed the process up, however if you want a truly Three Dimensional model for the use in the Games industry, the only thing you can suggestibly do is attempt to cut the number of faces down.

Apparently a good start for modeling is Addons/Hacks to existing games.

I did a render on a small screen as a sample. It took a few min. I am now rendering a large picture, and it is taking FOREVER. 1hr. There has to be something wrong. 5 objects plus water, and sky bg. Not animated, but a jpeg. I don't even see how a thousand objects could take that beedling long to render. Perhaps 2-5 min at the most. I have played video games with alot more objects moving around without slowing down.

Or do these things normally take that long for a full unhacked render?

I did a render on a small screen as a sample. It took a few min. I am now rendering a large picture, and it is taking FOREVER. 47 min. There has to be something wrong. 5 objects plus water, and sky bg.
How complex are your 5 objects?

Just some prims for the most part.
40 frippin min total.


http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/4461/csvuepic2nu1.jpg
Acutally, I see that it comes out pretty decent. My only concern perhaps is the color of the water. Towards the rear, the water gets bright.

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/3151/s2cq4.png
It came out good.
I can easy make a Point Click game like this.

The image usually gets funny towards the horizon where there is always alot of brightness.

How do you make it render faster? It's taking years. What a POS!

The bigger the image, the higher the resolution, the better the antialiasing = longer rendering time. Light and surface texture also can either add or subtract from rendering also. The more that is there to see, the longer it takes on a full screen render.

Think about your scene here for a moment. You've got an infinite plane with a water texture on it. Water is both translucent and reflective, depending on depth and the angle at which you're looking at it. Everytime you press RENDER Vue's rendering engine is having to crunch the math on how to accurately do that, given what it is told (i.e, the objects) are there.

Now: On img245 you've got a high sun, a little to the right of midday casting short shadows roughly back towards the camera. The islands mass is going to reflect on the waters surface, where as the water behind isn't - hence the difference between foreground and background.

The other image, the one with the tree's and building on it, much better balanced, much better lit. As you note, on both, the ocean's colour fades on the far horizon.

This is simply what light does over distance. The extent depends on weather and atmospheric conditions.

Try this: once you've loaded an atmosphere, click on Atmosphere (located at the top between Objects and Display or try hitting F4) Select Atmosphere Editor Here you should find a multi-tabbed panel covering everything: SUN, LIGHT, SKY, CLOUDS, FOG & HAZE, EFFECTS, etc.

Click on FOG & HAZE. Here you'll find sliders to control atmospheric density, including variables for altitude, and colour. Slide FOG to NO FOG and HAZE to NO HAZE. Okay it, give it a quick small render to see the difference it makes.

You have to remember, the actual differences only become apparent depending on the render settings you're using. So on preview, a change to fog and haze over a shot like the ones you've done may not be at all apparent, on higher settings they they will but if the image being rendered is a small one again it may only be half as apparent as it will be in a larger, full sized render which, unfortunately, will take time.

It's trial and error all the way I'm afraid. The greater the degree of control you have, the more you have to actively control you're scene. Try lowering the sun, again you'll notice appreciable differences both in terms of effect and rendering time. As I say, really, you have to experiment and explore.

But basically the programme is actually rendering, you just have to cast around for some tutorials and tips. A very good place to start is this chap here - http://www.graphique3d.republika.pl (http://www.graphique3d.republika.pl)

His War of The Worlds renderings are gorgeous, and he's got some extremely good tips on coaxing proper radiosity effects out of Vue as well as a few other bits and pieces, including links.

All the best with it,

A ;)

Rhino is pretty cheap, especially for students.

The bigger the image, the higher the resolution, the better the antialiasing = longer rendering time.
I consider fast less than a second.
Long, maybe a few secs or over a min at the most.
I'm waiting decades.

Summary:
I HATE 2006 AND ITS F#$%&ING PRIMITIVE CRAP TECHNOLOGY!


The final images come out great. I'm looking at your 3D graphiq site. what was used in those?
Vue doesn't seem to be able to do designs that sophisticated. Sophisticated environment, but not that sophisticated object designs.


I have Shade 8.1 porfessional that I cannot seem to get a hang of.
Vue does not even have as great detail in terms of interface as ACAD. Acad, I can creat and position pretty much any object I want with pinpoint accuracy from 1 hundred thousand inches to 0.0001 inches. I can pick up all kinds of objects, and revolve/zoom views with a mouse.
I can create arcs and and all kinds of shapes with pure accuracy.

No animation and no great environments in acad, but when dealing with nontexure simple objects, it is so easy.

I consider fast less than a second.
Long, maybe a few secs or over a min at the most.
I'm waiting decades.

Summary:
I HATE 2006 AND ITS F#$%&ING PRIMITIVE CRAP TECHNOLOGY!

:) ... well, with just the one computer, unless it's a HAL6000, you'll just have to put up with at least a few minutes of rendering time for the time being - believe me, setting up a scene in any rendering software - that's the easy bit, getting all you're bits in place, setting up the shot, texturing and so forth. Rendering - after you've done a few tests y'just punch it up to full and leave the thing to it. I use three PC's when rigging up 3D work, and that's just for producing still work. The only mitigation being, compared to the time it took to render stuff out even just a couple of years back, processing speeds have actually come one leaps and bounds.

You'll just have to put up with the limitations for now. Should be down to about the way you'd like it by, oh say, 2012 or there abouts...

Alternatively, try painting the same scene with real media on stretched paper. Then compare in the frustration stakes. Me, a couple of hours here or there is nothing.... ;)


The final images come out great. I'm looking at your 3D graphiq site. what was used in those?
Vue doesn't seem to be able to do designs that sophisticated. Sophisticated environment, but not that sophisticated object designs.

No, this is perfectly true. Vue isn't particularly geared for modelling, it's like Bryce - it handles basic primitives, boolean operations but nothing much more than that - fundamentally its a landscape and scene rendering engine.

That isn't to say you can't cobble out some fairly sophisticated stuff though, modelling wise - actually at the click of a button and y'don't even have to do any modelling. You can draw it.

Do you know what Displacement Mapping is? Or Bump? All 3D and Photomanipulaton software can read black and white image information and translate it into hight in terms of 3D - White is interpreted as a high value, black low. Say you opened up a new document in Photoshop (or whatever), and typed the letter's CS in bold black on a white background, saved it as either a .jpg or .bmp and then, when in Vue, open a new file, click on Generate Terrain in Editor - click on the button marked picture.

You'll see how the current terrain is generated - it's just white airbrushed onto black. Load your CS picture. You should have a terrain that is relatively flat on the surface with the initials carved into it...

If you Invert the image (little button at the top right next to the Picture window) now the letters are raised.

If you prepare you're image in grayscale, you can add subtle variations in hight - white the highest, black lowest and so forth.

Say instead of letters, you drew the front of a building, using the same principal you can just generate actually quite complex geometry - ironwork, window frames, doors, whole city blocks if you like - all without having to wrangle a single polygon. Mostly it's for distance stuff, obviously, but very quick way of modelling actually very sophisticated geometry - all without fiddling. Very simple to do.

The stuff you're referring to at the site I pointed you to - no. I doubt anything at all, apart from smoke and so forth, was originated in Vue. That's all imported, modelled in something more dedicated to the purpose (either Max or C4D) and imported to the scene - but pay close attention to the number of individual elements going on in those pictures. Previously, in order to get that much stuff into a scene like that and still get to render it out in one lifetime, you'd have to rig up series of alpha-planes (photographs, mounted onto a transparent plane with the image area's not to be shown masked off with an alpha channel) to give the impression of actual models being present and play very carefully with the camera and light.

These things, they're all polygon models. Chaps using a rig not much bigger than you're either. Bears some thinking about...

So Vue would probably be the main program interms of handling models. You would not import models from vue in to another program to create a final image.
But you would import models from other programs into vue to create a final image.

I did't know you could do such imaging with letters.

A few years ago, I was working on my tm, trying very hard in ACAD to turn it into a 3D image sort of like a gold ring. I shall post it here:
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/705/symbolph3.jpg




This is an AutoCAD image. Every arc and point on the image is set in perfect accuracy.

So Vue would probably be the main program interms of handling models. You would not import models from vue in to another program to create a final image.
But you would import models from other programs into vue to create a final image.

Yes, basically. It's the rendering engine in it you're really after, that and the built Vegetation generators. You can customise and build you're own trees, bushes and grasses for example. Other 3D modelling software, such as MAX for example, does have plug-ins to do this sort of thing very well but they're all commercial.

I did't know you could do such imaging with letters.

Well, glad I could give you a useful pointer. It's not just for lettering though. Black and White artwork, grey scale photographs: you can basically use any form of b/w/grayscale image - great if you want to produce say a rock carving of yourself on the side of a volcano in an Austin Powers Dr Evil kind of a way.... ;)

A few years ago, I was working on my tm, trying very hard in ACAD to turn it into a 3D image sort of like a gold ring.

Most bespoke 3D modelling software, 3D MAX, C4D, MAYA etc all allow the import of vector based graphics such as those produced in ACAD, Adobe Illustrator, that sort of thing. Basically what you can do is draw out your object in 2D aspect as you have, import it into your modelling software and model directly off the series of splines you're drawing has produced.

Say for you're ring design - you could just get another circle spline to run around the larger outer circle of your design and, bingo! Instant ring in 3D. Same kind of deal with the decal element - once you've drawn out the splines necessary all it is is just a case of fleshing it out in your 3D programme. Couple of clicks, done. Zero fiddling required.

Something else you can do with splines imported from vector graphic artwork is project the points from your spline onto the actual surface of another object and model directly off the surface - say you wanted to project you're TM as part of a decal running across the surface of a car bonnet, for example, in chrome. With splines, very simple procedure to do.

Vue, obviously (not being a full modelling programme) doesn't support that kind of thing, unfortunately, but most other actual modelling orientated 3D applications do. look out for names like MAX, Cinema 4D, etc.

Alternatively, just import into Photoshop and finish it off there. You don't get true 3D out of it, obviously, but the illusion is easy enough to produce. Photoshop will also allow you to draw vector graphics and export. Useful thing to remember.

I've had problems drawing vector in photoshop illustrator, draw, and freehand.
They don't appear to have the capabilities of calculating arcs and angles. I got so PO using these programs that I just trashed them altogether, and do all my 2d drawings in Acad. Then import them into photoshop if they need to be adjusted.

Well, no. That is perfectly true. ACAD's designed for technical drawing, the others just drawing in general. Be useful features in Photoshop, one day...

So Vue would probably be the main program interms of handling models. You would not import models from vue in to another program to create a final image.
But you would import models from other programs into vue to create a final image.

I did't know you could do such imaging with letters.

A few years ago, I was working on my tm, trying very hard in ACAD to turn it into a 3D image sort of like a gold ring. I shall post it here:





This is an AutoCAD image. Every arc and point on the image is set in perfect accuracy.
No CAD package works with perfect accuracy, they only calculate to a certain tolerance. What are you trying to do with this art?