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3D Apps And Resources

Andrew Boulton

Andrew Boulton

The Adminator
Modelling, Rendering & Animation Software

3d Canvas - http://www.amabilis.com/ (FREE)
3d Coat - http://www.3d-coat.com/
3ds Max - http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=13567410&siteID=123112
Blender - http://www.blender.org/ (FREE)
Cinema 4D - http://www.maxon.net/
DAZ 3d (Bryce, Carrara, DAZ Studio, Hexagon, models) - http://www.daz3d.com/i/software (some FREE)
Lightwave - http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/
Maya - http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...&siteID=123112
Modo - http://www.luxology.com/modo/
MoI - http://moi3d.com/
Poser - http://poser.smithmicro.com/
Rhino - http://www.rhino3d.com/
SketchUp - http://sketchup.google.com/ (FREE)
TrueSpace - http://www.caligari.com/ (FREE)
TurboCAD - http://www.turbocad.com/
Vectorworks & Renderworks - http://www.nemetschek.net/renderworks/
Vue - http://www.e-onsoftware.com/
Xfrog - http://www.xfrog.com/
Zbrush - http://www.pixologic.com/home.php
 
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my favourite (along with the previously mentioned Concept Ships)
SciFi Meshes - http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/

(Some of the guys on there are awesome - look for the famous never-ending Pluto Station model thread, the detail is quite insane)
 
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Sculptris

By the same folks who make Z-Brush but it's much simpler and it's free and does much the same thing.

xNormal

Generates Normal, AO, Cavity and Height Maps and many many others by mapping high res objects (say meshes made in Z-Brush or Sculptris) onto lower detail versions.
Can be used for generating effective colour/diffuse maps too (it's what I do professionally)
It's also free.

Crow
 
  • nDo - Photoshop normal creation toolkit [free] http://www.cgted.com/#home
  • CG Textures - Yes, like the name suggests, it's textures in raw form. [free, requires sign-up now, limited downloads (15MB I think?) at free level] http://www.cgtextures.com/
  • Flaming Pear Downloads- Near the bottom of the download page are a bunch of useful FREE Photoshop Plugins. Worth it just for Solidify A IMO [free] http://www.flamingpear.com/download.html
  • makeHuman- This is a FOSS human figure generator similar to Poser in concept. Close integration to Blender as it started out development as a plugin for that application. Also can use renderMan complaint FOSS renderers like Aqsis and Pixie [free, in BETA-testing] http://www.makehuman.org/
 
Wow - awesome thread guys!

I was just wondering earlier today what happened to the makehuman project...

Here's an oldie that I love:
POVRay - www.povray.org
- source based ray tracer
 
Pixologic has Sculptris for free and it can export a OBJ file. It will also create a UV map and let you paint it right in 3D. This is a stripped down Z-Brush but seems to be pretty good.
 
Sculptris and Blender

Double Thumbs Up for Sculptris from me. It's a bit limited, best for doing "soft" sculpts (as opposed to hard-surface objects. I use it in preference to ZBrush for the things it does well, then import into ZBrush to finish.)

It's very easy to learn, compared to ZBrush's general sculpting which has some hitches and gotchas that can be really frustrating. I can knock out a basic creature bust in abouut 45 minutes without trying to work fast, and I can texture and detail it in about another 45 min. That's skin texture, veins, etc (not to be confused with image textures overlaid on the mesh-this is texture detail in the mesh.)

My experience with real clay sculpting turned out to be amazingly applicable. I even get the same ripples in the edges of ears that I get in clay when I shape them improperly, and the fix is the same, too. Same goes for slapping on masses of clay then shaping it to get the form you want.

It's still in Alpha, I get semi-regular crashes on Mac and less frequently on PC under Win7. Save often, watch memory and vertex counts--simplify and reduce where possible.

Maybe we need a review/tips thread for 3D software?

Note on Blender: Free, but difficult to work with. Usually has multiple ways of accomplishing something, of which one will work well, but never the way you try first or spend the most time on. I don't think much of the modeler, rigging has a painful way and a less painful way. Certain effects are easy to do, others are very difficult or not as possible as they are suggested to be. ;) But much cheaper than Maya, and it has some strengths but the best way to learn it is like crossing a minefield--inch by inch, probing a little way ahead at each step. The most common book on it (The Essential Blender) is not that great, in my experience and that of two students I know who've taken it on. Introducing Character Animation with Blender is much better, even for subjects outside those suggested by the title. It teaches things from the ground up very well.
 
I recently used the latest version of Sculptris. It's my new favorite app now. I plan to model a Hiver with the thing soon.
 
Very nice!

Save often, it crashes at the worst times. I'm learning to replicate what Sculptris does in ZBrush, but for quick and clean Sculptris can't be beat.

I sat four of my middle school students down with it today. It was their first time. By the end of a 55 minute class, one had a nice human head, another a tusky boar's head, the third an ethereal-looking sort of Flumph creature (with about a dozen attractively curled tentacles) and the fourth a nice dinosaur-like critter with spikes and a club tail.
 
AC3D looks cool. I never heard of that app before. I bought a similar program once called 3DCrafter (because it was compatible with various train simulator games), but it was one of the worst modeling apps I ever used.
 
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