Recommend me a modelling app
polycounter lvl 6
Hi,
Let me preface this by saying this is NOT a vs thread. I just want some recommendations. Long story short after 4-5 years of modelling in it, I'm DONE with Maya; Autodesk has proven that they can not handle development on it and their incompetence has me pulling my hair out at the roots, my meshes are randomly becoming unable to be smoothed (crash without warning) due to yet another new bug, NEX integration is fighting against the old system, even QT still isn't properly integrated and even if it was it would still be vomit-worthy based on their practices alone. Software ridden with ancient bugs, worthy features (eg cgmuscle) never updated or fixed, and new features rarely more than a gimmick while necessary tools are stuck in the stone age. :poly118:
- I have tried Modo in the past. It was not bad once I got used to things however the way Modo handles pivots is not good and that alone was enough to put me off it. Has this changed? I want to like it, but until the pivot system is fast accurate and friendly I wont
- No interest in trying 3ds max again since Autodesk is obviously going to discontinue it and I want a long-term investment
- No interest in using blender as it's not something I can open up and continue working on my scene, I'd have to learn the software first. This is true for all to an extent but even more so for blender
If this is a factor at all I like to work with a stylized/cartoon style, and I work in both games and film. But it shouldn't matter. Save my sanity.
Let me preface this by saying this is NOT a vs thread. I just want some recommendations. Long story short after 4-5 years of modelling in it, I'm DONE with Maya; Autodesk has proven that they can not handle development on it and their incompetence has me pulling my hair out at the roots, my meshes are randomly becoming unable to be smoothed (crash without warning) due to yet another new bug, NEX integration is fighting against the old system, even QT still isn't properly integrated and even if it was it would still be vomit-worthy based on their practices alone. Software ridden with ancient bugs, worthy features (eg cgmuscle) never updated or fixed, and new features rarely more than a gimmick while necessary tools are stuck in the stone age. :poly118:
- I have tried Modo in the past. It was not bad once I got used to things however the way Modo handles pivots is not good and that alone was enough to put me off it. Has this changed? I want to like it, but until the pivot system is fast accurate and friendly I wont
- No interest in trying 3ds max again since Autodesk is obviously going to discontinue it and I want a long-term investment
- No interest in using blender as it's not something I can open up and continue working on my scene, I'd have to learn the software first. This is true for all to an extent but even more so for blender
If this is a factor at all I like to work with a stylized/cartoon style, and I work in both games and film. But it shouldn't matter. Save my sanity.
Replies
Keep in mind no tool is ever perfect, with that in mind Maya and 3ds Max are still critical and used widely in the industry. In the end, if you are under stress in deciding which software to incorporate into your pipeline. I would just try them all out and see what suits you best. Very easy these days, to either get a student version or a free version of any tool so nothing to stop the user, from experimenting. Hope that helps
That's not true at all.
But I do feel like the updates each version are fairly underwhelming regardless.
But it's awesome.
In the polygon/sds modeling side of things I like Nvil Very slick context sensitive workflow as well, some very cool curve based modeling features and tool customization options and it's dirt cheap at $79. It's also got some retopology tools but I haven't used them. I don't think Nvil has any UV tools so you will need to do them in something else.
Both packages have demos, the down side to the demos is they are of older versions so you don't get a real idea of what the packages are fully capable of. MoI in particular has some amazing features that aren't available in the demo.
Opened it up and the first thing that I can't remember how I got rid of last time popped up immediately.
The camera. It's.. stupid. Or retarded, or both.
Why would I ever want the camera to roll as I move around the scene? It's making me feel nauseas. Reminds me of when I went sailing and capsized the boat.
Where is the don't be a retard button for the camera?
I personally prefer Max. It has its quirks and I keep reading everywhere every release is underwhelming but people expect lighting in a bottle after each release. Yeah, some bugs are STILL there after 5 years (if not more) but the stack, the snapping and the precision -if you need it- are still second to none to me. All modeling apps those days rely heavily on scripts but Max right out of the box has the best modeling tools imo. I bought rappatools and still learning how to use them but I find the whole package plus other minor free scripts really well rounded.
Regarding Autodesk killing Max I seriously doubt Autodesk is going to shoot dead one of their most successful products. Softimage didn't have the same userbase and 3rd party support and Autodesk saw in Bifrost a way to even the odds in Maya's favor even though it's not a 1:1 comparison according to people who explained to me how awesome ICE is.
Getting my feet wet with Maya here and I'd say the modeling tools are a tragedy but I am getting to appreciate some of its features. I am learning it only cos it's popular and because it's got all the latest tech. I admit I wouldn't bother otherwise.
PD: I too dislike modo's way of handling pivots.
Example:
It sure doesn't help that this is the first thing they list either. If I want less clutter I turn shit off and save the layout for later. And I use marking menus, at least in Maya and other apps have ways of dealing with this. They're basically saying our best feature is that we don't have features. /facepalm
Oh, wait, I didn't read any of the other ones because I closed it after reading that last time. I skimmed and rather unimpressed.
I think you are referring to trackball rotation. If so, you can turn it off in viewport settings(click the little triangle at the upper right corner of the viewport).
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I've never had any problems with the way Modo pivots things; you just click where you want a pivot to be, or you select from a dropdown for things like origin, object center, etc.
Anyway, I'm going to agree with everyone else and say Modo is worth the investment. It's weird compared to other programs, but weird in a good way.
In other words, everyone who recommended modo (nearly everyone) didn't read my OP
You should watch go through the tuts upon starting the software. It has a page dedicated to your exact complaint
Sometimes you gotta suck it up and read the app tuts quickly to figure some basic stuff out.
You can also change the navigation keys to match Maya/3DsMax.
Thank you
Agree of-course, but I was hoping I can just cheat a little by asking the few questions since there's already a thread and I learned it once before and just need to close the gaps of info that I've misplaced. One of the side effects of being awake at 6.30am is not wanting to do anything that requires any amount of effort I suppose.
Considering you prefaced with asking for advice on modeling programs that aren't, Max, Maya, Modo or Blender, I have no idea what to tell you. Milkshape, is that still developed? You should also accept the fact that if you're in a studio you'll be working with Maya, Max, or Modo. Wait a minute, maybe it's something about programs that begin with M.
I guess those?
But no, just get MODO.
Renaming is more or less an example. I can't sort by alphabetical order in a way that is actually useful, I can't search for hotkeys. How in the nine hells do I locate what I want in this mess? I shouldn't be looking for it, if I want to change rename I should type rename then it should be there
I hope this is just another case of being up at 6.30am.
Milkshape is clearly the wave of the future.
It supports Source Engine file formats!
The programs worth anything are:
Maya, Max, Modo, Silo, Blender, Cinema 4D, XSI (Softimage, now discontinued though), and that's about it.
At a studio, probably Max, Maya, or Blender (since it's free).
I should mention I haven't had any of the issues in Maya that you mention. Maybe it's something in your workflow, or something about your machine.
Does this camera know what a pivot is? Can I teach it?
Pat Crandly has a bunch of good ones on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/patcran/playlists
The Luxology site itself also has a ton of Spotlight videos.
Have ever had a look into Maya's C++ API? The one thing you need to know when doing so is that Autodesk is the enemy. The majority of your plugin development time will be focused on contemplating the manifestation of ancient and incomprehensible bugs, and to a lesser extent - working around them - you do not fix them because in soviet Autodesk, bug fix you. It can sometimes help to pretend you're Harrison Ford, however if you are unaware of Autodesk's position as your enemy it will be a perilous journey. The knowledge that you'd be better off contemplating the meaning of life as we know it is the only thing that will save you from being devoured by the void. The void has no logic, meaning, or purpose. The void is also known as Autodesk.
With this in mind there is no way that you can surmise an Autodesk product's stability is a result of the user's computer or workflow because the likelihood of being able to make a stable addition to Maya when you're using your end users as your beta testers, is extremely low.
Furthermore, my workflow is something that I have developed over several years and is proven valid. I am not doing anything so overly complex that it can cause these issues and I know this is a huge stretch considering the sheer unpredictability of Autodesk's products, however my workflow does not differ between versions of Maya, and I can take the exact same scene into a previous version via ascii/edit to modify version/etc, and the issues no longer persist.
I can't imagine what there is in 2015 that makes you feel it is the best update in years, they made viewport 2.0 usable - although, I haven't rigged in it yet and it was at rare times giving inaccurate visual feedback in 2014. NEX integration is still no better than an Autodesk intern's vomit. Gimmicks.
And lastly, goats are really stupid and while they can swim will probably forget to paddle so for all intended purposes they may or may not float.
I guess I'm trying to avoid it because there's no reason I should have to watch an entire video where someone drawls on and on for 5-20 minutes while I try not to fall asleep while locating the 1 sentence answer I want.
I think I'm emotionally scarred from watching an 'advanced' digital tutors rigging video in the past where they explained why they name their joints. No, this is not a joke - I am not laughing.
If it's really too inconvenient to answer then that's fine too, I don't want to waste a tiny bit of people's time to save a lot of my own.
Nope, I don't have a need to; In a game studio, digging into scripting/coding plugins is the job of the Tech Artist, there's a few hanging around polycount but you might be better served asking around Tech-Artists.org.
But to each his own...
Why would I need to go to tech artist forum to respond to his comment about Maya's stability being related to my machine lol. And why are you answering a rhetorical question that was aimed at someone else, and was mostly sarcastic in the first place :P Was merely illustrating the point that Maya is built on a foundation similar to a garbage heap and Autodesk doesn't have the capacity in terms of development to work with it, around it, or fix it.
And, uh, anyway. I work on a lot of personal projects and the like at home, or I freelance, I'm not always in a studio and I like having my own arsenal - the only real benefit to Maya is it's potential to be built upon.
Did you know in Maya 2014 they introduced a joint symmetry tool? It's fantastic, if you spend 0.5 seconds to activate it you no longer have to spend 0.5 seconds to mirror your joints. :poly142:
Well, if you avoid looking at tutorials you're going to have a rough time learning any software. Surely you didn't instinctively know how to use every feature in Maya the first time you opened it.
Luxology's official tutorials are quite good as well:
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/tv/training/
I'll say it again, action centers are really, really useful. Think of them as "live" pivots. You can use action centers as pivot points that you can rapidly change at any point for certain operations: http://docs.luxology.com/modo/601/help/pages/modotoolbox/ActionCenters.html
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That video covers pivots and action centers^
from the docs, pivots: http://docs.luxology.com/modo/601/help/pages/scenesetup/CentersPivots.html
But that said, I should probably at least watch them for the sake of picking up things that might not have interested me in the past, and shall hopefully do so when I wake up sometime in the afternoon >.>
I apologize for my over-use of sarcasm, especially when I'm not being sarcastic. Being tired is making me irritable and extremely unserious.
Anyway, thanks for the recommendations. I suppose I have no choice but to learn to use Modo and if necessary write a whole lot of scripts that essentially just turns it into Maya. Except not shit.
I don't want to burst a bubble here, but surprised this is still an issue. Being that we now have access to CG softwares and tutorials for free. Than again I assume you already know this and just fall under the category of people that feel the incentive to pay for the tool even if they can get it for free. In that case, I understand
Just though I throw it out there, so folks understand software pricing should not be an obstacle to them trying new tools.
Note that some software trials have many limitations and non commercial use of course. But I was leading more towards full version, not a topic to lead towards, but I am sure many artist know what I mean.
In the end, when the issue is what tool to use, just try them out and spend a few hours and you can find the perfect software that supplements your workflow.
Nice, I really wanted to try out mesh fusion, I'll have to give it a shot. A few of the artists at work use Modo, I haven't really had the call to use it since I'm currently working with a lot of animation & pre rendered sprites where I don't really need precision modeling.
Let's stop this here and now. Suggesting the use of pirated software on Polycount is not something that will be tolerated. If you continue on this path your account may be banned.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63361
Mesh fusion looks interesting as far as initial workflow but the resulting mesh is subpar and would need to be rebuilt.
They also have a 30 day trial for $25. Its always seemed a bit weird to charge for a trial, but I guess they're trying to weed out the people who aren't serious.
Modo is fantastic, super fast and powerful. I'd rather be in blender than max or maya.
Now Blender has real smoothing groups (or sharp edges, like in Maya), and use of cage (projection mesh) for baking with Cycles, oh and GLSL PBR viewport shading under development as well.
At my school they teach with 3ds Max, which is a total chaos to use for me. And that's just my personal opinion and experience with it.
Modo seems to be a good choise for many out here nowadays, but I'm not sure is it actually an industry standard, are my thoughts right? If not, then I'll use Blender forever.
Oh looks like meshfusion not included in the pay to try for 30 days license.