JohnnyRoy,

I had to (unwittingly) cut my teeth on 3DSMax for a client about a year ago -- what started as a simple 2d logo rotation with gaussian blur in Vegas, became "Can you give it some volume and weight and make it do a dance?"

I chose 3dsMax because it was accessible at the time and there's a lot of pretty good books on the app (I picked up "3dsMax Fundamentals" by Ted Boardman) -- and eventually delivered a product the client was happy with.

However -- I don't think 3d should be as much a struggle and I hear/read a lot about Cinema 4D being easier/better/"the Vegas of 3d" -- how do you like it and why?

- jim

yea..you got to be careful what you let your clients know...because some of them want the whole 9 yards and dont want to pay the whole 9 yards price.

> how do you like it and why?

Jim,

Before you get anyone’s opinion of why they selected a particular product its important to understand their motivation and selection criteria. I did NOT want to be a 3D graphic artist. I just wanted to be a videographer who could integrate 3D into his work once in a while. So a major criteria was that I could not use the program for a week and still remember how to use it when I returned. The bottom line was: I could use Cinema 4D and then not use it for a while, and very easily come back to it and get productive again without having to open the book again.

I looked at 3D Studio Max, Maya, Truespace, and Cinema 4D. I ruled out Truespace pretty quick because its interface looked like there was a tremendous learning curve. I’m sure its possesses and incredible abundance of attributes. IMHO, “user friendly” isn’t one of them.

Maya had a strange way of accomplishing things that I also felt was overly complex. If I could explain what I wanted to do in four words, it should take me 5 steps to do it. It seems you where always drilling down into three or four attributes and tweaking them just get one thing to work and if you forgot to change one nothing would work and you couldn’t figure out why. I just couldn’t remember all the things you had to do.

3D Studio Max actually made a lot of sense to me. It was complex to learn but it wasn’t overly complex. Unfortunately, it didn’t pass my criteria of being able to come back to it and remember how it works. I’m sure if you use it every day it’s great. Perhaps I didn’t give it enough time. In fact, I’m sure I didn’t give any of them enough time. (one or two tutorials each)

For some reason Cinema 4D just stuck with me. I could come back to it and use it again with minimal effort. It seemed logically laided out and I could easily create objects, change them, apply materials to them, attach a camera to a spline and fly it through a scene getting exactly the motion I wanted.

But that’s just me. I would suggest anyone who wanted to learn 3D to try a few programs, go through the tutorials, perhaps take a project that you have in mind and do it in all three programs. Then pick the one that works the way you do. It’s all about workflow. I liked Cinema 4D’s workflow the best. I picked up version 7 on eBay and it does everything I need for the occasional spinning logo or fly-through.

I guess Cinema 4D is the "Vegas of 3D". Just like Vegas the workflow is such that there is a minimal amount of steps to accomplish a goal.

~jr

do you think cinema 4d is capable of pushing out the results of that of 3d studio max?

My eight yearold does some amazing things with 4D Cinema. It is capable of any project but is only limited by your ability with the myriad of functions it can do.
I am sure that if you could master every capacity it has your creativity would know no bounds. It's beyond me, I only master the things I need, I haven't got the time to spend any further than that.
Like Vegas there is a learning curve,but a site C4D CAFE has some excellent tutorials.

> do you think cinema 4d is capable of pushing out the results of that of 3d studio max?

I can’t say from personal experience but Sony Pictures Imageworks used CINEMA 4D in the development of Warner Bros. "The Polar Express." Since I’m not planning anything that grand, I’d say it will meet my needs. ;-)

~jr

Thanks for your info, JR -- sounds like the app for me. Now, if only I could get my clients to pay ontime...

- jim

well it depends on what exactly you want to do with max. i could give you some tips if you want to be more specific.

well.....right now...all i want to do is be able to add some special effects to my digital video... The things is I don't even know where to begin. I open up 3d max 7 and im like wow....look @ all the pretty tools lol

they used it for so many major film such as:

cat woman
the day after tomorrow
the matrix reloaded
league of extriodinary gentlemen
x-men 2
the core
equilibrium
cellular
panic room...

the list doesn't end.....i wish their were some video tutorials available, showing you the basics on film effects.

well max isnt really for effects or compositing. you would want to you something like after effects or combustion for that kind of stuff. all the stuff from those movies, the environments and everything were built in 3d and composited later.

I've read a number of posts that seem to indicate a few newcomers are confused by the difference between special effects and Computer Generated Imagery (CGI). The former is typically applied to existing media, composits, blue screens or even optical effects. CGI is used to create media.
Most of what we see in films today isn't special effects, it's CGI. It's used to create and animate complex models in a virtual space. In many cases these objects are controlled from motion capture of real actors.
To give a simple example, in Polar Express pretty well everything that you see on the screen was first created as 3D models, these were then controlled by input from motion capture of real talent but no actual image of the real talent is used in the movie. So you cannot take a piece of video and feed it into a CGI program and create anything that looks like Polar Express!
Just to explain how complex these tasks are, the motion capture rigs used in Polar Express used around 70 cameras, actually Sony developed a new system which they I think hold patents on called Performance Capture, this allows them to capture both the gross movement of an actor at the same time as the facial expressions. THe CGI models are anatomically accurate, they need muscles and tendons to make the surfaces move realistically.
If you're interested in CGI CineFX magazine is a good place to get inspiration (or a major downer once you realise just how much work goes into these things).
Getting back to the question of which 3D app, I have a relative whose mastering Maya and he'd be the first to agree it's by far the hardest to get your brain around. But as he explained it's built to handel the more complex of tasks and it's typically used accross departments, one group build the models, another animates them and another lights them. So to really confuse the casual user the same thing can be done in several ways but each way is more suited to the different roles in the production process or is still retained for backwards compatibility with what the old hands have learned. By his reckoning it takes several years to get a workable knowledge of full CGI.

A small note, its is not uncommon for artists to design models in 3Dmax and export them to different 3d apps. Cimera4d is great for modeling moving scenes with other 3D models from other 3D apps. 4d has made a lot of inroads because of its flexiblity in rendering.