3D Modeling/Render/Raytracer Software

[Fungos Bauux]

Hi, I have a softhouse in Brazil, where we develop small games. Our income isnt enought to buy 3D Max and Photoshop.. Our artists are a little relutant to use Linux (they have fear or dificulty learning new softwares).. But as new rules in out company, we will demand the use of Open Source and Freeware software. For windows we are planning to use GIMP and Milkshape.

But Im looking for good Open Source 3D Software (Not blender please, this is very very very complex for simple mundane artists).. Please, post here any software that you know (and links) and if you have used any, talk a little about the software pros and cons ..


Thank you

[Spockmeat]

Well as far as ray tracing goes, you can't go wrong with pov ray. It's been around a long time and it well supported and documented.
http://www.povray.org/

As far as modeling goes, blender is actually good, but I had a hard time learning it as compared to max or maya.

[babo]

I think blender is not hard to learn, couse it was easyer for me to learn than maya or max, couse I find tutorials on blender site very helpful.

There is also wings3d for modeling, but I don't know what it is like.

And it's great to hear companies going on open source.

[FishB8]

[jschellhaass]

I see jahshaka-2.0-rc1 is now in portage.

www.jahshaka.org

jeff

[Fungos Bauux]

I will study Blender and Jahshaka (this has a simple interface, and may help) . But Blender looks better than I remember some years ago I will do some study with Blender. If you say that Blender has same difficulty than 3DMax, I think its good for our artists. One question, Blerder can use POV-Ray as Raytracer? Its easy to put they work together?

Any comments about writing plugins, importers, exporters ( Blender and/or Jahshaka)?

[lotw]

[FishB8]

I'm sure you can use PovRay from Blender, but it's not supported natively so it may be dificult to use and your results may vary quite a bit. I'd stick with Yafray. It has very high quality output and supports thigs like radiosity.
_________________
"...as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." -Benjamin Franklin

[darker]

Try Art of Illusion [url]aoi.sourceforge.net[/url]
_________________
"I saw the code for your computer program yesterday. It looked easy. Its just a bunch of typing. And half of the words were spelt wrong. And dont get me started on your over-use of colons."
- The Pointy Haired Boss sees some actual code

[lotw]

[Fungos Bauux]

I need a modeller too (most important), so blender as a modeller is good and easy enought? Or better use some other modeller in a combo like Wings/Milkshape+Blender?

[darker]

Actually, aoi's rendering is quite good (he added openGL support in the last release) and it is getting better all the time
_________________
"I saw the code for your computer program yesterday. It looked easy. Its just a bunch of typing. And half of the words were spelt wrong. And dont get me started on your over-use of colons."
- The Pointy Haired Boss sees some actual code

[chrisR]

Hi there

Wings is a better modeller than Blender on the whole but both have strengths and weaknesses. Blender is far far more than a modeller though. Use both as Blender will import Wings. Also if your doing 2D stuff which you can also do in Blender by the way then Inkscape and Gimp can be used to create 2D Geometry which can be imported into Blender successfully along with basic dxf from say QCad. Blender has an excellent online community at www.elysiun.com and the release cycles for Blender adding new and exciting functionality are about 4 a year, it's development team is hard at work, it's not one guy doing a bit of code when he gets a chance like so many Open source efforts (which I'm not knocking by the way, doing open source software is a gift to all and anyones efforts is so welcome). It's also available for MacOS, Linux and Windows. I know your looking for basic stuff but Blender will do that as well. Take a look at www.Blender3d.org in the Gallery download the Siggraph DVD and look at what can be done. The Blender community is buzzing with the Orange movie project and features going into Blender like Cloth simulation, softbodies and fluid dynamics, the animation systems been totally rewritten and work has gone into unifing the GUI. Don't be put off by the user interface, it IS intuitive. The append functions allowing many people to work on a CG project together linking your models into one combined workflow is also very helpful in a team working environment.

Blender also supports Yafray (www.yafray.org) which is an excellent open source render. It even supports hdri lighting and openexr file format 0.0.8, which can be viewed and manipulated with Cinepaint.

Blender, Gimp, Inkspace and Yafray is the best workflow your going to get with open source software on Linux. Blender has so much to offer, modeller, animation system, renderer, game engine, audio sequencer, video sequencer etc. Don't bother with any version under 2.37a (current) soon to be 2.40 (October) and Yafray 0.0.8 (not a Gentoo build yet though of 0.0.8 god knows why) but easy to build (scons)

Good luck.

[DetectiveInspekta]

I want to get into some modeling so I can build my house designs.

I'm not sure what ray-trace does but I'm guessing its a rendering program and I should use a program like blender3d to make stuff then put it through ray-trace?

[lotw]

[Tronic]

If you are going to be doing anything serious, you need to forget the free software. They are simply completely unusable, compared to the better commercial ones. Softimage XSI is much cheaper than Maya or 3DSMax, but is actually very good (and available for Linux). It is generally regarded as one of the two best 3D/CG applications out there (the other is Maya, of course). The interface is very powerful and also far easier to learn than Blender (because it is consistent). The modeling tools are the best that I have ever used. All operations are put in a stack in a similar fashion to 3DSMax, so you can make changes for a base model of a complex serie of operations and instantly see the result. The texturing (like many other things in XSI) is node-based, so it is very flexible. Animation tools are pretty much the same as in other programs, but some basic physics (rigid body, soft body, cloth, hair) simulation is included. The renderer (Mental Ray) is fairly slow and it is somewhat tricky to get very good quality (compared to Newtek Lightwave). Of course you still cannot even dream about this kind of quality with Blender's renderer. Perhaps you could do something with yafray, but since that is fairly new, I don't go guessing yet.
_________________
There are no alternative energy sources to fossil fuels. Whoever claims otherwise doesn't know the difference between mW and MW. -Kurki-Suonio

[FishB8]

[skyPhyr]

If you do decide to go the closed source route I can highly recommend XSI. I'm a TD (who happens to specialize in XSI) at a production company and have used Max and Maya also. XSI is by far the most artist friendly and definitely has the easiest and most flexible workflow of the lot. Though if you're looking for particles and effects work then you'd want to take a look at Houdini as these are areas of weakness for XSI atm.

As far as open source I have to say I'm highly impressed with blender. It's really quite a solid and feature filled package - an great effort by the open source community - I can see it becoming a serious option for even mid-range productions in future versions.

Cheers,

Alan.

[kanis]

If you want to use an open source alternative to Blender, you really have only one other feasible option: POV Ray, and 90% of the POV Ray stuff you see out there is a few reflective spheres on a checkered plane. I'm not saying that it's bad software (on the contrary, it's great), but it's just um... well, POV Ray. But give it a whirl and see if you like it.

But honestly, going open source in the 3D market is probably just as smart as jumping out of a plane without a parachute. You might get away with it in the 2D market with GIMP (but that's a whole other argument), but in 3D you only have a few roads to take, and most of them aren't open-source.

If you decide to forego the whole idealistic open-source crusade for this one market, choose XSI or Maya.

I run Maya in Linux, and while it may be expensive, it's still pretty functional. Since 6.5+, the included Mental Ray renderer has also improved dramatically in quality. The only problem is that Maya has a learning curve, but it didn't take me too long to switch ( I used to be a Max guy (Lightwave before that)). Another issue with Maya is that you don't get a lot of extras (like fur/hair and cloth extensions) if you don't get the Unlimited edition.

Blender is also a decent program, but I don't use it. I don't know why.

Also, for whatever choice you take, there's a whole community/forum dedicated to discussion/tutorials/theory about the whole shabang at CGTalk -- http://forums.cgsociety.org/

They even have a Blender section.
_________________
Siggy siggy

[francoisp31]

I use blender, gimp & povray too. Sometimes I also use some external renderer to get the final image/video.

Blender is very well documented so it is a very good solution, IMHO, it is easy to use & fast.
In facts I prefer Blender to all I used before for several years, 3DSMAX, Lightwace, Truspace etc.....
_________________
merci @+

[FishB8]

[lotw]