i mean, it is "only" a(n enhanced) modeller, not a full 3d suite (advanced animation, rendering, sfx particles you name it). looking from c4d, lightwave, carrara, truespace, silo and not from any overpriced autodesk product like maya, the price seems above standard level, to say it nicely.

Yes, but c4d, lightwave, carrara and truespace do not have modeling, sculpting and 3d-painting combined. This is probably the reason for their price tag.

really? cinema has

im not sure about the sculpting but if it is comparative with zbrush or mudbox, then c4d doesnt and niether does silo because those two dont allow even nearly as many polys. on my system, scuplting in like silo or blender I can get up to about 500k polys without lag and about 1.8million before the computer gets to a crash worthy state. I've had zbrush over 10 million before so there is a real difference in optimizations and speeds.

Hi

@Machinery_Frank - up to you

But I think modo is a new breed of 3D software, once they add true animation I think not many apps will come close for the money.

The way the toolpipe work is just great

You always can try modo before you buy.

I have it and its great, I also have Zbrush - both cost together a third the cost for 3DMax.

3Dmax is so old school and I don't want to buy old stuff

Anyone already compared prices and features between c4d, modo, lw and the like?

I'm searching for a reliable tool which works together with A7 nicely without having to use 10 converter tools inbetween.
I'm especially concerned about animation, skins and unwrapping.
Still this tool should be flexible enough to be usable with other engines as well.

Has anyone made such a list already? 'Im quite out of business concerning modeling, so I can barely judge the advantages and disadvantages of each tool.

If heard of the combination of free Truespace + Ultimate Unwrap which is suppsoed to offer a great deal - is it really that good? I'm searching for experiences.

Thanks in advance for opinions and sorry for more or less hijacking this thread.

I would say Lightwave and Modo should be a good solution.

Lightwave is a all-in-one-package. Modelling, Texturing, Animation and Rendering.
And you can export directly to MDL7 (FBX also).

If you want Sculpting and 3D-Painting then it's time for modo.

And the best of all: Modo can read/write Lightwave-Objects (*.lwo) and Lightwave-Scenes (*.lws) directly.

have you tried blender? the character animation tools are very nice and the unwrapping tools are at least on par with modo.

some people hate blender's user interface but in my opinion most of the time a lot of preconception is involved in this. blender isn't really harder to learn than the other complex apps like maya or max. actually i found it a bit easier.

modo can't do character animation yet so you would have to wait for 501 or so if that is important to you.

i have seen many rumors that lightwave slowly is dying. they aren't making much money with it anymore...

Lightwave is dying? I am a customer and beta-tester. They publish a couple sometimes more beta versions every week. They work very hard to improve it, to make it even more stable as it is. If I send a bug-report then they reply personally. It does not feel like it is dying.
The new renderer is that fast and advanced, it is probably the best built-in renderer you can find in all 3d-apps.

Ello: Cinema 4d has a sculpting tool? This is new to me. I have to check that.

Firoball: Truespace is a nice software and you can model quite fast if you are used to it. But animation is a bit buggy. But the best way is to try it yourself.

XSI is a bit expensive now, they dont have the foundation edition anymore. Probably because of the deal with Autodesk. So if you really need an all-in-one solution then you should check C4D, Lightwave and Blender. All of them are affordable and have tools for modeling, animation, rigging and rendering. I decided to use Lightwave because it is more affordable than C4D and at that time it had built in support for fur/hair, texture-baking and normal-mapping and C4D did not. But this may have changed now.
But still I dont like the upgrade policy of Maxon (C4D). I am still an active user of Bodypaint 3d (Maxon) and they wanted me to pay almost the full price for an upgrade with only very little new functionality. I could have bought a new license for almost no new features. Probably they want to become rich very fast.

And FBX modo can export to this.


There is always fragMOTION for character animation (frag)

I like blender but could never get use to the interface so I got modo.

There is another 3D package and that's Truespace which is now free I also have this package and the interface again is a pain and the character animation is NOT first class and the UV is not that great and hard to work with.

For me it came down to time and how much time I have which is NONE to learn anything new, well I have time to learn modeling BUT not to learn a hard interface.

I think modo work flow is second to none and a world apart, but that's me - people should always try the software first you may not like it