Overview of 3D Graphics Applications: Part 1 ProsConsProsConsProsConsProsCons Industry Standard High-end Design and simulation software Difficulty when first beginning to learn Industry Standard High-end 3D Graphics Software $400-$3000 approximatel y, or a few hundred dollars second hand Easy to StartIt has it’s limits—hard to model detailed objects and exact shapes Free (open- source, and anyone can reprogram it or send fixes to the developers) Can model or real-life designs and simulations of usage scenarios You have to know exactly what you’re doing to make anything As good as you are at 3D modeling is as good as the program’s results will be (no limits) Specialized— you may not be able to do everything without purchasing addons, or jumping over to one of the other programs Free (Caligari bought out by Microsoft and offers latest version free; Google offers limited version of Google Sketchup for free) No limits – has features of most of the major High-end 3D Graphics programs (helps you be ready to learn industry- standard programs) Keyboard shortcuts are more efficient than the buttons AutoCAD / other CAD 3ds Max/ LightWave 3D/ Maya/ SoftImage XSI Caligari trueSpace / Google Sketchup Blender

Overview of 3D Graphics Applications: Part 2 ProsConsProsConsProsConsProsCons There are free alternatives such as BRL- CAD and FreeCAD Cost: $4000Sometimes cost is a few hundred dollars (around 70% discount) for student or staff w/ proof of enrollment Since each is especially good at a certain category or certain categories of effects (humans, machines, animation, scenery, energy effects), often more than one are needed for cinema-quality when a movie requires various categories of effects. Ability to import from and export to many game formats (for creating games) and software formatsCurren tly Microsoft discontinued the program after buying the rights (doesn’t have support or updates) Always being updated – fixed, improved to keep up with the competition Available to students for about $700 (temporary 5- year license is around $150) Excellent texture mapping and bump mapping Can’t buy unless used, except latest version, which is not completely bug-free Cinema quality (using YafaRay or POV-Ray render modes) Not used much in popular cinema AutoCAD / other CAD 3ds Max/ Lightwave 3D/ Maya/ SoftImage XSI Caligari trueSpace only Blender

AutoCAD

3ds Max The view on the bottom left (the camera view) is solid & textured mode for a preview, while the other views are in wireframe mode.

LightWave 3D -often used for animating cartoon-like characters for TV and movies

Maya -often used for animating realistic characters and scenes for major movies such as Spider-Man and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings.

SOFTIMAGE -often used for creating exaggerated characters and special effects for major movies such as Charlotte’s Web (2006) and Happy Feet.

Caligari trueSpace [sic] (with option turned on to show all editing buttons at once)

Custom Software In this screenshot, you can see that Industrial Light and Magic (ILM, George Lucas movie FX company) has created this custom software (They probably have a whole team of programmers besides their 3D Modeling video editing teams). It is running on Linux as opposed to Windows or Mac OS.