Dream's Edge

A review of various software a) from a beginner's stand point and b) from a more professional stand point.

List of software under discussion:

3D Software

Bryce 5.5 and Bryce6
Maya
Cinema4D
Wings3D
Blender
Hexagon


(This review is based on personal experience and thus may change with time and usage.)

As a beginner I used Bryce for many years right from when Bryce was Bryce4. Bryce was initially marketed as landscape creation software and is often mistakenly dismissed as such without taking into account its in-built model making abilities which include the wonderful world of Boolean operations.
i.e. take a sphere, make it negative,
take a cube and make it positive,
make sure the sphere impinges on the cube,
group the 2 elements,
and the sphere gouges a concave area out of the cube – wonderful stuff!

Bryce6 now includes IBL lighting abilities and an upgrade on its animation abilities; – it was said to have an upgrade on the speed of its renderer but in practice as this was a matter of a minute or two here or there, it has actually made no appreciable difference. Bryce6 has had no further updates from the owners (Daz3D) for the last two years. Bryce is not just a hobbyists tool as some amazing things have been done with it in the past and are being done now.
Its biggest advantage is its ease of use and very user friendly interface.
Its biggest disadvantage is its immensely slow ray tracer renderer.
.........................................................

Wings3D is open source software that has been continually updated and improved, so much so that there is currently a Beta version of Wings1, it having gone through many previous incarnations to the last prior to version 1, which was version 0.99.60
Wings3D does not have boolean operations – yet. It is what is termed a "Box Modeller" but it also has the great advantage of a) price and b) ease of use, it is incredibly easy to begin using Wings3D and it has one of the few manuals that includes tutorials that help a new user get to grips with the programs abilities. This manual is now a little out of date, but still applicable.
..............................................................

The only other software in a similar vein is Blender, this software has a great many more capabilities, however it also has an enormously big disadvantage. It is extremely user UNfriendly, and as it was created with the emphasis on keyboard shortcuts to the detriment of menu use – it remains very difficult to use, also the viewport is counter intuitive to use and hard to navigate in.
It is however, like Wings3D – free to download and use, with no limitations.
...................................................................

Maya. Since Maya was taken over by AutoDesk the free Personal Learning Edition with its crippled render sizing and logo displayed over the renders but unlimited time, has been discontinued. They are back to 30 day limited versions, - but still with limitations. So unless you have a vast fortune to buy the program – it is possibly one of the highest costing programs in the industry – or a slightly smaller fortune to afford lots of lessons/tutorials in the program – or both, then forget it.
.................................................................

Similar in its abilities is Cinema4D – this is not cheap, but an education license makes it just about affordable – at a pinch. The Professional Core program of C4D costs more than the educational license for the studio bundle, which includes, the core, Net render, Advanced Render, Thinking Particles, Pyrocluster, MOCCA, and with release 10 BodyPaint is now included. I do not have the remaining modules which are: Sketch and Toon, Hair and MoGraph.

Cinema4D is an easy to use program, the modelling is fairly easy, and at least it is menu driven so eventually you can find things. It has excellent animation abilities - keyframing is easy and you can even add sound in the program - something that Bryce cannot do as yet. Cinema4D also has Thinking Particles which I have recently plunged into for my current animation and thanks to the collection of Presets for Thinking Particles there was a much less steep learning curve than I anticipated, thanks also to the members of C4DCafe, Renderosity's Cinema4D forums in particular. I have had some help from CGTalk forums in the past as well, but they are mostly professionals there so it takes some days, even weeks sometimes to get any response there. Understandable in a busy professional life.

XPresso is the coders way to use Thinking Particles and quickly gets impossible to understand.

I hope soon to be investigating MOCCA which is Cinema4D's rigging and boning facility, but first I must do more work on my character – especially his hands, so that I have something to bone and rig.
.....................................................

The last program I wish to mention, of which I have some experience, is Hexagon.
I'm afraid that I think this program is a lost opportunity, like Bryce it is owned by Daz3D, unfortunately it feels like Carrara – another Daz3D buy-in.
Like Bryce it has had its bugs and not a great deal of care (updates etc), unlike Bryce it does not have its ease of use, and occasionally it crashes... well to be honest I found it crashed more than it worked.
Its UI is not very intuitive, and its ease of use is.... hard to find. Like Bryce it has been neglected, but unlike Bryce does not seem to have so loyal and vocal a user base.
..................................................

I also have Carrara - but as I have not had time to open the program much, I do not feel I can say anything of substance about it – yet.

So at the moment I tend to think that for professional use the way to go is Cinema4D – there are rumours of an imminent new release for Bryce – but this has been going on for at least two years now, so unless something happens soon, I feel I will become one of those with fond memories of Bryce but I will be using Cinema4D professionally.

........................

I will deal with the 2D/editing based software another time.