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QUERY: Modeling Software

Gabriel Theodoulos

Gabriel Theodoulos

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18
Country
unitedstates
Question,

What modeling software do you find yourself using the most?

I like GMax. It's easy to understand and use. My problem is the video graphics bugs out on me when I use it. Many times, when I grab and rotate an object, the windows goes weird and I get reflections all over the place. And if I am in multi-view mode and I try switching, the views I am not using goes black.

This is what drove me to focus my efforts on Blender.

Blender seems to have a much more difficult learning curve, but it also comes across as being more robust in features.

I really like how I can lay down a simple line in GMax and build off of it. But I also greatly enjoy the Blender Community and the amount of tools available.

What do you find yourself using the most? And why?
 
Are you trying to start a war? lol Gmax/3ds Max because life's too short to learn another all-encompassing modelling package while raising a family, holding down a job and paying attention to my other half. Oh, and dabbling with Photoshop.

If starting from scratch, Blender would be a serious option but it wasn't even an option 10 years ago.

Change the display driver to Direct3D if you're getting viewport blackouts and Win 8/10 screen freezes are cleared by clicking at extreme right of the taskbar to briefy show the desktop, then back to G/Max and carry on.
 
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hairyspin said:
Are you trying to start a war? lol
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Heavens to Betsy, No!

TBH, there is no "right" or "wrong" on which tool you use. If it gets the job done, and you're comfortable with it, that's great!

Gmax/3ds Max because life's too short to learn another all-encompassing modelling package while raising a family, holding down a job and paying attention to my other half. Oh, and dabbling with Photoshop.
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Like I said, I like GMax because you can do some simple tricks which really makes life easier. Maybe Blender can do the same, but I haven't figured it out yet. 8^P

How similar is GMax to 3ds Max? Are they similar? I would be tickled to death to play with 3ds Max, but that $1400-$1800 price tag is way too much for my fixed income.

Change the display driver to Direct3D if you're getting viewport blackouts and Win 8/10 screen freezes are cleared by clicking at extreme right of the taskbar to briefy show the desktop, then back to G/Max and carry on.
Click to expand...

Wow! That worked!

Thanks!
 
I am still using GMax 1.2, PhotoImpact 4.2, 12-ish years of public-school education in the visual arts, and common sense 1.0... most rendered textures look like garbage anyway. My eyes still curse the day developers learned about ambient occlusion and thought it would magically make everything look good.
 
Gmax is very similar to early 3ds Max versions because it is an earlier version of 3ds Max with a number of features disabled – rendering, NURBS and file write/create functions in MaxScript. Max has been developed a lot since Gmax was released but is extremely expensive and you can't buy a permanent licence for it any more, which is why those lucky enough to have an earlier version hold on to it very carefully. I was lucky enough to buy 2008 years ago, but it isn't even supported by Autodesk now.

Gmax is a pussycat once you finally learn all you need, but a grumpy bear when you're beginning: the usual stumblingblock for the beginner is setting up your 3-views, so in that regard it's just like Blender. What I like about Gmax, and Max, is the precision of the tools: makes repeatable, accurate results straightforward.

Oh, and I went for Max (back then) for AO and texture baking: sorry Erick!
 
All tools are useful when used correctly, but lots of developers think that the baking will magically make their textures look good without any more effort, and it just don't work that way.
 
ErickC said:
I am still using GMax 1.2, PhotoImpact 4.2, 12-ish years of public-school education in the visual arts, and common sense 1.0... most rendered textures look like garbage anyway. My eyes still curse the day developers learned about ambient occlusion and thought it would magically make everything look good.
Click to expand...

Render to texture is a very powerful tool. Obviously you can't render everything without some sort of hand editing, but it does get closer than eyeballing. The more you can let the rendering software calculate light rays, the less you risk "breaking physics" (which will inevitably happen unless you're developing for a PBR-based engine). AO when done right adds much depth that our dated sim platforms simply don't render real time.
 
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. The best 3D artwork I have seen combined good rendering parameters with good texture work. I was looking at renders of a CP SD40-2 work-in-progress for Railworks and it was simply magnificent - but you could tell that they did their groundwork on the textures, that they were composites from properly-lit photographs, heavily-edited for consistency. It looked like you could walk up and touch it.

The problem is that the average texture artist sees rendered shadows as a magical realism monkey, that it will somehow make dull, flat, lifeless textures look good. And it just doesn't do it at all, it just looks like dull, flat, lifeless textures with good lighting effects. It's much like the early days of FS8, when people thought that specular highlights and environment mapping would magically make a flat grey area with a black alpha channel look like aluminum. As I'm sure you remember, it generally looked like diarrhea. People fail to comprehend that even the most polished of chrome still has a definite surface texture that will show through the reflected light.

I'd love it if Open Rails, for example, someday used a PBR-type engine. I could concentrate on drawing good textures and leave the lighting effects to the simulator. That would be nice...
 
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