What are /r/3DMA's favorite Products & Services?

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Unity Would be excellent for this; extremely simple scene set up (just drag & drop your model into the scene view), and the scripting is very simple, and very easy to learn.

Good luck!

It's is 98% the work of one guy:

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/3D_or_Real_Above_Everything_Else/

https://vimeo.com/15630517

Production company: The Mushroom Company

Director/DoP/Art direction/Post/Editor: Alex Roman

Original idea/Concept: Alex Roman

Additional CGI: Juan Ángel García Martinez

Music: ZipZap Music

There are a lot of great resources for Zbrush on their site: http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/ And the ZBrush Central forums have a lot of good stuff.

Tutorials for maya is a trickier deal. I'd just google for a couple hours. 3D Kingdom used to have a lot of great tuts.

Well for starters, let's say you have a plane that you're using as your ground. You would make an image file the size of your plane. You would use textures from say www.cgtextures.com, or even create your own textures for say grass, dirt, etc. And you fill in your texture file, easiest way is just to copy & paste grass where you want grass, your pathways and so on. Apply your ground texture file to your plane, going back and forth between your 3d software, and graphic editor, tweaking your ground texture to your liking. As for what to use, that's really just a matter of what you're comfortable with. Gimp is a pretty full featured open-source image editor, and it's free. As for 3d software for the actual modelling, Blender is probably the best piece of free software you can get for the actual 3d modelling side of it. Modelling/rigging/sculpting/animating, it's all in there, totally free. There may be other ways to accomplish the task, but this is just the technique that I first learned, and it's pretty straightforward once you get the hang of it. Also there are plenty of tutorials on youtube that can help steer you in the right direction, for whatever software you decide to go with. Hope some of that makes sense, best of luck!

As a mathematician you can easily go for the overkill, Houdini.
Look around for training, it's also free. PM me if having problems.

Houdini Apprentice: (free)

• https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=245&Itemid=400

I'm not the developer, I actually met them through an incubator in Paris called Le Camping. It is still in heavy development, so you may be able to get in touch with them through their Facebook page, they seemed like nice guys. Their faq has a lot more info.

From what I understand, you can upload a zip file with the model and textures, and then it will display them.

Good question. I'd bet you can save the files & reopen when you resubscribe but you hit it with "you can never be sure." I bet the vendor's F.A.Q. Addresses this & I'm sure if it can be opened by others with the same software then it should always work with you.

I came from Maya into Blender & am impressed with how far its come along. I find most of the features easier to use than Maya because with Maya, every setting seems to be wrong when I first apply a tool. It took a while to get used to it but once I got comfortable, I never looked at Maya again. The Cycles renderer is truly amazing & super-easy to get quality results with minimum work. Not at all like the mindfuck puzzle that is Mental Ray.

The first thing any new blender user should do is go to the preferences & set the "select with" to the left mouse button ( https://www.blender.org/manual/preferences/input.html ) This will make it work like every other piece of software.

For Zbrush, a Wacom tablet is highly recommended. They're great for painting textures in other 3d software.

A mid to high end Nvidia card is worth its weight in gold. I look at AMD as a great gamer's toy & see Nvidia as more a professional's tool. It supports CUDA & can be used in Blender Cycles for GPU rendering. Beware: I have had issues installing Nvidia's drivers (doesn't work, screws with USB functionality, doesn't recognize monitors, etc.) I recommend downloading the newest driver & throwing away the CD that comes with the card.

I understand that Stack Overflow might not be well know within the 3D artist communities. Stack Overflow can be best understood by reading this: http://stackexchange.com/tour. The main benefit for their system over conventional ones is that the information is very easily indexed and searched by google, making information quicker and easier to access.

If I am right, you want a 3D Software with Sculpting, modeling and slicing capabilities. For that Case, I recommend SelfCAD https://www.selfcad.com. In addition to the sculpting and modeling tools, there is the magic fix tool which helps you to magically fix your designs. There is also an in-built slicer that you can use to generate the G-Code that you can send to your 3D printer directly.

Hi,

I am a beginner in this field. And have used 2 software till now.

https://www.keyshot.com/

http://www.vd-3d.com/buy/

I have used both and both are doing well. But as I am startup so the VD-3D was very affordable for me. If you are in a startup then can go for this.

If you're trying to do what I think, Pepakura sounds like what you'd need.

http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/download/viewer/

I've never used it before but it seems like people have done some cool stuff with it

No, I'm a hobbyist with far more enthusiasm than actual talent -- my only professional jobs were animating a biologically-accurate walk cycle for a physical therapy video and also a little stick figure guy for a cheap local commercial, both done with Maya.

I suck at modeling but have a lot of fun with photoreal shaders. I've been out of the 3D world for a few years now and never made anything of note, but of all the 3D programs I tried, Lightwave was the one I stuck with, and actually purchased once I got a job that let me be not broke anymore.

They've added quite a bit in the areas of rigging and whatnot. I should really upgrade to the latest version. Which happens to be on sale at the moment.

Well, SESI set up a forum in their official forums for SI users to come together and ask questions. If that doesn't sway your vote I don't know what will: https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewforum&f=51&sid=81ff931b02fbfb35154b66b45e616287

If there isn't anything specific in the animation you need then I would recommend looking at stock footage sites for DNA animations. Quick google search landed me on this animation.

https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-637000-stock-footage-animation-of-seamlessly-looping-dna-strand.html

If you do need something more specific then it depends on the quality of the animation. To figure out the price the artist would have to have some idea how good the animation needs to look. If I had to do this animation I would first look for 3D models of DNA from sites that sell models. In my work I always buy models if they can save me time and money. Usually I can get something for 10-15 euros that would otherwise take me hours to do. Sometimes I will even buy model just to have it as a 3D reference when the model is unusable, but has the correct measurements. Quick google search found this nice looking model.

https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/science/laboratory/dna-strand

For the DNA I would guess the price being 200-500 dollars. Really depends on the quality. It might be a really fast 2 hour job at best, but you never know. If a client is really picky and you end up spending way way more time tweaking something.

As for the device part that is very tricky. It depends a lot on how useful the 3D model is. Often times those models are not the same type as what us regular 3D-modelers use. They are NURBS models made with CAD programs while normal artist tend to use polygon models. Conversions are possible, but often they might not be good enough for rendering and contain seams and holes. I do a lot of ship models and I usually get a NURBS model for the hull shape, but I always model it again for quality reasons. I personally would not give any estimate unless I had a really precise idea on what the model is. Preferably I would like to have a copy of the model.

You will want to get ASCII STL files, so they're easy to read, then look for lines that begin with VERTEX. Try using MeshLab to convert binart STL to ASCII STL, it's free opensource.
http://www.meshlab.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_(file_format)

Here is the vimeo link: https://vimeo.com/38591304

Anyway, can someone tell me which software's were used in creating this awesome short, I can see AFE, C4D, Maya and tons of plugins but a short list would be awesome.

This the first move of the Skeleton from the iOS & Android game

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skeleton-invader/id1287479772?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Yembel.SkeletonInvader

Buy this book: https://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Principles-Classical/dp/086547897X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483955056&sr=8-1&keywords=animation+survival+kit

It's the only book ever worth buying.

Jahirul Amin recently created an awesome book about creating characters in Autodesk Maya, it's aimed at beginners and it's needless to say amazing. I been lectured by him through my University Degree and he was by far my favorite lecturer.

Thanks for the info, I'll be looking into those tablets. Is there a specific one you'd recommend? It seems there's a few different models available on Amazon, including a few non-Wacom brand 3D graphics tablets. I'm assuming Wacom is the cream of the crop brand though, right?

I hate to continue bombarding you with questions, but have you had any experience (positive or negative) with the 3Dconnecion SpaceMouse? It's got good reviews on Amazon, but simply wondering if you'd ever used one before. It seems like it'd be perfect for me simply because it'd get me as close as possible as being "hands on" without simply reaching into my clay and making something. Here's the one I'm looking at in particular:

http://www.amazon.com/3DX-700040-3Dconnexion-SpaceMouse-Pro-3D-Mouse/dp/B006GPZ17K

As for the Nvidia card, that won't be an issue with me. I have a really beefy gaming / editing PC I built a year back that has a GTX 980 Ti in it. So hardware wise I should be set!

Max and Maya, being now owned by the same company, are very similar and do pretty much the same things, with a few differences in little features. The general consensus seems to be that Max is superior for modeling and Maya is superior for animation, but in reality most shops will only use one piece of software if they can, so you're really more constrained by what type of work you want to do. Maya is far more prominent in the vfx/animation/film industry, and Max is used by many if not most game companies. That said, I think this will change in the future. Some game companies have switched to Maya already, and a lot of schools are now only teaching Maya. It may be that Max gets phased out as more people enter the workforce without knowing it.

There is a book that kind of breaks down the basics of both programs. It's decent, wish I could find my copy. http://www.amazon.com/Autodesk-Maya-3ds-Side-Side/dp/1598632426

Have a look at SCANN3D. I'm sure there are alternatives out there, but I don't know what they are. Of course, there's always Google.