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Best Modeling Programs

not_here

coming from the 3d art community before going into architecture, maya is well known to provide the best modeling tools on the market. 3Ds is used mostly by people concerned with polycounts and realtime rendering of exported models...

if i were to compare what i was doing with maya when compared to what i was doing with rhino during this past summer, i'd definitely back maya as having far more options than rhino and being a better modeling tool.

it also happens that maya comes with mental ray, which can be used for stunning renderings.

bill said photorealism is overrated... i disagree so much. ever try selling a building with a render done in rhino's integrated pos renderer? hah. like you'd even consider doing that.

anyways. if you are stuck with rhino like i am now, c4d provides awesome rendering capabilities and it's really easy to pick up when compared to mental ray.

and btw, whoever keeps recommending sketch up as a modeler... dude, lay off the drugs. get a real piece of software. sketchup is good for what its name implies: SKETCHING UP, not modeling.

enjoy ;-)

Aug 29, 06 8:14 pm  · 
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garpike

I think you may be a little narrow on your view of photorealism.

Aug 29, 06 8:26 pm  · 
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not_here

sketchy lines are pretty too, garpike, sorry, forgot to mention that, hehe.

Aug 29, 06 8:28 pm  · 
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garpike

Ooooo. Sketchy lines? No. I guess I was thinking of the more diagrammatic rendering such as this:



(Sorry for the black background, folks)

Aug 29, 06 8:46 pm  · 
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trace™

addictionbomb - it's really a misnomer that Maya is for animation/high end and Max is for games. That was true at one point, but that was many years ago (it's true that each has strong foothold in each respective industry).

Each can pretty much do what the other can, more or less. You see them used more throughout the industries (Max on movies, Maya on games). Also, they both come with Mental Ray.

i'd guess that they'll start heading in different directions now that Adesk owns Maya.

Aug 29, 06 9:48 pm  · 
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mvsuriano

There is no doubt Maya is one of the best modelers on the market...for the "3D art community". Its popularity is undeniable, but the fact of the matter is you'll find more models made in Maya of ninja turtles (sweet) than you will of buildings. That is what it is made for. You like it better because you were exposed to it, and trained in it, which is essentially what you have to be to extract quality information from it. No doubt it is a great tool when mastered, but Johnny Photoshop probably has neither the time, nor the money to invest in the countless pages of text and penguin tutorials that come with particle animation and kinetics, when he just wants to build an f'ing house for his grandma, sans worrying about the size of his polycounts.

Speaking to photorealism - it is overrated if you rely on it to heavily. Photorealism half-assed looks terrible, agreed, which becomes all the more reason to rethink how work gets represented, rather than forcing it and using it as a crux. Do it well or not at all.

I personally don't like eating soup with a fork, which is what making a scalable, and transferablly usable model in Maya is like for me, personally.

Bottom line to the intiator of this thread: Use what you need to get the job done and realize something good. It comes down to what you like and can get comfortable with. In the end, no one will care if you modeled and rendered it in the coolest modeler ever, or "Bob's Super Box Maker".

Stepping off the soap box...

Aug 29, 06 10:11 pm  · 
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A Center for Ants?

weird that autodesk owns both maya and 3ds...

with photorealism, the danger isn't the quality of renderings but rather of mis-representation or creating false expectations on the part of the client. it's great when you can make an amazing rendering, but what good does that do anyone if the lighting conditions will never match it, or if the materials aren't the same?

my firm explicitly tries to stay away from photorealistic rendering as much as possible except for the cases where the client needs promotional materials. and in those cases we always suggest spending money on a very nice professional model rather than renderings.

Aug 30, 06 12:31 am  · 
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trace™

I strongly disagree with the models over renderings for marketing materials (something to do with me doing professional renderings, perhaps). Mostly because your average Joe will certainly be seduced by a model being 'cool', but they'll have no idea about the actual spaces, materials (the plastic they put on the models hardly looks real. Cool, but not real).

There shouldn't be any reason why the lighting and materials won't be very close to what it'll look like, if done well.

A quality animation will give a better impression of how things will actually feel.

Also, you can use renderings in anything from showrooms to brochures to websites. Photos of models generally look like photos of models (if you are lucky, you get shiny little silver people!).

Models all look the same, essentially. Quality renderings are fairly hard to get and the demand is growing for qualified firms (projects are growing in size/scope).

Personally, I love models much more than renderings, but certainly not for marketing. It's just too hard to show people and too far from reality.

My 2 cents.



Adesk owning both is weird. I guess they figured they could own the market. I am guessing they'll start focusing Maya towards film and Max towards Arch/Product Viz and games. That's fine with me.

Aug 30, 06 8:16 am  · 
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Chili Davis
Best Modeling Program
Aug 30, 06 8:29 am  · 
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cowgill

is anyone else as exited as I am about Max 9 (supp releasing this fall) being 64 bit?

Aug 30, 06 10:13 am  · 
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emaze

It is unfortunate that garpike gave up only after 3 weeks on Revit. Did you have any training? If a firm is going to switch they have got to provide training on any new platform. It is curious on this thread that there seems to be a rift between BIM nonBIM modelers, can anyone else infer that? Also interesting that there is only one comment regarding microstation, and not concerning their GC, "smart geometry", concept. Any takers?

Aug 30, 06 11:18 am  · 
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+2

Thanks alot Surry for your comments! Your portfolio is very well done also (for the record).

I also appreciate your comments made in response to addictionbomb (no disrespect to him, because his comments are also valid to a certain extent). My firm has a version of maya (because a previous employee knew it, and convinced them to purchase it), and ive tried to play around with it using my knowledge of other modeling programs. As you can imagine, that didnt get me too far. If I was interested in motion, animation, or any kind of cinematic production, i think id invest in learning Maya. It appears that responses to the intital question that I asked in this thread, in addition to research that I have done since, concludes that Im going to continue to use 3ds. I just wanted to see if there was anything that people would recommend as alternatives.

I am going to look at Rhino and Vray though

Thanks alot for all the comments. Feel free to keep this thread alive, I think it is alot of interesting comments.

Aug 30, 06 11:54 am  · 
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not_here

gotta love being opinionated ;-)

Aug 30, 06 5:01 pm  · 
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flashpan

Gotta say that CATIA/Digital Project has easily the best surface modeller I've used, BIM aside. But I don't have enough experience with Maya - getting a copy next month.

Sep 2, 06 12:19 am  · 
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jsanz

hey emaze Revit renderings a bit cartoony - yeah if you are a beginner and dont know how to use it...... Most people that i see who use revit dont know how to create photrealist renderings but it is possible
check out this link
http://www.augi.com/revit/default.asp?page=373

Sep 9, 06 7:31 pm  · 
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bRink

Yeah, actually Revit users take one look at the renderings without knowing what they are doing and dismiss it... It takes some tweaking like any software to get used to how it works, but the results can be decent, and quick... Personally, I like Revit alot. If my office started using it I'd happily use it for rendering.

Sep 10, 06 5:13 am  · 
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auvn

for me, CAD 2007 is great modelling tool (no curves)
on photorealism, if you can really do photorealism, built work in photographs should look around 80% similar to renderings in term of light quality and materiality.

revit: give up

Sep 11, 06 11:51 pm  · 
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emaze

jsanz, I really should clarify my response regarding renderings, i.e. when you hit the render button, and you don't have all your materials defined (because if you want your rendering to look a certain way you have to take the time to define the materials), I was refering to the program right out of the box, and for most of the emerging revit market out there "beginner" is the classification. I had seen the link previously, thanks.

Sep 12, 06 12:20 pm  · 
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i.des

Best modeling programs....

Rhino and Revit...Those are my favorite

Sep 12, 06 1:40 pm  · 
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i.des

Best modeling programs....

Rhino and Revit...Those are my favorite

Sep 12, 06 1:40 pm  · 
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erin g

so ive read all of this and now id like a suggestion:

i am at an av engineering firm and my boss wants a 3d program that will give clients a photorealistic view of what we would design. ive suggested sketchup, but he doesnt like it. my only real experience is with viz and it seems like too much for what he wants, and i barely know how to use it. so, i need something that looks nicer than sketchup, that is easy to learn and use, and is relatively cheap. we arent designing spaces or anything, just av systems and acoustics.

Sep 13, 06 3:37 pm  · 
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Chili Davis

Vue.

Sep 13, 06 4:00 pm  · 
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Chili Davis

This might be better...

Vue.

Sep 13, 06 4:01 pm  · 
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wurdan freo

Anyone change their mind, two years later?

Jul 7, 08 3:56 pm  · 
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over_under

use maya/ rhino almost exclusively, especially for form finding... people around in my firm who are not as comfortable tend to group toward sketch-up... Revit is becoming prevalent if we have to submit a model to a general contractor... for in-house stuff maya mental ray rendering and v-ray do it for me.... unfortunately we ship our presentation rendering overseas for the max/vis/whatever the firms in china/india/argentina are using.

(honestly it kind of pisses me off that we dont do our presentation renderings in house, it feels like the architect can make his intentions more clearly known through his renderings, but it does save time/money)

Jul 7, 08 4:23 pm  · 
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Antisthenes

i use rhinoceros exclusively but i know everything else so i know i have made a good choice.

i also have helped people in other softwares with it as a middle tool too when i have to between illustrator sketchup max autocad et al

like a poster above said if you use autodesk stop.

Jul 7, 08 4:33 pm  · 
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Per--Corell

"ike a poster above said if you use autodesk stop."

And do what -- spagetti ?

Jul 7, 08 5:31 pm  · 
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