Ideal 3D software (for me)?

[epoclaen]

I've been using 3DS Max v9 for a while now but I'm not overly impressed by the results. I'm looking to do animated short films and clips with anything from simple cartoony characters to fully textured characters with displacement and texture maps. For the record, I'm using:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ CPU
2x 512Mb RAM
WinXP 32bit
Nvidia GEforce 7600 GT GPU

Issues I don't like about 3DS Max:
1. No audio integration into animation
2. Hair is dreadfully sluggish.
3. Biped, skin, & Physique rigging and weighting of vertexes (even with vertex painting) is dreadfully slow and arduous.
4. Cloth and Reactor simulations are horribly resource-intensive and slow.
5. Numerous tools that do very similar things but discovering the tools and their differences is sometimes difficult and confusing.

Now I know most people will suggest trying out the various other 3D animation options (Maya, XSI, Lightwave, Blender3D, etc...) but to be honest, researching all of those (assuming a 1 month period for trial versions of each) could take 4 to 6 months of digging and research. So I'm looking for opinions on what to try before getting into the research and trial part.

I'd like:
1. Audio integration for animation. I've only seen a few lip-sync specific applications but I'd much rather have sound and lip-syncing bundled all in one package. Am I going about the workflow of animation all wrong here? Is this a post-production task rather than one that's typically handled during animation?
2. Faster applications of CPU-heavy processes. I hear that 3DS Max 2008 is faster in general but I'd like to look at other options before possibly trying the upgrade. I read that Maya's Cloth system is very dynamic and accurate but whether that will be the case on my system is questionable. Is it a matter of upgrading my hardware maybe?
3. Tools that don't force me to completely relearn 3D modeling terms and processes. Zbrush is great and I expect to be using it on occasion but the 2.5D pixel environment takes considerable learning to get used to. Last time I tried Maya I found it too hard to find the tools I needed but maybe this has changed since Autodesk bought them out. I don't mind learning a new system but if it's going to be a fight to figure stuff out then it severely hampers my use of the application.
4. A quicker, easier character rigging and controls system. Max has some great features but I found them really time-consuming to use. Rigging a skeleton to a mesh and weighting the vertices shouldn't be rocket science. I mean how hard is it to figure out that if you have a Biped skeleton and you skin it to a mesh that the joints should be weighted like so and bulge like so without the explicit need for Bulge Deformers and Joint Deformers and such? Painting weights in 3DS Max is sluggish and clumsy compared to Zbrush's texture painting and sculpting tools. I'd like something with Zbrush's speed for use in vertex weight painting.

Thanks,
Jeff

[DeadSpace]

Maxon Cinema 4d, it has audio integration (.wav) built into timeline with placeable speakers/mics in scene, up to 7.1 sdds, hair, fur and feathers. Has bodypaint 3d bundled, model painting in app, character rigging, bones/joint structures, dynamics, physics, and imo, better particle system then 3ds.
as to lip synch...only one i know of that's reliable is mimic pro from daz, it exports in poser format though, so there's several steps getting the lip sync animation to C4D :/
Export from mimic, import to poser, export again for use in c4d
edit mimic only supports poser ready models last i checked too, very limited use if your using custom characters

[Vortex]

o.o Video rendering on that platform is going to be painful....

[Coyote]

Check out Blender3D. I love the controls. It took me a while to convert from 3DS, but once I got it, they where very intuitive. Plus it is cross platform, small size, quite powerful.

[cyzada]

I got started with Lightwave before going to college. I've been using Maya for about 7 years, zbrush for a little less. Most of what I have to say pertains to Maya/zBrush.

1. Audio. In Maya I only have to drag an audio clip to the timeline, and it appears there in wave(graphical) form. It can be adjusted as needed. I use this primarily for lipsyncs, also good for effects(explosions, etc.). If you create a playblast of the animation, which is very quick(not pretty), it will output the sound as well, giving a nice preview.

2. Hair is usually sluggish, especially if you don't know what you're doing. The Maya hair system, typically, starts with follicle nodes, curves are attached to these nodes. They can be dynamic or not. You would then need to determine how you want the hair to act/react to physics. Curliness, density, etc. After that you would need to apply a graphic to the hair, probably with paintFx. There's a not small amount of examples and presets for you to digest, installed by default. Hair is complex, and it will take a good bit of time to get looking right. I would take a page out of the game design bible and use polygon planes for large sections of hair, add texture, and make multiple layers. It's incredibly fast, looks good(skill dependent). If it(hair/strands) need to move, make a joint chain and bind the piece of hair you'd like to animate. Simulation is expensive(time), difficult and specialized. Simple is better.

3. Rigging can be very unpleasant. It's also very rewarding, and vital to character development. Rigging is it's own career path, well TD. It takes a lot of work, you must learn the hierarchy system your platform uses, and you have to practice, and fail, a lot. Painting weights is my least favorite part of rigging.
If you put a lot of time in, and really try to learn and figure things out, it is one of the most rewarding aspects of the character pipeline. There is a plugin called The Setup Machine(TSM) for Maya, it uses only Maya nodes, and is therefore compatible with most versions of Maya, and it doesn't require the plugin to be installed for other people to use the rig you make. Very good for telecommuting team projects. You're essentially matching the TSM character pose to your characters pose, and press the button. It will rig your character and apply default weights. This is not perfect, with some weight painting and tweaking you could have your character moving in no time.
I use this plugin primarily for the weights it outputs, I copy the skin weights and paste them onto the character I rigged manually and then fix the weights. Saves me hours on the weight painting front. They also have a facial rigging setup plugin, though I haven't used it.
Rigging is long, time consuming and fraught with errors and hurdles. This requires critical thinking and determination, time, practice and effort. It's not rocket science, but it is a hierarchical science.

4. Cloth is much like hair, slow, complex. It's dependent on knowledge, and time put in. That being said, I'm a huge fan of the Nucleus physics node in Maya. I can simulate 70-80 frames on a high poly mesh(60k polys) in under an hour. The higher the polycount, the better the simulation(less popping, less interpenetration), the longer it takes, and the larger the file size. Things to take into account-
What does the cloth collide with? Does it collide with itself? Do I really need to use cloth? Can I cheat?
Depending on what you use, you may not get proper self-collision of cloth to begin with. For every surface the cloth has to react with, you're basically doubling to processing required. Do you really need to use cloth? Probably not, a fully rigged character with dynamic cloth and hair is INCREDIBLY resource heavy, it may look awesome, but you probably won't be able to animate it or pan the camera in your scene without crashing. Can you cheat? Yes, always. It's faster, and usually easier. I use influence curves on sleeves, joint chains on dangly bits, paint the weights and animate them as necessary.

5. zBrush is fantastic. It's 3D, but people still seem to have problems with it. It's not like your other programs, it's unique and you have to put time into it. If you don't have a Wacom(or equivalent) it may seem unwieldy, it is designed for tablets. Navigation aside, you're never rotating the camera, only the object. You can paint on the canvas(like a flat painting) or you can drop the model onto the canvas and begin sculpting. It talks well with other programs, has a decent UV layout plugin(included), does normal/disp. mapping(of course), supports blendshapes from/to Maya. Has great tools for texture painting, and plays nice with PS. I use zBrush for many things, and we get along nicely.

You want to make your pipeline easier and more effective, understandably. All of these specialties take countless hours and intimacy with your platform/s to make any headway. I've been doing this for 7 years, and I'd say within the past year and half I've finally gotten my full pipeline solidified. I model, rig, texture, retarget mocap data, and work with realtime engines/art assets. Keep doing work, learn more about the programs you use already, study other peoples techniques, study rigging theory and always apply what you've learned to something practical. Always be learning.

[Vulture]

maya user here as well. 3 years. cloth/hair/physics, will be processor intensive. i tend to use "fur" instead of hair in most cases. learn to "cache" whenever applicable.

cloth in maya is terribly versatile. you can use it to do rough simulations of shattered surfaces, object collisions, as well as more mundane cloth processes.

straight up physics collisions between rigid bodies in maya are not so forgiving. I have never gotten them to work correctly.





Do you really need to use cloth? Probably not, a fully rigged character with dynamic cloth and hair is INCREDIBLY resource heavy, it may look awesome, but you probably won't be able to animate it or pan the camera in your scene without crashing.
i rectify this, by taking the geometry with cloth attributes on it, duplicating it and making a switch to turn visibility on-off between the geometry with the cloth, and without.

i then "cache" the animation for how many frames i think i want to animate, then turn the visibility off of the cloth object with the switch. i then animate per normal, with the visible stand-in duplicated geometry, rigid. when done with setting my keyframes, i make the cloth visible, and re-cache from the beginning. the cloth then follows the rig and animates however i had it attached. then i can work the cloth attributes to look good with the original keyed animation.

[Firebrand]

You need to get some plugins I think. I had an animator add sound into a video he did for me and he's never mentioned any of these problems you have. Also, keep in mind that 3DS Max is industry standard in the game industry for a good reason. It pretty much does everything. Switching to Maya or SoftImage (if anyone even still uses that) will still leave you with other holes that need to be filled in via plugins. Choose your battles.

Also keep in mind that an artist does not limit themselves to one tool if the one tool does certain things shitty. Use what's best for the situation rather than attempting to use a hammer to turn screws.

[epoclaen]

Well this is from 3 years ago but thanks for the recent replies! In all that time I only updated myself to 3GB RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 210 Graphics card. High time for a new system!

I've come to reject the Hair & Fur and Cloth modifiers as ways to model hair for my purposes. If I were doing high-value productions then yes, I would work with those options but the cost in render time is too restrictive for me and my system. Reactor seems to deliver the results I need at much less cost.

As for rigging and painting weights onto vertices, I still find it arduous and annoying but have gotten used to dealing with it.

Thanks again for the replies!

[TenochAcampicht]

Might I recommend Zbrush, it's very easy to learn and you can make characters easily.

[Firebrand]

Scultris is considered Zbrush Lite, works differently, and is free (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.).

[TenochAcampicht]

Scultris is considered Zbrush Lite, works differently, and is free (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.).

I downloaded it the other night when the internet was still working at home, it's easy to use, very small and lots of features, I dunno if you can animate though, whereas I know that Zbrush has stuff for animation. Specifically bones, IK, etc.

There is though a great program that has a free version called Endorphin.
It is a dynamic motion system and works realtime to make custom animations and natural behaviours.