I thought I'd throw a shout-out to Lightwave 11.5. Lightwave has always been aimed at the one-man-band setup (which means it's very well-suited to indie films where one person wears many hats).
They nearly killed it with the whole CORE fiasco and for a time it looked like Lightwave was going to fade into irrelevancy, but they've turned it around and v11.5 is finally getting a lot of the modern touches it so desperately needed.
For those of you who just never got anywhere with Blender (like myself) but need a solid 3D package that's cheaper than Maya or Houdini, you might want give Lightwave a look. It also comes with one of the best built-in renderers there is -- fast and beautiful and far easier to learn than Mental Ray and the like. I was up and running with full GI on day 1. It also comes with a library of real-world lens and camera models so if you need to exactly match lens distortion you won't have to try to do it manually.
(I'm a bit of a fanatic as it's the only 3D program that really clicked with me. I never got anywhere with 3DSMax, and Maya is a complex swiss-army-bus that can be a bit of a minefield for 3D newbies. Also, Lightwave is extremely tablet-friendly, and I highly recommend a tablet + mouse/trackball combo when using it.)
They nearly killed it with the whole CORE fiasco and for a time it looked like Lightwave was going to fade into irrelevancy, but they've turned it around and v11.5 is finally getting a lot of the modern touches it so desperately needed.
For those of you who just never got anywhere with Blender (like myself) but need a solid 3D package that's cheaper than Maya or Houdini, you might want give Lightwave a look. It also comes with one of the best built-in renderers there is -- fast and beautiful and far easier to learn than Mental Ray and the like. I was up and running with full GI on day 1. It also comes with a library of real-world lens and camera models so if you need to exactly match lens distortion you won't have to try to do it manually.
(I'm a bit of a fanatic as it's the only 3D program that really clicked with me. I never got anywhere with 3DSMax, and Maya is a complex swiss-army-bus that can be a bit of a minefield for 3D newbies. Also, Lightwave is extremely tablet-friendly, and I highly recommend a tablet + mouse/trackball combo when using it.)
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