Hey guys and gal,

Much like Chris Huggett in the topic of Cinema 4D, I too work full time and looking to expand from After Effects to 3D but have no idea which 3D program to choose from. Most of my work is with opens, show packaging, JibJab type animations and more recently a ton of maps. Needless to say I don't see myself working on the next Monster's Inc anytime soon. But If I do decide to get into that at some point I want to make sure I at least start on the right software. Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of learning new software, however difficult, I just need some help choosing.

Also, I'm not too sure what the current trends are but I keep hearing that too move up the payscale ladder I need to know Shake and Maya ( Whats up with AE7 32 bit, is that not enough?). And I only mention pay because I do have a family to support and I have to take this into consideration even though what I really want to do is... (insert cliche word here).... direct! Any help is much appreciated,

Thanks,

Luis

PS: I forgot to mention that my job has Shake and Maya already installed, but I keep hearing that Cinema 4D is the way to go especially in regards to integration with After Effects. Help!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2006 03:36AM by lueyluey.

If you already have Maya....well.....I'd be surprised they would shell out more money for a different application.

Cinema 4D will output multiple passes to After Effects, Combustion, Apple Motion, eyeon Fusion, and FCP as native project files, which you'd have to build up and render out manually in Maya or other 3D apps. Cinema 4D is a bit easier to get up to speed on and grasp, but Maya is the king out there, so Maya experience makes you very employable.

Similarly, Shake is a compositing industry standard, which uses a node-based interface, as opposed to a layer/timeline based interface. Node-based compositing has its advantages over AE's layer compositing, but ultimately you can do the same work in either; it's just a matter of how quickly and easily you can get the work done. You can dabble in node-based compositing with dvGarage's Conduit Demo for Apple Motion 2.0, although Shake is pretty cheap now, being under $500, or much less educationally.

mschirad
www.wmaeug.net

Thanks for your advice. I do need to learn 3D rather quickly ( in 2-3 weeks) and I am leaning more towards Cinema 4D. If I do get more into working in 3D how difficult do you think it will be to transition from Cinema 4D to Maya? Also have you heard anything about MoGraph?

If you can do the same work in either Shake or After Effects why go to Shake? Since it's the standard there's got to be something Shake has that AE just can't do ( besides the node based UI) or Shake just does it better, more efficiently, etc, than AE. AE is 32 Bit, so I am asuming Shake is higher resolution for film, maybe thats the reason? Again thanks for your response.

Luis

I used Maya for 3 years. Learned quite a bit of it. Was really good with MEL scripting (well you need to be with Maya) I tried a demo of C4D a while back and was completely blown away with it. I dropped Maya like it's hot. The benefits of Maya only show when you are working in a large house with the need for heavy custom tools and deep character animation. But for the individual user (especially doing mograph work), C4D is about ideal. Maya is calibrated to a much higher complexity. Which is awesome if you need it complex. But the downside is that you're dragged through the Maya way even for simple stuff.

I can bang out stuff in C4D way quicker with a much better looking internal render than with Maya. The Mograph module is a freaking dream. Not only for mograph, but for many other things.

Even though I have a full seat of Maya 7, I never touch it. Maxon brilliantly ripped off some of the best elements of Maya, Max, SoftImage and Lightwave and put them in one, powerful, logically laid out environment.

Download the free demo of C4D 9.6 and the free Maya PLE and play with them both. I think the choice will be clear.

While I haven't used MoGraph, I've gone through the demo information, and it's almost like Apple Motion for 3D animation - a broadcast must-have.

After Effects used to be a 16-bit color space program at best, with work-arounds to fit into a film pipeline. Now it's 32-bit, or a good portion of it is. AE 7 Pro is $1000 retail, while Shake 4.1 is $499 retail (formally $3000). Shake is at heart a compositor, and built for detailed rotoscoping, keying, core VFX work. AE will pump out motion graphics material much more easily, and give you most of the tools you'd need for compositing as well. Shake has been known for being able to render very quickly, especially using Q-Master's net-rendering. As Maya is scriptable using MEL, Shake is fully scriptable, therefore customizable, if you want to learn the language.

I'm scared of scripting, however.

mschirad
www.wmaeug.net

This seems to be a fairly old thread, so I hope someone will respond. I need to integrate 3D into motion graphics work as many posters above and am also debating which software to go with. I've done learning versions of both and found Cinema much easier to learn. This seems to be the general consensus in this thread, so I wanted to find out if this is still the case for everyone as the thread is from 2006 and it's 2009 now. I do not need to do character animation, the software would primarily use it for Motion design. We also already have a very well trained Maya user so if we needed character animation for some strange reason, he could easily do it. We have five Designers with extensive After Effects skills that need to learn 3D, so I think the interface of Cinema would benefit us as it is easier to understand and integrate into my current workflow. I think I have pretty much made the decision, but could really use some recent opinions to help sell it to my boss.

well i don't know if you still need that advise but here i go. first as you said it your self cinema is the way to go specially with the last release i had also the same situations of yours so i just show my boss the time he could save by taking a full seat of c4d i did get a full copy on my training classes so he could see it in actions and trust me i did a pretty damn good times with maya but in c4d is ridiculous so he is thinking it as we speech since my license finish in 2 or top 3 more weeks so. render times is faster, projection man makes everything easy and mographs is the cherry on top.