I need some advice: Switching modeling programs

Bopoe

Howdy I'm new to Polycount and I'm in need of some advice. I'm 15 right now and seeking to become skilled at modelling & animation, right now I'm using Lightwave 9.6 to do everything because it's the program my teacher taught my class with. during the class I've had a sneaking suspicion that light wave was not a very popular program. now that I'm on summer break I've been looking to get better and I find looking for Lightwave tutorials is very tedious. all of the tutorials I find either link to a broken geocities site, a 404, or are just for an out dated version of the program. So I'm wondering should I ditch Lightwave and start learning a more popular program like Autodesk, Maya, XSI, or even Blender.


if anyone could give me some help I'd greatly appreciate it, thanks.

LMP

3ds Max and Maya are the Standard Programs.

Advice for switching, model a simple object in your original program, then model it again in the new program. And, repeat until you are as fast in both programs.

passerby

3ds max is the most popular, and most studio want people to know Max or Maya, some people prefer one over the other for there type of work or workflow.

and tutorials it really doesn't matter if a tut is for your app, the skills can be used across the board.

also lightwave is by no means a bad modler it just kinda fills a niche market, along side other apps like silo, modo, wing3d etc.

Bopoe

@passerby
which niche does Lightwave fill?

EarthQuake

3ds Max and Maya are the top two industry tools, you should learn one or both, even if just the basics like scene setup and baking normal maps and such. XSI is probably third but not enough studios use it to make it worth your time learning it.

Modo is a bit more modern version of lightwave, from some of the old lightwave developers actually, but more of a focused sub-d modeling tool. Modo is great in addition to something like Max or Maya.

Jedah

Simple workflow advice is to just find every good tutorial you can that teaches something you want to know and just do it. You will slowly start to find the various skills you learn come together to form a solid base.

Bopoe

I've been messing with blender for the past couple of days should I stop that and start learning 3ds Max or Maya?

Ace-Angel

Some guys at WETA use Blender, because they like that's it's free, however, when it comes to crunch time, they revert back to XSI.

I guess what I'm saying is you're going to have to learn an industry standard tool, at least one, anything else will be an extra asset for you.

ralusek

I use blender at work and zbrush for sculpting. Blender isn't bad for sculpting, it's just not very mature yet.

In my opinion, blender is the future, but you'll find a good deal who will oppose me on that. There was an article on the front page recently on an environment artist from epic (i think, gears of war 2 or something like that), and he casually said that he used blender. it didn't seem to get much notice, but he said that he just preferred it. why i mention it is because it's completely fine, and in many ways superior to it's competitors. the best part is that it's constantly being updated and fine tuned, i seriously will find an update with a great new feature at least every other week.

TeZzy

If you can model well in lightwave, then the knowledge should transfer. Doesn't hurt to learn blender but I would suggest learning max and/or both maya as your main. Though, as mentioned there are of course other software like modo and silo.

Honestly, if you understand modelling principles....it is really a matter of what program you are comfortable. But of course, if the company you want to work for uses a specific program then learning that should be your goal.

passerby

ya to sum it up there is nothing wrong with spending time to learn other apps, but if you got limited time you should stick to max or maya.

i think you will find that there are a few people who jumped between max and maya and maybe added additional tools to there world flow like silo or modo.

Bopoe

Thanks for the info everyone it was really helpful.

Wrath

Honestly, I would reccomend switching to Max. From my experience, Max's tools are slightly more fleshed out, but more stodgy about working in the 'Max way'. Maya is put together in a much cleaner and more logical way. It's much more transparent and easier to modify, change, and script for. I've often found vanilla Maya's base tools to be a a bit lax, but there are plenty of 3rd party scripts that can be found to beef it up.

You'd be very hard pressed to find anything that you can do in one that you can't do in the other...or in pretty much any software package. But as far as standards go, it's generally Max/Maya competting for the top spot with XSI in 3rd with a sizeable gap.