I need some advice: Switching modeling programs
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.
if anyone could give me some help I'd greatly appreciate it, thanks.
Replies
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.
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.
which niche does Lightwave fill?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.