First of all: I'm coming from a 3D Cad background (I'm an engineer), so I'm experienced in using software like Catia, Solidworks and so on ...
Now I'm also really interessted in 3D animated stuff for things like short (TV) ads, 3D logos for brands or any other fancy cool stuff on webpages.
Really short question: Can you give me some tips on which software to learn?
There are too many to choose from! :(
3ds Max?
Maya?
Cinema 4D?
any other software I may not know?
What would you recommend?
P
Maya is most commonly used for 3D ads, shorts, and movies. If you're looking for the single most relevant package for your stated question, Maya is what you want. I believe they have a free trial version.
For game development, 3ds Max is the most popular package.
Blender has an idiosyncratic user interface, but it is open source and free to use; it is good enough to do professional-quality work.
You could do worse than try Blender (http://www.blender.org) - it's free :)
Another great package is Luxology Modo http://www.luxology.com/
Really great rendering as well.
Related
Apologies if this is a very specific and out of the blue type of question. Tekken 3 was one of the best games that left a lasting impression on me, growing up, especially the cinematic intro. For me it's still one of the best and coolest game cinematic intros ever, even compared to this era (giving it's been over 20 years now since the game's release). Even though I'm a software developer, I've always been intrigued by how such amazing cinematics intros are created. I've researched on Google everywhere, but unfortunately couldn't find a source that discloses such information. I know it's been over 20 years since and the game is quite old, but I still find it strange that there's no discussion anywhere online on how its amazing cinematic intro was created (what software(s) was used, how the cinematic effect was created ...etc). The best resource info I could find, simply talks about the game characters, moves ..etc. Nothing about the opening cinematic intro. Just for those who need a reference as to what I'm talking about, here's the video from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsvtUxEFQaU.
I'm aware it's a very complicated process that requires a highly experienced team to work on it, but I simply want to know what software and what kind of processes/effects were used (even guesses from experienced animators/developers would suffice) and as much information about the process as possible, would be really appreciated. There are numerous tutorials online about how to make computer animations on 3D std max, Maya, Unity and Unreal, but they all look like children Disney animations or animation from the actual game graphic itself, not the cinematic effect rendering you experience from Tekken 3 intro. If you watch its intro you will know what I mean. I would really appreciate any help and would be very intrigued to learn the process if somebody could provide me with a direction and some information on the software and processes used, just from a very high level view.
Thank you so much in advance for the help. You will literally be answering one of my main life's mysteries :)
but they all look like children Disney animations or animation from the actual game graphic itself
I'm sorry, but did we watch the same video? It's entertaining for sure but visually nothing impressive.
This doesn't look like an in-game cinematic so it's probably using a 3d animation package like 3DsMax/Maya/Softimage/etc.. These packages are also used for feature films so I'm not sure where you're getting at that it all looks like children Disney animations. They can also be used for live action for photo realistic renders. Though these days 3DsMax is mostly used for games, Maya is what's mainly being used for films as it's what the studios are using (for the most part, there's exceptions). These packages also include solutions for particle effects, and cloth simulations. Right now Houdini is king for these 2 though.
Of course what matters most is the skills from the team to make the most out of the software.
The process generally goes like this:
Create a script to define the story
Create concept art for characters and locations
Create assets (3d models/textures/shaders)
Rig the assets so they can deform
Animate the assets into shots (modeling/rigging/anim can work in parallel)
Do character effects on your finished shots (cloth, hair, rigid dynamics. This depends on your budget and is optional)
If you're using any other software for lighting/effects, you probably need to export your scene to cache data (alembic is a popular format)
Render everything out
Use a compositing software to add all different elements together and make final tweaks to the shot (optional)
I'm still missing a few stuff, especially for bigger productions, but that's the general idea.
I would like to create a mesh from pointcloud data. I am able to get pointcloud data from a Faro laser scanner. I can save it as .xyz, .dat, .asc formats. I can't afford to buy Geomagic wrap and would like to know if I can get a quality mesh with Meshlab. The meshes I make with my current software are not very smooth. The overlaps of the scanner make alot of noise. Can anyone point me in the direction of a workflow in Meshlab to convert an .xyz or other file type into an .stl or .obj
Here's the best I can do with wrap trial:
first attempt with a Wrap trial software
I can also supply the file to anyone who would like to take my .xyz file and use it to show the workflow. Thank you.
I think that meshlab can absolutely cover your needs.
You can find many surface reconstruction methods under:
Filters -> Remeshing, simplification and Reconstruction
The best results will most likely be given by the Screened Poisson Surface Reconstructiom option. Click on Help to get info about the avaliable parameters.
In addition meshlab have a lot of options for cleaning and basically for almost anything you want to do with meshes (and it has some point cloud features aswell).
Check the Support page.
David, Thanks for your reply. I'm glad to hear you think it's a good choice. I will update once I've figured out a workflow. This is what I accomplished with David software, but it took hours...enter image description here
My company is considering creating a interactive advisor(3d) for our customer. I was trying to find appropriate software for 3d modeling of human figure (realistic).
We are taken into consideration two approaches.
First option is to use one of the 3d modeling software for a creating model and the with help of some internal scripting language animate the model. The software should act as rendering server because 3d model should be reacting on user action in some way. Therefore we are considering applications that has some kind of scripting language.
The second option is to use 3d modeling software to create a character and then animate it with OpenSceneGraph.
There is also the hard way: do it all with OpenGL but I do not think it is a right way.
The project is at a very early stage of negotiations but I have to collect some knowledge to realize if its even possible to do that is such way. Therefore I have few questions:
Is it possible to use a software like Cinema 4d/Maya/Blender to animate in real time single character?
Which software would be the best to model a character (price is not an issue, what matter is rendering speed and very good 'realitness'). We are considering Maya, Cinema 4D, Blender or ZBrush, Poser, 3DMax (however last three does not have scripting language as far as I know).
Can OpenSceneGraph can be easily use for animating any character from software listed above?
As you can see the main issue is 3d software and question if it is possible at all :). I appreciate all suggestions.
Thank you in advanced.
The probably best way to do this is using a 3D game engine, like the CryEngine3 (it's free for noncommercial projects) or the Unreal3 engine. Technically you're interested in only the character animation, but you'll need sophisticated material and lighting support in addition for multi layered shaders. Those engines can do it.
3D Modelling programs like you suggested are not optimized for realtime rendering. Although Blender has a game engine built in with quite thorough shader support it may a bit hard to get started with it. But for modelling the character and get a high quality preview it's very well suited.
Is it possible to use a software like Cinema 4d/Maya/Blender to animate in real time single character?
The realtime rendering of each of those programs is meant as preview, not the final product. Blender has the game engine, but this is not optimized for such kind of things.
Which software would be the best to model a character (price is not an issue, what matter is rendering speed and very good 'realitness'). We are considering Maya, Cinema 4D, Blender or ZBrush, Poser, 3DMax (however last three does not have scripting language as far as I know).
Scripting helps you only so much with animating a character. You'll also need tons of reference and pose data from which the animation system can blend together the expression.
Can OpenSceneGraph can be easily use for animating any character from software listed above?
Not really. Use a game engine instead if you want to get this done fast. Take a look at the CryEngine3 gallery. And like said: The SDK is free if this is noncommercial. If the program goes commercial you'll require a licence though.
1.- http://www.thepixelart.com/10-best-real-time-animation-tools/
2.- I use Zbrush with 3D Studio Max. Combining those programs you can model a character really fast
Those 3 you mentioned (Zbrush, 3DMax & Poser) actually have script languages
Zbrush => ZScript
3DMax => MaxScript
Poser => Using Python => http://d3d.sesseler.de/store/tutorial/run_python/RunPython.pdf
3.- No idea on this :)
Luxology Modo is a very good option for your needs.
I'm quite interested in automatic images translation
to 3d models. Not really for commercial product, but
from the point of possible academic research and implementation.
What I'd like to achieve is almost transparent for user process
of transformation series of images (fewer is better) to 3d
model which might be shown in flash/silverlight/javafx or similar.
Consider online furniture store with 3d models of all items
in stock. Kinda cool to have ability to see the product in 3d
before purchasing it.
I managed to find a few pieces of software, like insight3d,
but it couldn't be used in my case I guess.
So, are there any similar projects or tips for me?
If it would require to write that piece of software - I'd
really love to dig into research on this field.
As was mentioned by David, this is a very hard problem. For a use case like the online furniture store, you're far better off asking for the 3D models from the manufacturer. That said, you can find some results immediately on Google by searching for things like "3D reconstruction" (but you get tomography results too), or "model generation from images". Here are some examples:
Make3D - Used for scene understanding for robotic navigation.
urbanscape - Reconstruction of buildings from street view video.
youtube video of PhotoScult - Commercial product.
The Youtube video has lots of related videos to commercial products, and I suggest looking at references in the papers, since this is still an actively researched topic.
This is an extremely difficult problem to solve. That's why you can't find a general purpose program that will do this.
I'm going to program a fancy (animated) about-box for an app I'm working on. Since this is where programmers are often allowed to shine and play with code, I'm eager to find out what kind of cool algorithms the community has implemented.
The algorithms can be animated fractals, sine blobs, flames, smoke, particle systems etc.
However, a few natural constraints come to mind: It should be possible to implement the algorithm in virtually any language. Thus advanced directx code or XNA code that utilizes libraries that aren't accessible in most languages should not be posted. 3D is most welcome, but it shouldn't rely on lots of extra installs.
If you could post an image along with your code effect, it would be awesome.
Here's an example of a cool about box with an animated 3D figure and some animated sine blobs on the titlebar:
And here's an image of the about box used in Winamp, complete with 3D animations:
I tested and ran the code on this page. It produces an old-school 2D flame effect. Even when I ran it on an N270 in HD fullscreen it seemed to work fine with no lag. The code and all source is posted on the given webpage.
Metaballs is another possibly interesting approach. They define an energy field around a blob and will melt two shapes together when they are close enough. A link to an article can be found here.
Something called a Wolfram Worm seems so be an awesome project to attempt. It would be easy to calculate random smooth movement by using movement along two connected bezier curves. Loads of awesome demos can be found on this page:
http://levitated.net/daily/index.html
(source: levitated.net)
I like a lot the Julia 4D quaternion fractal.
(source: macromedia.com)
Video: Julia 4D animation in F#