Getting started in 3D

I originally posted this in response to a question on a forum on Dreamstime, but I thought it might be useful to the general public, so I'm reposting it here.

Let's say that you're interested in getting started with 3D... which software do you choose?

Well, the good things about choosing a piece of 3D software these days is that 1) you have a lot of options, 2) almost all of them have downloadable demos you can try out and 3) there's a lot of learning materials for all of them.

I've been working with 3D software since the mid 90's and here's my advice for someone who hasn't done 3D before....

Maya: Stay away from it. It's not new-user friendly (heck, it's not really user friendly), it's not particularly easy to learn, it's fairly expensive and by the time you learn it well enough to get your money's worth from it, they'll probably have 2 or 3 revisions out by then. Maya is amazing, but you're likely to get turned off from 3D altogether if this is your first experience.

3D Studio Max: Not a bad program, but very dated, and by many accounts, nearing the end of it's lifecycle. Everyone expects some new beast to come out from Autodesk in the next few years that'll replace it. Also, it's Windows only.

Modo: A new player to the game, but a pretty full-featured one and not a bad price. I'd elaborate on it more, but my experience with it has been limited. They're constantly adding new features, though, and it's quite a nice package for the money.

Lightwave: Used to be great, but has really fallen behind the times. I don't recommend it for a new user, either.

Cinema 4D: This is my personal favorite... It's very user friendly, it's very easy to start up and play with and get a feel for it, it's not terribly intimidating, it runs on Windows, OS X and Linux (though that's only for studios and hasn't been publicly released), there's a great user base and there's a non-time limited, full featured demo (except for saving out files, but you can do full size, non watermarked renders with it) and the company that makes it is constantly listening to the user and coming out with new things. A new version may well be announced at siggraph in a few months.

Blender: Blender is a super program, and I've used it off and on for years as well, but it's not the easiest to pick up right off the bat. It's open source, though, so the UI is constantly changing for the better. It can do quite a bit, and is a great place to start learning, if you want to take the time to learn it. It's also free, which is a big plus.

My suggestion would be if you have a little bit of money, go for Cinema 4D or Modo, but first try out the demos. I think modo's is fully featured (even saving files and renders) but only 30 days. Cinema 4D's demo can't save anything, but you can load and render any existing c4d file you can find, and it's not time limited, so you can really spend some time playing with it to see if you like it. If you don't want to spend money right now and are willing to learn an unusual workflow, go with Blender. For someone brand new to 3D, I'd stay away from the rest. I think Cinema 4D is probably the most user (and artist) friendly, followed by Modo -- but both of those applications still contains an immense amount of power, and you can get into either one for under $1000, but if you want to do everything that Cinema does, you'll need the studio bundle, but again, I'd wait until you needed it...

Like all the other opinions, you can take or leave them, but I've been doing this a while... I started with 3D Studio R2 (back in the mid 90's) and then Truespace, Hash's Animation Master, etc... then I did tech support for 3D Studio Max reseller for several years and learned lightwave to the point where I knew I didn't want to work with it, I found Cinema 4D. And love it.

Those are my thoughts, hope they're helpful to someone.

New look for the shop and a new design...

With some help/advice from a graphic guru friend of mine, I've got my shop in slightly better shape. This is the old look:

And the new look:


I'm not 100% satisfied with the new look, but I think it's a lot better than the old one. I'll probably revise it to be somewhere between the two before it's all said and done.

In addition, I've added a new design to the abstract section and I've started on the first of a series of characters. I've also added a Zombie section and the first design there. Here's the abstract (on black and white backgrounds) and zombie hunter designs added.

New design, new products...

I've added a new design to the 3D/abstract section, and I've added a couple of new products to those items. I added tote bags and mousepads to all 3 of the existing designs, in addition to all the black t-shirts and the coffee mugs that were already there. I took the steins out -- I can't really imagine someone buying one of those with one of these bizarre graphics on it, though I think the mousepads could be a big hit if people can find them (which is always the trick).

Anyway, here's the new design:


More to come!

New designs, another sale, and Google found me!

Well, I made another sale of the ever-popular *grin* Mike Huckabee's Plan for Border Security (which is 2 words: Chuck Norris) -- I'll be more excited when one of my own designs sells one, but I'm happy to have sold a handful of these so far.

I also created a new category -- 3D/Abstract -- and will be adding various things to that... it will probably open up some new categories for me besides just t-shirts... I think mugs or maybe even clocks/notebooks or something could work, depending on the design. The tough part with this is getting it to take up the maximum space, but not cutting off the outer edges of the design (so there's a visible seam at the end) -- it'll get easier as I move to other designs, I think. Here are the two designs up in the abstract 3D section currently:


I think the abstract designs *could* do well, but people finding them is going to be the hard part... I could turn them into backgrounds and cross-promote, but I'm not sure... we'll see. Also, if anyone is interested, I'm using Cinema 4D R10.1 from Maxon to create and render these abstracts.

Also, my shop seems to now be listed in Google! Someone found me by looking for a shirt about having twins. They, of course, found my shirts about *not* having twins, but that's good nonetheless. It doesn't look like Google has updated their version of my store lately, but I suspect it won't take long.