Animator vs. Gmax

[chris]

Anyone who has used both Animator and Gmax, what were your impressions of each? I have some experience with gmax. Should I stick with it or should I switch to what everyone else in the Orbiter community uses?

thanks.

 

[MJR]

I personally think that Anim8or is really easy to use.

 

[computerex]

Anim8or is really easy to use, fast, and can do nearly everything GMAX can do. GMAX on the other can be difficult to use, however it automates a lot of tasks you have to do manually in Anim8or.

 

[n0mad23]

Let's add Blender to this discussion as well.

I've only used Anim8or, but have wondered often about Blender. Anyone have pros and cons to share about this one?

 

[MJR]

I once tried it for a day or two and got sick of it because I thought that it was a little bit complex.

 

[tl8]

All are free, and all have exporters and importers for mesh files. Which ever one you like is the best

 

[Notebook]

One thing that some may miss, is that gmax dosen't come with a built in renderer, though I did see on the Turbosquid site that its possible to use a third party. I have 3ds MAX 5.1 version, and gmax is a good enough substitute to develop meshes on my tame old 700MHz laptop. Good enough for my talents, that is!

N.

 

[MJR]

All of them are up to my standards, but I prefer Anim8or.

 

[n0mad23]

Maybe I'll have to give both GMax and Blender a try. The current issue for me in Anim8or is how poorly it behaves after you get to a certain length. After about 60 km, Anim8or starts corrupting my objects - moving things out of position, and actually 'crumpling' my circular solar panels. This will not do!

It bums me out though - I don't look forward to the learning curve of either Blender or Gmax.

 

[NukeET]

Good discussion!

Does anyone have enough experience with all 3 to post a pros vs cons for each?

I have only used Anim8or so far. The learning curve isn't flat, but not too steep.

 

[computerex]

Well anim8or is extremely simple to use. It's like the MS Paint of photo manipulation tools. It's extremely flexible, anything can be done in it. Blender is for people who are fans of keyboard combinations. It has a different interface that will take getting used to, but once you have mastered it you get work done very efficiently. Gmax is difficult to use, but has many many features that are quite useful.

 

[unussapiens]

Blender is also very good for texturing, it has easily the best interface I've seen for UV mapping. It also has several incredibly useful modifiers for things such as smoothing, mirroring and other deformations (make sure you apply them before exporting).

As computerex said, Blender is base around having all the controls available at the press of a button. Once you learn the basic hotkeys you can do almost anything really quickly.

From my experience with anim8or (which is very limited) it is not as flexible as blender. Particularly the UV mapping, and possibly mesh editing in general, but that could be because I am used to Blender.

If anyone wants tutorials for Blender, PM me.

 

[Chode]

I would recommend trying out AC3D. It's not free ($80), but it has a 14 day free trial period. After trying out anim8or and Blender, I was not satisfied with the results, and eventually found AC3D. There are free Orbiter .msh import and export add-ons available, which work well. Applying textures and UV mapping are also quite powerful, and fairly easy to figure out.

Regards

 

[chris]

Thanks for all the responses.

I did a couple of addons in gmax (but they're pretty bad so I wont release them) and I had the following three problems:

1. I found it very difficult to do up-close detail work. When I zoomed in on an object it would disappear. I think the real problem here is my lack of experience, but I point this out as something a beginner like me might run in to.

2. If I mirrored an object, it would also mirror the faces, meaning that if you have a cube with external-facing faces, when you mirror it, the faces are on the inside of the cube. The result in orbiter is an odd, "turned inside out" appearance.

3. I did a lot of my work by creating primatives and then punching out other shapes. For example, I might create a cube and push it into another shape, then subtract the cube, leaving a hole for a window in the other shape. Sometimes when gmax would recompute all the verticies, it would end up looking like a crumpled soda can. I was told on another form that I should be creating and removing faces instead of subtracting primatives, but I had problems with that technique because of point 1 above.


It's been over a year since I last played with gmax, but I have an idea for an addon so I'd like to start playing with it again. I'm wondering if I should switch to Anim8or or stick with gmax.

 

[jedidia]

I never looked into Blender, since I was so fortunate to come around 3DsMax in Bosnia for... well... less than a sandwich would have cost me in Switzerland.

However, I know the guys from VegaStrike are mostly using Blender, and they do some very good stuff with it. There are aso plenty of tutorials about it in the VegaStrike-forum.

I never heard about GMax, and the only thing I use anim8or for is converting .msh to .3ds, but I had the impression from briefly looking at it and from doing texturing for people that use it that the UV-mapping tools it provides are highly insuficient.

 

[computerex]

I never heard about GMax, and the only thing I use anim8or for is converting .msh to .3ds, but I had the impression from briefly looking at it and from doing texturing for people that use it that the UV-mapping tools it provides are highly insuficient.

Unfortunately that's true...Anim8or does not allow you to create UV maps. However there is an excellent free UV mapper, which works quite well. There is a link for it inside the add-on developer resource thread inside the add-on developer forum, however googling, "Free classic UV mapper" should turn it up.

 

[Donamy]

AC3D is the way to go !!

 

[Cosmos]

I have used all three, but it is really down to your preference. I like Blender and those that think it's too complex should give it another try. The tutorials help greatly and while I'm very new to modelling it is not
that difficult.

 

[Urwumpe]

I would recommend trying out AC3D. It's not free ($80), but it has a 14 day free trial period. After trying out anim8or and Blender, I was not satisfied with the results, and eventually found AC3D. There are free Orbiter .msh import and export add-ons available, which work well. Applying textures and UV mapping are also quite powerful, and fairly easy to figure out.

Let's hope the Euro value increases over the next months a bit instead of taking the other way... 50€ is something I might afford...

 

[francisdrake]

I am using Gmax (tried AC3D some time ago, very little of Animator, also AutoCAD).
I decided to go for Gmax and am happy with it!

It is powerfull (manipulating everything from big mesh groups to single vertices and polys), has a very clear (and widely customizable) user interface, and is IMHO easy to use. Once I understood what kind of bodies (primitives and meshes) there are and what I can do with them, the modifier and context menus became very clear to me.

I did the tutorials from the Turbosquid site. It took me about a day to learn 90% of what I needed, the rest I looked up in the help file or forums.
____
Just a word on Gmax and Window Vista: The current Gmax version 1.2 has problems with DirectX under Vista. The display panes flicker once any selection or operation is carried out, and screen redraws has often to be triggered manually.

The workaround is to use the HEIDI driver (it is software based and a little slower, but fully workable on a modern computer). The disadvantage are fuzzy looking corners and some texture bleed-through of close surfaces in shaded view. This is only in the viewports, the models themselves are allright, without any error.
There are rumors in the forums a Vista-compatible version of Gmax shall be released eventually.