Threedee

I have been thinking for a while about expanding my retouching business to include some 3D imagery. Since I basically just work in print, my requirements are very different that most 3D modelers who work in film or broadcast. Indeed 3D is quite rare in print with a few exceptions (I actually met that guy when he was going to do some retouching on a shot Colin did for the now defunct Maximum Golf Magazine. Only Nir did too good a job with the food styling, so no retouching was necessary.).

Working in print I don’t really need any of the fancy animation features in the 3D programs. Since I intend to alter existing photos, not create my own images from scratch, I also have little interest in character animation or other cartoony techniques. I don’t plan on using the software all the time either like I do with photoshop. I have noticed that most of the 3D software is also very expensive. If I get this software I will pay for it myself, so keeping price down is a major consideration.

The three major programs are Maya, 3D Studio Max, and Lightwave. All are high end and quite expensive. Maya seems to be the standard for film. Max seems to be used a lot for video games, but also used in film and video. Lightwave gets a lot of use in broadcast. They are also the only company that even mentions print. I like the renderings I see in Max a lot, since they don’t tend to look all very shiny, but Max is a PC only program, so that rules it out. I haven’t looked at Maya very closely, but it looks very complex. I was most considering Lightwave and went through the effort of…er legitimately acquiring a copy, which only works in demo mode so far. When I loaded it up I didn’t have the first clue of where to start. Even after exploring it for a bit I never got very far.

I think that these big boys may just be too much program for my needs, so I looked for something cheaper. Actually years ago, in another period of trying 3D, I got a program called Ray Dream Studio. I never got very good with it; and I wasn’t very satisfied with its renderer, but I was happy with its capabilities and ease of use. It turns out that has been upgraded and combined with another program called Infini-D in a new program called Carrara. It’s render is faster and much improved and there are more features and it runs natively in OS X. It’s got a neat add on as well that will render to vector output, useful for flash animations (which I never do, but might start) and print. It also only costs $399, or actually only $199 for me since I have a copy of Ray Dream.

Of course it isn’t without its problems. It is a low end program and so doesn’t have the community, support, plug-ins and such that a more professional program would have. It also suffers from being merged from more than one program and so all features aren’t integrated smoothly. It also doesn’t have may features found in a higher end program, although many are not necessary for me.

So I downloaded a trial version. The trial version doesn’t let you save anything, but I managed to snag a few screen captures. Many of the controls are quite similar to Ray Dream which was both familiar and frustrating (I could never model well with Ray Dream). There were some nice additional feature and the renderer seemed both fast and effective. I made the image I posted here, which while a bit cheesey shows that this is a capable program.

I still haven’t decided but I will probably get the program. I still may try to get lightwave to work, but I seriously doubt I want to make that kind of investment. Actually, the biggest investment I have to make is my time: learning how to make good looking images.