Michael Peligro wrote: > 1. Are there any "Maya" or "Alias Wavefront" equivalents that are affordable > for him to learn and use? Or does he need to work (or apprentice) for > ImagineAsia Studios to further hone his skills?
There is Maya Personal Learning Edition which is free. But this version is available only for Windows and Mac, even though there are full versions of Maya for Linux. There's a catch, though. All your creations will bear a watermark, i.e., the word Maya repeatedly printed all over your work. A popular alternative for Linux is Blender. It is well documented and has quite a big user base. And it'll probably see more improvements now that it's open source. HOORAY for that! Unlike most other 3D software for Linux, Blender is a suite of modelling, animation, and rendering tools. But nothing beats an apprenticeship in a production house. We had several batches of Softimage and Maya training before in ImagineAsia, but alas there won't be any of it soon or in the near future. Anyway, Blender would still be a good alternative for learning 3D on Linux. > Of course he can only use his workstation for design/creation purposes only, > and he can never afford a render farm (he also sincerely hopes that someday > in the future, several clustered Linux on legacy machines (Pentium I, II) can > serve as a "poor man's" render farm). Or can he crunch the images in his > computer's spare cycles overnight? Yes, he can do that. A single box--a PIII/Duron 550 MHz, at least 256MB RAM (the more the better), and GeForce card--would be decent enough for both an artist desktop and render machine and simpler than a cluster of legacy machines. > 2. What software is used for "image-crunching?" There's already a rendering tool in Blender. But learning to use special rendering software like BMRT would be nice. BMRT, which is free for non-commercial use, churns out very good images but is very slow. Renderman is the most popular and the most expensive. It's fast too but there are some things it can't do such as global illumination, which BMRT can do. (I'm not sure about the new release of Renderman, though.) There's also Entropy, a fast BMRT, but not free. All software I've mentioned works for Linux, or I'll be off-topic. For more resources, check out these links: http://www.blender3d.com http://www.aliaswavefront.com http://www.linux.org/apps/all/Graphics/3D_Modelling.html http://www.linuxmovies.org -- this site has a mailing list and wiki pages worth looking into. > By the way, I hope I am not mistaking you for Benjamin Oris of ImagineAsia > Studios. I am that guy too. Benj _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fully Searchable Archives With Friendly Web Interface at http://marc.free.net.ph To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
