I suggest Eovia's products, either Carrara Basics: http://www.eovia.com/products/carrara3D_basics2/carrara3D_basics.asp
or Daz's Bryce http://www.eovia.com/products/bryce/bryce.asp Both are capable of what you want to do with ease, both are easy (actually fun) to use, have excellent renderers, neither one will break the bank, and both give a lot of nice features and quality for the money. I use both (though I have the full version of Carrara), and while I don't have as much as I used to to play around with them, they're fun to tinker with. hth -- Philip Regan [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://homepage.mac.com/pregan REALBasic 2005r4, Applescript Mac OS 10.3.9 On 3/17/06, Aliacta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Here's the summary of what people recommended so far: > > I myself have been using Art Of Illusion <http://artofillusion.org> > lightly in the past but it's made in Java and I find it clumsy to > work with. It's open source and free though. > > Two persons recommended Cheetah 3D <http:www.cheetah3D.com> which > costs $99 and is made for OS X only. I did the "Hello World" > tutorial but couldn't obtain the animation you're supposed to get. > (The earth globe didn't rotate and I couldn't figure out why. For > every frame that was rendered another angle was shown in the field > that shows the angle in degrees, but in the finished animation all > frames are shot from the same angle and thus the planet doesn't > revolve.) I'll try again later from scratch. > > Blender 3D <http://blender.org> sounds promising on paper (even if it > seems hard to learn) but it didn't launch on my system (PowerBook G4 > 17" 1.5 GHz, OS 10.4). I have no time to figure out why. Blender is > open source and free. > > I took a short look at <http://brlcad.org> but what I saw and read > didn't convince me to download it. This app is developed by the > military and seems to be free. > > POV-Ray <http://www.povray.org> does only the ray tracing and isn't > therefore exactly what I'm looking for even though I've been told I > should be able to build simple shapes from scratch with it too. This > isn't exactly a GUI application either. I'm still mentioning it > since it's free and open source and seems to be highly regarded as > one of the best ray tracers around. Blender for example has export > scripts for it. > > Render-Boy <http://render-boy.com> is $39 shareware but it seems like > development has been stopped in February 2002. It's for Mac Classic > and it doesn't look like there's ever going to be an OS X version. I > didn't download it. > > Any other suggestions are still very welcome! > > Many thanks to those who responded so far, > > Marc > > >>Occasionally I set out to look for a 3D application for OS X that > >>doesn't cost an arm and a leg and is easy to learn. So far I've > >>never found one. I feel the need for 3D only about twice a year so > >>I'm not really looking for a high-end product. > >> > >>This time I'm taking the liberty of asking if anybody on this list > >>can recommend such a GUI application. > >> > >>As a selection criterion: I want to make a transparent glass ball > >>with a solid cube inside and appropriate shadows and reflections. > >>The surface of the ball should also reflect and appropriately > >>distort the image I have in a jpeg file. I'm looking for an > >>application that allows me to build this from scratch and gives a > >>photo-realistic end result, and I would ideally like to be able to > >>learn how to do the above in less than two hours by reading the > >>application's documentation. > >> > >>Any suggestions are welcome. > >> > >>Thanks, > >> > >>Marc > >> > >>PS: Feel free to respond off-list since this is OT. > _______________________________________________ > Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: > <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> > > Search the archives of this list here: > <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html> > -- _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives of this list here: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
