which plugin is good?

[Dominique]

Nice list if your'still on Max5 and 3 years ago,
6000bucks!!, joyeux Noël!!
First; I'll answer because I wouldn't go for your list, and Second:
Seriously, I would buy only if I need them, this said;

http://forums.cgsociety.org/images/icons/icon2.gifAfterBurn
Illustrate is fantastic, check out FinalToon as well, choice won't be easy but Toon has a couple of features as it's more recent, like japanese brush-Styles,
There's a pro-pack for PFlow, forgot the name, which I would take Instead of Thinking Particles or sandblaster and Phoenix.
ACT or Hercules
Power-Booleans, this should be standard for years!!
Real-Flow-Wave, but new softs are coming out maybe more performing, this is a technology evolving fast,
VRay
DarkTree
Z-Brushhttp://forums.cgsociety.org/images/icons/icon6.gif
DreamScape
http://forums.cgsociety.org/images/icons/icon13.gifDVD-Pack from Cg Academy, nice to have it all, learning to use them well is another thing,
people like Paul Neale Bobo, Alan and manyothers are doing a marvelous job, I only had the chance to buy 1 DVD for the shool where I was Teaching, and I learned a hell of a lot.
Other DVDs, on V-Ray for example...,
Books, depending on what kinda work you're doing,
For Digi-people and Head-Designer; no Idea, ther might be Alternatives like Poser or even a simple version of XSI.
A good compositing package is welcome as well, I personally prefer AfterEffects,
PhotoShop
So you need trees, check out all of them and try them!
Personnaly i wouldn't take Bones-Proand Clay-Studio,

and what do you want to do with all these, i do have a slight idea :),

cheers,
Dominiquehttp://forums.cgsociety.org/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Stefan-Morrell]

depends really.. on what your interests are

Afterburn works in Max 8 so version 7 shouldnt be a problem
you should also grab a 25$ cgtalk membership which will give you a 100$ voucher good for any of the ACAP plugins from turb squid,
Dreamscape is fairly good at setting up quick landscapes
Afterburn is good if only for the thrill of blowing stuff up :)
Final Render Stage 1 would be the best plugin I've got this year,(comes with Finaltoon bundled)
other renderers may interest you too,Vray,Brazil etc

Polyboost & Orionflame could be a couple others worth looking into


Cheers
Stefan

[Gräck]

I would recommend you to check out CAT www.catoolkit.com (http://www.catoolkit.com).

[seedo]

oookay now am confuse, z brush isnt an endependent softwar?

i have adobe after effects 4 and photoshop 8 and priemer 7 pro and illustrator 11, and i have combustion4 and i have poser 6 and i have zbrush 2 and flash 8, and max 6 7 and 7.5, i dont have much plugins i just have vray and hair and fur, yep dreamscape is cool.
but any way am still studying max and am pretty good and am a pro in using photoshop and illustrator and flash.

i want these plugins cuz am intersted in making animation movies and gamrs though i dont know how to be a part of making a game, any way thank u and am waiting for others to say what they think.

[Dominique]

oookay now am confuse, z brush isnt an endependent softwar?

True, it's even better and great you have a version of it,

i have adobe after effects 4 and photoshop 8 and priemer 7 pro and illustrator 11, and i have combustion4 and i have poser 6 and i have zbrush 2 and flash 8, and max 6 7 and 7.5, i dont have much plugins i just have vray and hair and fur, yep dreamscape is cool.
but any way am still studying max and am pretty good and am a pro in using photoshop and illustrator and flash.

i want these plugins cuz am intersted in making animation movies and gamrs though i dont know how to be a part of making a game, any way thank u and am waiting for others to say what they think.

Euh...., sorry, got it wrong,
get Vegas for making a Reel,
MS-Word for the CV and
DreamWeaver for your Site,
And contact people, show them your work,
just don't buy plugs you'll never will use,
if you can show, illustrate you are mastering all the softs you are mentionning, and if you are willing to move etc..., you will not have any trouble getting a job in the industry.
I just tried to be reasonnable, ..., there aren't a lot of people learning Max that can spend 6000$ like that on a list of plugs straight out of the resource guide, (in fact you're the first I know of).
So good luck to you,
and hows the industry going on down there? As I don't have a lot of news from your country?
cheers
Dominique

[andrewjohn81]

I smell a pirate.


max 6,7, and 7.5?????
7.5 is for subscription users. Why don't you have version 8 then?

[seedo]

reall?????

i didnt know that i can upgrade to 8, but is it for free and how? thank u for the info.

thank u all guys.

but about the industry in where i live, well.........:wise: ......... bullshi****** :banghead:
i mean its really driving me nuts

no body care about 3d animation or character animation or animation movies or cartoon or gaming, they just care about printing press things and yuk it suck i work in this field for 2 years designing books and greeting cards and magazines etc...

but i workd also in the multim edia industry and it was good :rolleyes: and fun and i get paid good making intros and presentation CDs and ebooks and multimedia stuff using macromedia flash but i still feel that i can do better so i started studying max for a year now ( by my self) buying DVDs, i get paid for one presentation CD like 1100$ is that good?
and now i deside to open my own company which am the only designer who work in it, and my wife as a secertary and my sis as a designer too.

what do u think guys should i go on?

thank u

[thatoneguy]

I think you should save your money. Why buy plug-ins you don't need? Obviously you have the funds, or your employer has funds.

I tell my boss "I need XYZ" he asks for a link, and he orders it the same or next day. With plug-ins that turn around time would be pretty much: "Link -> Click -> Download".

Why try to anticipate purchases you probably won't have to make. Plug-ins are by their nature specialty tools designed to augment specifc cases. What you might want to look into is perhaps some work-flow plugins such as Orionflame. Spend the rest on Max 8 and at least one auxillary render machine. When that deadline is bearing down on you and your work machine is also your render machine there'll be great gnashing of teeth.

[shibumenon]

Thinking Particles is great!!
Its mightier than pflow ... a must have ... but makes sense only if you do a lot of film work/vfx. you can cross out sand blaster if you buy TP.
As for the rest of the plugins, depends on what kind of jobs you expect to come to you.

[naik]

Hey seedo...


i would agree with some other guys here.

The main question should be, why do you need those plugins and for which task do you need them? Or perhaps how often ?

I mean, i could probably continue your list until this thread explodes but
as you can see, all those plugins are task specific - and without knowing your task / assignment exactly, its almost impossible to confirm you buying such plugin.

Dont misunderstand me, some of those plugs are awesome, but
i know many guys thinking like
: Buying good plugs = much better Cg Quality - i think you know what i mean - at the end, its the artist who survives...

In my view, i would save the money for now - and perhaps investigate which path your jobs / assignments will go - and then perhaps decide which genre of plugs you can invest and not earlier...

Its a bit complicated, but anyways... my two cents...



regards...

NAIK

[virtualmesh]

I purchased the bulk of my plugins (along with 3dsmax) while I was a student at 3D animation school (I was able to enjoy the educational discounts) and have to say that the TurboSquid's toolkit had the bulk of what I needed for an all-round need for 3d work at that stage. That kit included most of Turbosquid's ACAP products:

ACT Pro
DreamScape
Afterburn
finalRender Stage-1
finalToon
Human IK
a Texture Baking utiltiy

After school, I recently purchased hairFX, clothFX and Texture Layers from turbosquid as my 3d work was starting to move towards character modelling and rigging, plus I wanted the simulations to work easily with cloth and hair. I've heard that 3dsmax v8 now comes with a cloth and hair simulator (it came with the subscription under 7.5) so if you are moving to a newer release then these might already be included. I recently purchased from cgcharacter the cgskin plugin and am currently figuring out the best way to use that with my characters. I also just picked up bones-pro3 which is on sale at digimation until Dec 31st for just $99. I would have to say the best plugins for character modelling has been texture layers and cgskin. bones-pro has came to my rescue on certain areas such as the fingers and it's jiggle bones.

I also picked up COM, MOM and MTK from di-o-matic. These have been an esential tool for morphing my models. I recommend them for any character modeller with morphs.

When I was doing some art work on a space scene, I purchased finalFlares along with finalDOF from cebas. These are neat post-render effect plugins that really added some exciting visual enhancements to what I needed them for.

While I was at cebas, I also purchased Ghost Painter and psd-manager, these let me integrate in a real-time mode, painting my models using Photoshop tools rather than the painting tools (such as Vertex Paint) within 3dsmax.

When I was starting to model everyday objects, I purchased both PowerSolids and PowerBooleans from npowersoftware. These two plugins changed my modelling workflow with their internal workings.

It all depends on what you are doing.

[andrewjohn81]

We have final render And vray.

I have used final render more, but we all use vray alot more now.

The learning curve (if you knew mental ray a bit before) is ALOT better for vray because the terms are similar and so are the concepts.

Rendering techniques are more established for it, it's cheaper, it crashes less, and you can have unlimited render nodes. What more could you want?

Ok, final toon is good. That's really all we use final render for. Of course, i do some standard techniques that avoids both now, but that's just for wire rendering for architectural type stuff mixed with other. We do black and white hidden line environment with detailed realistic type appliances at times and none of the toon renderers work great. It's always best just to define the actual lines to render.

But everyone is right. Just buy the plugins you will use.

And yes, contact your distributor. They are WAY late on shipping you max 8. OR, you have failed to pay for the upgrade. It sucks though. Don't bother yet. Maybe there are some character animation enhancements, but other than Pelt there is nothing better for me than 7.5. It crashes about 5 times more often. We almost went back to version 7.5

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