Can you help me with these feature questions?

#1

I’m having a tough time trying to decide what to use, Maya PLE, XSI Foundation, or Animation Master (if there’s anything else I should be considering, please let me know). My focus is on animation, and all my experience so far is in Maya. Actually, I’m surprised AM hasn’t lowered the price in response to Foundation only being 500 bucks. If AM were 200, I think I would just buy it right now. But at 300, plus shipping, I wonder, well, maybe I should just fork out the extra dough and get XSI. I mean, isn’t XSI a much more powerful program? I tried the XSI demo for a bit today, but I’m having trouble getting my head around their workflow, it isn’t very intuitive, I prefer Maya’s way much more. However, I don’t like PLE because it’s so crippled, and that watermark is just so intrusive. If there were a 500 dollar version of Maya I would definitely get that because I’m most familiar with it. As you can probably tell by reading this, money is incredibly tight for me right now, so I need to make the right decision.

I’ve started watching the downloadable videos but so far haven’t seen the answers to my questions. I’ve been reading about AM for the past couple hours actually and I’m not seeing the answers, so I’m hoping an AM expert can take a couple minutes to help me, it would be GREATLY appreciated!

On to the AM questions, please forgive me if these sound like dumb questions. I just REALLY WISH they had a demo of the program, that would help so much.

  1. Does it support bump and specular mapping?
  2. Can I do stuff like make transparent glass?
  3. Can it do fog?
  4. I really like smooth skin weighting in Maya (more than one bone can affect a single point). Is there something similar in AM?
  5. Can you change the color of fur at the tip (starts brown at the base, changes to black at the tip)?
  6. What about moving around the model (again, I really love the way Maya works this way, with the alt and mouse buttons, it’s fantastic). From what I saw in the vid, moving around looks a bit clunky…again, if there were a demo version I would be able to see this better…is there a perspective view or just the orthographic views?
  7. Can it do fire effects?
  8. Can it make morph targets, and then have something like a set driven key to activate them, like when you bend the arm, the bicep turns into a big muscle?
  9. Can it handle really large scenes quickly and without crashing?
  10. Can you create stretchy bones so that when you pull the hand, the forearm and bicep bones stretch? Also, can you get the model’s geometry to shrink as the bone stretches?
  11. Can you render wireframes?
  12. I have 3 fast computers here, can I render on all of them or am I stuck to just one? If it’s only one, that would be a major drawback. I ask this because I think I read somewhere that you need the cd in the drive to run the program…that does not sound fun at all…is this to prevent multi-computer renders??
  13. What kinds of lights does it have? Is there directional, spotlight, and omni? Do they have visible cones to show where the dropoff occurs?
  14. Is there an f-curve editor?

Geez, sorry about that, more questions than I thought there would be. Anyway, I know there are lots of other people out there who have faced the same decision, so if anyone would just like to post their experience instead of going through all those questions, that would be great too.

Thanks VERY MUCH in advance!

#2
  1. Does it support bump and specular mapping?

yes

2.  Can I do stuff like make transparent glass?

yes

  1. Can it do fog?

yes

  1. I really like smooth skin weighting in Maya (more than one bone can affect a single point). Is there something similar in AM?

yes

5.  Can you change the color of fur at the tip (starts brown at the base, changes to black at the tip)?

yes

  1. What about moving around the model (again, I really love the way Maya works this way, with the alt and mouse buttons, it’s fantastic). From what I saw in the vid, moving around looks a bit clunky…again, if there were a demo version I would be able to see this better…is there a perspective view or just the orthographic views?

yes

7.  Can it do fire effects?

yes… sort of. That’s up to your own imagination, same with any software.

  1. Can it make morph targets, and then have something like a set driven key to activate them, like when you bend the arm, the bicep turns into a big muscle?

yes, it’s called smartskin in A:M

9.  Can it handle really large scenes quickly and without crashing?

yes and no, I’m currently working with a gigantic set that in wireframe mode just looks white (it’s that dense). it loads great. It doesn’t do AS well with really huge models as some software does

  1. Can you create stretchy bones so that when you pull the hand, the forearm and bicep bones stretch? Also, can you get the model’s geometry to shrink as the bone stretches?

yes, there are ways to do this

11.  Can you render wireframes?

yes

  1. I have 3 fast computers here, can I render on all of them or am I stuck to just one? If it’s only one, that would be a major drawback. I ask this because I think I read somewhere that you need the cd in the drive to run the program…that does not sound fun at all…is this to prevent multi-computer renders??

yes, you need the network render version, but it’s still very reasonable.

  1. What kinds of lights does it have? Is there directional, spotlight, and omni? Do they have visible cones to show where the dropoff occurs?

yes, they’re called, kliegs, suns, and bulbs, there’re lots of properties you can change.

14.  Is there an f-curve editor?

I’m pretty sure, but I’m not as well versed with the animation tool set.

A:M is really a fully featured package (If you need a re-cap, I gave them all yes’).

Why not get both Maya PLE and A:M? Maya PLE is free after all. It doesn’t sound like a tough choice to me. :wink:

Zack

#3

Thanks for your response, zack, AM is much more fully featured than I thought. Guess I can’t really go wrong in buying it.

#4

I think that zero2zillion pretty much covered it all there apart from to say that there is a 30 day return policy so you can have a month to see what you think.

The spline modelling is probably something that you won’t be used to and I suggest that you give it some time to get used to it. You will get there. Splines are good for character animation.

In terms of everything else, the ease of use is a big selling point. For instance, smartskins can be edited as you animate. Say you notice that there is some odd deformation somewhere in the knee, just right click the shin bone, select “new smartskin”, move the cps until it looks good and then carry on animating. The defomation will ease in when the bone is in the position you made the smart-skin in. This deformation is automatically embedded into the model.

Also, there is an f curve editor - it is pretty comprehensive and you get Vector, Quaternion and Euler to play with. Quaternion avoids gimble lock for you. You also get a dope sheet which works well.

Actually, there are two time lines. One can be set to dope sheet and the other to channel editor (f-curve).

Character animation is the real focus and is at least as fully functioning as in any other program.

Phew! essay over.

#5

I’m a brand new AM user, so I can give you a bit of persepective. I would ask what are you going to use it for, first off. You mention large files, as one thing.

The app is not as stable as I wish it were. It’s easy to work with, easy to get the basics down and start running with a project. But if you do certain things, AM will crash, and you have to learn what those things are. Also, you are going to have to rely on 3rd party documentation and training to get deep into the program, and a lot of tut’s on the net are not current with the current version because things have changed (for the better I gather) in the last few versions. The book that comes with AM is next to useless once you get into the program.

AM is great for character animation, so if you are going that way you need to take a serious look at it. Their forums are a good place to get information, but beware of the AM kool aid - dissenting opinions aren’t really tolerated there since it’s their own forum. I know from experience.

Having said all that - in the end I really like AM. I’ve gotten through the basics, and I am struggling a bit with the next stage. There are some great 3rd party training materials out there you can get - but they are not free. Figure that into your purchase price. I bought Anzovin’s The Setup Machine for rigging - which is a great piece of software - but that was $90 right there. They have some great training vids too, but again, not free.

So for me I’ve done this:

Bought AM: $299
Bought 2 AM books (used) $50ish
Bought TSM2 (rigging) $90
Probably will buy at least one Anzovin Vid: $30-50

So right now my “price of purchase” as I see it is around $450+.

I also agree with John they have a 30-day no questions asked return policy. Give it whirl, send it back if you don’t like it.

HTH

Tom

#6

…there are some trainingvideos which are free… watch them on www.hash.com…
They show just the basic-tutorials from the manul, but they will give you a idea of how a:m works…

Fuchur

#7

Well, to be fair about the Docs, I havent’ seen good thorough documentation come with a program since Poweranimator 8.1. So for most of the extra costs you add onto AM may as well be sdded across the board.
I’d say AM’s docs are about as good as Messiah’s. it’s in project based format that intoduce you to the basics of the program but don’t take you deep enough.

As far as workflow and ease of use AM is probably the best. Rigging is easy and straight forward, and if things slip by that you have to go back and change the entire setup doesn’t blow up on you.

As far as the stability goes, AM has made great strides in becomeing more stable. I However right now it is still my most volatile app. Where I will get a crash in MB or c4d once or twice a week at most, AM will crash on me mabye 2 or 3 times more.

The only real downside is that AM doesnt’ fit well with eisting pipelines. you are not going to be exchanging assets back and forth with other 3d programs as easy as you could with a program that has an fbx plugin.

I would go with hash if you are doing a project all by yourself or you can live with working the AM content into the pipelne at composite time.

hope this helps

#8

Pixelmech;

I somehow have managed to survive without any of the materials you have mentioned. I’m not saying that they aren’t useful, but they are definitely not part of the starting cost for the software. There’re many resources out there.

As for stability, I will mention that even with my heavy use of A:M, it has only crashed for me twice in the last 6 months. That is notably higher than a somewhat notorious recent release of Maya. And each time I crashed it was while doing something out of the ordinary (such as trying to make action objects on a 20k patch model).

I really don’t understand many of the issues people have with A:M anymore… I hear complaints once in a while about it’s ease of use, but A:M is truly the most intuitive software out there, and it’s usually reasonably clear that the person who is having difficulties hasn’t read the (admittedly short) manual or followed any of the many online tutorials.

I definitely don’t understand complaints about stability. The last two versions have been rock solid for me.

I agree with onikaze, A:M doesn’t fit well into pipelines using other software. But that doesn’t mean you have to be working on a project alone, there’re at least 3000 users of A:M on the Hash inc. forums, alone. And A:M is excellent for online project management. It’s files are small text files, and with the magic of IRC, Skype, FTP, and some sort of private forum you can easily manage a large project with other A:M users.

Zack

#9

Thanks for all your helpful replies, I’m going to give it a whirl.

#10

There was a time when this was true. But I have found 11.1 to be one of the most stable 3D applications I have ever used. In re-working eggprops I have had to do a lot of re-modeling, re-texturing and rendering. A:M has been rock solid.

If you do manage to make it crash. . . I’m sure Hash Inc. would love to hear how you did it. They have been fighting this stigma for a long time and I think/know they are making huge inroads.

#11

Well, I am in fact using 11.1b. I have plenty of crashing issues. .1b made it better, but only a little. In think it is fair to say that more experienced users are keen on what NOT to do to make AM crash. This doesn’t necessarily mean AM is perfectly stable, it means you know how to work around the quirks. I’m learning to do that now, I just wish I didn’t have to.

Quick example. If I am working in a project, then I close it, then make a new project, import an model and work on it. If I close the project, it crashes. (I might have the sequence a bit off, I’m not at home). I can pretty much count on it happening every time, so I try to work around that process.

In a typical 2-hour session I’d say I crash probably twice. So save early, often and in versions, which is always good practice anyway.

From what I hear though - this is no different than other 3d apps, they all crash to an extent. Not trying to bash AM - I like the software, just saying how it is for me. I do plan on submitting a bug report for it to, as soon as I have time.

#12

If you can repeat a crash like that. . . why are you telling us? Thats called a bug. Report it.

#13

As I said…

#14

The problem is, that the 3d-programs (all I used up to now) are selfish little programs…
most work the best, if one computer is only for the 3d-App…
That doesnt mean that if you have installed for instance Maya and A:M or even Photoshop and A:M, that they will crash all the time, but I think the possibility of it is there…

If you got any programs running, which are trying to get the power of the prozessor at the wrong time, some other apps will crash…

If you got luck you wont experience even one crash in a month… if you are not, you could experience 2 in a hour…

For me, A:M is quite stable, although I get it to crash sometimes… I get maybe 2 crashes in a week or something. I can live with that… I worked with 3ds and Maya at work, and they both werent that stable…

Fuchur

#15

The Technical Reference is in digital form on your A:M CD.

#16

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.