Its done first week 2004-01-29 - By Chris Kufahl
Back
Well, I can only compare LW 7.5 and tS 4.3, so my comparison isn't exactly
going to be right on. And obviously, this is mostly opinion and personal
preference.
Interface:
I guess tS's interface is more intuitive in the beginning, and probably
better for a beginner. However, once you learn LW's interface, workflow
becomes pretty smooth. It's also logically laid out in my mind. (Though
sometimes in the beginning I wonder why something would be in one spot or
another) I do actually prefer the text based "icons" in LW as opposed to
the image based icons in tS. The 4 view layout in LW is nice, and while I
don't have it in tS 4.3, I know the newer versions have it. The layers in
LW's modeller are great, but I can't compare them to tS 5 and 6's layers as
I don't have either.
I'm still somewhat mixed on the modeler/layout workflow of LW. While it is
nice for keeping things neat and tidy, I sometimes miss tS's way of having
it all in one.
Modelling:
LW takes the cake, easily. I find it much easier to create and design the
shapes in LW than in tS. In a few weeks I was creating things in LW that
took me months to learn to do in tS. Maybe that's because tS taught me how
to model in general, but I'm pretty sure if I set out to model something
complex with subdivision surfaces (THC in tS), I could do it a lot quicker
with LW.
Surfacing:
Easily LW. The fact that you can change matierials scene wide is a big
plus. Plus you have a lot more options for surfacing. You get much more
control over everything (such as incidence angles, etc). While different,
the surfacing in LW is just as easy as tS, though it may take some practice.
Lighting:
I haven't gotten too in depth with LW's lighting, but I would venture that
tS and LW are pretty similiar in this respect. I do like the option in LW
of being to exclude individual objects from individual light's
effects. (IE: Box 1 is affected by lights 1 and 2, but box 2 is only
affected by light 1)
Animating:
I've done very little animation in tS and none in LW so I can't comment.
Rendering:
Again, easily LW. I don't know what it is, but the renders I've done in LW
just look much better already than some of the renders I've done in tS.
Stability:
LW has crashed no more than 3 times on me. tS crashed on an hourly basis
for me (whereas nothing else crashed at all really)
Other notes:
There are an extreme ammount of free tutorials for LW out there. A lot of
them are extremely thorough, detailed, and well written. A lot of them I
would imagine are as good, if not better than some of the proteam matierial
(and yes, they're free). There's also quite a bit more LW related resource
sites out there. The LW community, while seemingly bigger, is still very
helpful, but the tS community is a bit more tight knit and everyone sort of
knows everyone.
Compare: http://ck.ethereal.net/skyline18.jpg - That's after years of
using tS. http://ck.ethereal.net/supra018.jpg - After just a few weeks of
using LW. (Ignore the shadows though, I just used a quick light
setup). Again, this could be that tS taught me quite a bit of the basics
that carried over to LW. Those two aren't exactly the best benchmarks, but
are meant to just give a sort of rough estimate. It would probably help if
I had two better full scenes that were more comparable, but I don't as of
yet. Of course, someone could make a car in tS that looks 100x better than
my LW car.
Conclusion: tS is a great starter app, and could be used to make some great
work. However, I believe LW to be well worth the extra money. A pretty
pointless post, but I thought I'd share my opinion :P .
-chris
At 01:41 PM 1/29/2004, you wrote:
>At 05:28 PM 28-01-2004, Bobby Ray wrote:
>>I said it at the beginning that I meant no offense and I still say it
>>now No Offense. Let not take a statement so serious. The Facts are the
>>Facts Maya Softimage is HighEnd tS is not this is only argued when
>>someone disagree with that. tS probably can do movie and TV's that not
>>what being said HiEnd Renderers produce HiEnd Work.
>
>It's not offensive, it's just an old, I guess argument isn't the right
>word, it's just that some of the back-and-forths on this topic in the past
>have gone on an on, and with extreme rancor, beating the proverbial dead
>horse until it's just annunrecognizable smush. So I admit that i, for one,
>tend tor eact badly when it loos like that poor dead horse might be
>resurrected again.
>
>I personally do think, though, that it'd be interesting and useful to see
>some solid comparisons between other programs and tS. If nothing else, it
>would establish some known paramaters/limitations for people to evaluate
>and work with. I do also think that, if Caligari could manage a
>subdivision structure, i.e. with something like trueModeler (or whatever
>one would call the older, student-priced versions), trueSpace (current
>trueSpace, with continuing development) and a "super-duper" version geared
>towards the film and other intensive-use industries (trueVision, truePower,
>whatever), they'd be in a unique position.
>
>As I see it, what people fear, with all the talk of going high-end, is the
>possibility of affordable trueSpace versions disappearing in favor of
>$30,000 program-plus-plugins setups.
>
>- Kris
>
>
>
>- Kris M. Krieger
> http://www.pterochromics.com
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