#MACROMODEL+3D Studio
7 messages in this thread
Would anyone care to comment on the suitability of MACROMODEL
for orgnic shapes which could then be brought into 3DS for rendering
etc.
Judy
Hi,
Macromodel is a fine external modeller, but for the money you get a better
package for organic stuff with Animation Master, and by the way, also a
complete 3d-package.
Bye from Stuttgart, Germany
Jan / Imagelab
We have used MacroModel extensively over the past 18 months. On the plus side,
it is very easy to create organic shapes and offers a great deal of control.
On the minus side, it can be slow with large models (even on p90s) and can
crash. In addition, using MacroModel DXF models in 3D Studio is not as
straight forward as it should be.
MacroModel handles DXF very poorly, often creating duplicate edges. For
certain objects correcting this in 3DS is not a large problem; Optimize makes
the task simple. For others, however, extensive editing at the face or vertex
level will be required — a time-consuming hassle.
When we bought it, MacroModel was the only readily available spline based
modeller. Now, there are better modelling alternatives (metaballs, etc.) If I
were you, I would look at other packages first, IMHO.
Cheerio,
John Mateer
The current price of MacroModel is $198.99 – I understand this is a big drop in
what it used to be.
I was and still am interested in ANimation Master – they are supposed to
release just the modeler for about $200 – but nothing yet.
I am sorry to hear that MM has so much trouble with DXF files – I thought that
by now that was fairly standard.
Thank you for your information.
Judy
If you need to model cad accurate mechanical objects check out XCAD for
windows. It uses advanced nurbs surfaces and trimmed surrfaces. Since it uses
nurbs it might work better than Animation Master. I myself will probably be
using both packages. One for mechanical one for organic.
I assume Animation Master for Organic?
Judy
Yes. I meant Animation Master for organic. I just received Xcad and so far it
does a bad job of DXF translation. I will probably send it back. Too bad to
because it did use nurbs surfaces.