Now that I’ve settled on Unity Pro, I need to decide which 3d app to focus on, at least for the near future. The apps I have to choose from are C4D 9.5, Lightwave 9.3, Carrara 5 Pro, and the latest Blender. (I’ve seen Cheetah mentioned a bit too, but don’t know much about it)
In general, do any of these stand out as being easier to work with Unity in terms of workflow and getting objects/materials/animation into your projects than the others?
I’ve looked through old posts on the forums, but since they’re usually people asking questions to resolve problems, they don’t really tell me if one or more of these apps have lots of people happily using them day-to-day without issues.
I have and use C4D 10, Carrara 5 Pro and Blender. I’ve given Cheetah a spin and have tried Maya and Lightwave. Of those applications, I’d say Maya and C4D offer the most complete integration with Unity. Next on the list would be Cheetah followed by Blender and then Carrara. The feedback on the latest version of Cheetah has been very good. It now supports animation export and the only things it lacks (and that I need) is texture / light baking. Blender’s exporter has had some recent improvements, but the animation export is still under development. Carrara is a nice app, there’s a great baking plugin available, but it only exports static (non-animated) .FBX or .OBJ files.
So there you have it. If you got lots of $$, get Maya or C4D, otherwise I’d get Cheetah and if you need texture baking, get Carrara plus the plugin or Blender.
Right, the best apps to run with Unity are Maya/Cinema 4D 1st, or Cheetah 2nd.
However, nobody should be using a 3D program these days without a 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator (or more expensive product), and Maya’s the only one that supports that on the Mac right now. Cinema 4D supports it on Windows, but not Mac. Cheetah says it supports it but it doesn’t work in practice. Blender supposedly has alpha support for the SpaceNavigator, but I can’t get it to run on my MacBook Pro (and Blender doesn’t integrate well enough with Unity right now for me to use it, although I loved using it in the past).
As such, I find Maya to be the only practical solution for the time being. I told the Cinema 4D people to get on the ball, so maybe if more people do, there will be a cheaper viable option for you.
Thanks for the info guys, this is very helpful! It sounds like C4D may be my best bet. I’ll have to pay to switch my license from PC to Mac, but hopefully that won’t be too much.
BigKahuna: What do you think of the C4D upgrade to 10? I currently have 9.5, and am wondering if I should spring for the upgrade while I’m at it. Are the new character animation tools helpful? Maybe I can get them to cover the PC → Mac switch if I do the upgrade…
Hi,
Cheetah3D 4.3 will already add texture baking and a second UV set.
So that gap will be closed quite soon.
I also want to add that Cheetah3D supports stuff which can’t be done even with Maya or C4D. Like creating different animation clips/takes within one file. With Maya or C4D you either have to make one spagetti animation and let Unity split it up to smaller animation clips or you create various files, one for each animation clip.
Eddie, if you’re a PC user, don’t forget to check out XSI Foundation 6.02 or the newly released Mod Tool. At $495 and free, respectively, they represent the best price/performance ratio in the business, IMHO.
Eddie - I’m a real Noob to C4d (started with 10), maybe one of the other C4D users here can fill in the gaps.
Martin - Is there a demo of 4.3 we can try? The only version I found on the site was 4.2. I’d like to give it a go to see how well the new baking tools work.
EDIT: Oops, sorry, I just noticed it’s still being developed…
Well, I called Maxon, and to switch platforms from PC → Mac has a charge of 25% of the original purchase price! However, if I get the upgrade from 9.5 to 10 then I can switch platforms at the time of the upgrade, so I went ahead and did that, which is actually cheaper than just switching the license and staying at v9.5. …go figure…
In any case, I’ll give C4D the first shot. I was a bit biased towards it anyways because, out of the ones I mentioned, I liked its UI and workflow the best.
Island Dreamer: I had tried out XSI Foundation, and it was impressively powerful. For me personally C4D and Lightwave felt friendlier and I was able to get better results sooner. (Although it did seem that someone who gets to know XSI well would be rewarded for the effort…)
Cheetah looks interesting too, especially since its price is quite reasonable. I’ll keep an eye out for the new features, but I’ve just got to let my credit card take a rest for now, because between the purchases of iMac, Unity, and now the C4D upgrade, ummm, let’s just say the poor thing is smoking from the heavy usage.
Oh well, if you factor in the number of hours I’ll be using all these things, it’ll work out to be cheaper per hour than a movie in the long run. (He said trying to justify it all again to himself…)
The training materials that now ship with the product are much better than they used to be. Digital Tutors also have extensive training DVDs covering just about every subject. 3D Buzz also offers a very inexpensive intro DVD.
Perhaps it’s because I date back all the way to Imagine 1.0 on the Amiga, but modeling in XSI just feels “right” to me. But I know it’s all a matter of personal preference.
(He said trying to justify it all again to himself…)